Digital Book Evangelist David Rothman’s Bold Vision For Libraries

It’s the afternoon of June 29, 2021, and I’m in a deep conversation with David Rothman, a former poverty beat reporter, and staunch library and digital reading advocate since the early 90s. Years ago he founded TeleRead reputed to be the world’s oldest existing site devoted to general news and views on e-books, libraries, copyrights, and related matters. 

Rothman’s thought-leadership in this space is impressive. His views have appeared in numerous publications including the Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, Education Week, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Washington Post, among others. 

Curious about his early history as a journalist, I asked him to share a bit about what he himself affectionately refers to as his “checkered past.” For starters, I discovered that his early career began in Lorain, Ohio working for the Lorain Journal, a daily newspaper which at that time had a circulation of around 30,000 or 40,000.

Reminiscing on the 4 ½ years he spent there, Rothman remarked:

“It’s now a considerably reduced morning paper. I covered the poverty beat, specifically public housing. I wrote front page features and general news. One of my biggest stories was in the aftermath of the Kent State Massacre -- I wrote about  Bill Schroder, the ROTC cadet killed. I also covered the anti-war protests that took place in Oberlin”  

In 1974, he decided to leave Lorain to pursue work as an investigative reporter in Washington D.C. It was there where he wrote a novel about a D.C. building collapse. He recounts the eerie similarities of that book to the tragic event that recently took place in Miami. 

“Solomon Scandal is of interest now in a tragic and timely way.  It revolves around the story of a building collapse and ensuing discoveries about the connection between the media, certain business types, and government officials.” 

While in Washington, he developed an interest in the rapidly emerging field of high tech noting:

“It’s a field where I realized that I could crank out more work and do a better job. This was 1984 or so.”  

He, in fact, wrote another book called The Silicon Jungle in 1985, which he described as a “mix of a computer guide and stories from Silicon Valley,” adding

“I worked off of the theory that if you knew how computers were designed then you might become a better consumer. I also offered some straight consumer tips in it.” 

All of this led to a budding interest in e-books, pre-mass adoption of the Internet. Says Rothman: 

“I began thinking about it from a poverty context, namely how e-books could really drive down the cost of knowledge and entertainment. This led me to outrageously write in 1993 about the possibility of how an e-book reader might someday cost around $35.00 from Kmart.” 

Rothman says he then began to envision a complete national digital library system. 

“My particular vision is that it would be well integrated with both hardware and content so even technically unsophisticated librarians and everyday users would be able to take advantage of it. I felt it would be a great way to give the U.S. high-tech industry a start in terms of increasing the demand for chips and displays. In fact, I’ve often wondered what the web would have evolved into if the usual business types had been regarded a bit less and librarians a bit more.” 

According to Rothman, the aforementioned TeleRead dates back to the early 1990s, when he, the site’s founder, made a bold proposition in a Computerworld article for a well-stocked national digital library. He also pushed the TeleRead concepts at three national conferences. Rothman continues: 

“In that sense, the word “TeleRead” meant a highly evolved proposal for such systems in the United States and elsewhere that are tightly integrated with local libraries and schools, as opposed to being excessively centralized.” 

These views all came at a time when old fashion modems were the way to get books.

“Of course e-books, these days are more often read from phones than dedicated readers,” says Rothman: 

He says he created the word “TeleRead” by combining “Telecommunications” and “Read.” And while the site primarily covers e-book related commerce, it still offers its share of news and commentaries reflecting the public interest and society’s cultural needs. TeleRead posts community member comments in a sidebar which Rothman says adds considerably to the value of the site. What’s more, TeleRead commentators, according to Rothman who show a good track record can become contributors featured in the main part of the blog.

Rothman also launched a few years ago an initiative called Library City with Tom Peters, a veteran academic librarian. It aims to help public libraries thrive in the digital era by serving all of us, not just the economic and cultural elites. This helped spawn what Rothman considers to be his magnum opus, a legacy project called The LibraryEndowment.org.

In short, the endowment will benefit the entire U.S. through the use of a Friend of the Library-style model. Rather than competing with local groups, it will focus on donations from the super-rich.

Some of this money will be earmarked for matching grants to support local libraries, with allowances for poor localities that lack substantive fund-raising potential. Other funds will be directed toward the hiring of school librarians in cash-strapped cities or for two national digital library systems (one public and K-12, the other for higher education and research).

Rothman says he was emboldened to pursue this given how local budgets go up and down and library budgets vary widely geographically.  He continues: 

“I’ve written about it in the Library Journal and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.  What I’m proposing is a $20 billion dollar endowment within five years that is funded by the super-rich. We believe that they will agree with us that this is a much better way for them to spend their money better than they are right now.” 

He emphasizes that this funding won’t replace government spending. Rather, it would augment it. 

“I would love to see more good books available for the masses. And it would be nice if authors could get more money for their work. It’s here where the endowment would expand the market for not only commercially published books but those that fall in the self-published category.”

Rothman can personally attest to his latter point as the author of six, commercially published tech-related books and a commercially published Washington novel, the aforementioned The Solomon Scandals.  

He was in fact kind enough to send me a copy of his newest book, a self-published novel entitled No Taller Than My Gun. Without giving too much away, the book he says highlights a lot of the terrible stereotypes to this day about Africa. He believes that much of this was fueled by the 1899  book “Heart of Darkness” written by novelist Joseph Conrad. Rothman offers this: 

“A lot of people in my view are still caught up in the Heart of Darkness concept. They often view Africa as hopelessly backward and are unable to see its potential. But despite the challenges there and all of the continued fighting over minerals, I believe there is so much potential there given the resilience and resourcefulness of the people. I think that technology has a real possibility of one day changing Africa’s prevailing narrative” 

In “No Taller Than My Gun”  Rothman says that he personalizes the story of a villager named Lemba, a name which means “to soften.” In a sense, this is what Lemba does throughout the story, namely, soften the resistance to his ideas and the importance of being humane. Rothman offers this concluding thought: 

“The book is different from many others about Africa that are written with a mood of despair, and hopelessness. While not trying to minimize the horrors in this book, I’ve tried to show how people can transcend them. This underscores my universal belief of how novels can fuel possibilities”