I went to high school in the midwestern cultural hub commonly known as Ann Arbor, Michigan and have nothing but the fondest memories of that place. My girlfriend’s family had a farm on a dirt road about 30-40 minutes west of town, and when we weren’t recklessly driving the tractor about their property we were hanging around the halfpipe her little brother had built into the loft of their barn. Her brother was and still is an epically cool guy. I clearly remember seeing the Andre the Giant has a Posse sticker in his possession around 1991, not knowing what to make of it, but instantly thinking “this is rad”.

17 years later (um, right now) Shepard Fairey is being sued by the Associated Press after getting the same “this is rad” reaction from a decidedly larger audience than the early 90s skater crew. In case you’ve been living in a hole or under a rock, his Obama “Hope” poster is pretty much the iconic image of 2008, but the AP claims Fairey owes them “damages” since it is an interpretation of an AP photo. This evening the media remix dream-team assembled at New York Public Library to weigh in on the currently confused state of copyright law vs. artistry. Lawrence Lessig has got Fairey’s back in this nonsensical (IMHO) battle with the AP, and tonight he delivered commentary very similar to what he says in the TED talk below. Steven Johnson, author of the Invention of Air spoke as well and served as moderator.

I love that this conversation happened in a public library, but I wish that we had gotten to discuss the library as an institution that must support and encourage creativity, new media literacy, and remix culture as part of our service delivery. Public libraries have traditionally provided access to static information content. Books. Magazines. Films. DVDs. Engaging and learning from media is no longer a passive activity, and our public libraries, facilitators and champions of recreational learning, need to adjust to that.

There are some public libraries out there with ample funding, talented staff, and a risk-taking attitude that are addressing media literacy with their services. As an example of people doing things right, have a look (try not to drool) at the Creation Station at the Darien Library (CT).

Here’s what you are looking at:

• Mac Powerbook (MS Office, Audacity and has all Mac apps)

• Flip Cam

• Edirol voice recorder (rechargeable unit, no batteries)

• Sony CyberShot

• Flip tri-pod (works with both the cameras)

Darien Library’s Creation Station has no loan permissions and is (for now) only used in the building. Kids call, email or come by to use it, and it is also used in library programs.

The question for you, my readers: is the Creation Station a frill, something that should only be offered as a bonus, add-on, special service in some public libraries, or is this kind of toolset an integral part of what libraries should be doing to address the new media literacy needs of our kids? You already know what I think. So why is this Creation Station just being offered to kids? If my library had a fleet of creation stations, they’d be packed with twenty and thirty-somethings from open to close. Is this service as important as I think it is, and how can we make this jump from being 20th century book repositories to vital hubs of participatory culture and knowledge sharing?

Finally, Shepard Fairey: Thanks for the talk. I want you to make a poster for my library. I work at Brooklyn Public Library. I’m easy to find. Help spread the good word- public libraries support remix culture.

“There are two economies: the economy of scarcity, which is the physical world, and the economy of abundance, which is the digital world. Everything in the physical world gets more expensive and scarcer, while everything in the digital world gets more abundant and cheaper. So there’s a huge imperative, both in terms of economies and choice, to shift things to digital, and then once they become digital – once they’re in that deflationary world – they inevitably become free. Physical world things are going to get more expensive over time – I don’t just mean monetary cost, I mean also their externalities: carbon costs, ecological costs, everything else is going to become more expensive. Therefore, there is going to be a strong drive to shift from the inflationary to the deflationary economy, to make things digital if at all possible….

…I was recently in Seattle and had the chance to walk through OMA’s Seattle Public Library again. That’s a pretty good example of getting the balance right between abundance and scarcity. I think its profound that on the first floor, in the largest communal space, there are no books. The library is simply a place with portals into the world of abundance.”

For me, this speaks not only to architectural innovations but it also justifies the digital initiatives ‘labs’ trend that is appearing in some public libraries, like NYPL or DCPL. It also speaks to the fact that evaluating success by collecting materials circulation statistics is insufficient in this changing landscape. A more accurate means of evaluating success would be a combination of circulations stats, door count, wireless usage stats, web traffic stats, and presence in the social graph.

An example of an ideal library program used to be “do an arts and crafts project, and set up a book display of books related to that craft for the patrons to check out”.

Now an ideal library program becomes “do an arts and crafts project, and set up a book display of books related to that craft for the patrons to check out, and then create a gallery of the crafts people made on Flickr”.

That’s right folks, now we’ve got MORE work to do!