In the shadow of Occupy Wall Street/DC/Oakland/wherever lies the the fledgling Occupy Knowledge movement, also known by it’s more common name, “Librarians Don’t Get On With Vendors.” A simple Google for “librarians and vendor relations” yields a list of hits that could have resulted from “difficult mother” or “I think my boyfriend is cheating on me.”

I don’t speak of it directly very often, but I work at the Library of Congress. It’s a pretty big, pretty nice library–lots of good stuff happening here. Arguably, one of the best things happening here is copyright deposit. In case you are unfamiliar with the law, check out Circular 1, and this handy dandy excerpt:

Yay, books! All for free, all for us, two copies of everything published here in the U.S. for our use, or disposition.

On Use: Collection policies vary from division to division, based on the importance of the title. But in my division, we tend to keep two copies of most law journals. We collect issues as they’re deposited, and we bind them ourselves. Sometimes, publishers will send us a nicely bound copy of an entire volume, even though they already sent us the loose issues.

On Disposition: Sometimes, more than two copies are deposited. Sometimes, we actually buy a copy, and still have two deposited. Sometimes we get extras from gift & exchange. Acquisitions happens. What do we do with the extras, beyond our keep decision? We pulp them.

Yay, recycling! But wait, you say: isn’t that terribly wasteful? Aren’t librarians fighting a war against high prices from unreasonable vendors? I mean, yeah. I hear they are. But none of them have approached me, or the Library lately to ask about cooperating, getting the knowledge out there. Plus the fight doesn’t directly apply to me; I lack standing.

There’s nothing more free law than dumpster diving, people. Gift and exchange doesn’t cover this, and neither does the surplus program. Who wants to figure out a way to make a new program?