I found and acquired a copy of the monograph:

From the first chapter:

Scholars and scientists engage in attempts to make contributions to a public body of knowledge about the world. They do not work simply to increase their own private understanding of the world, nor simply to increase the understanding of their co-workers in a specialized branch of inquiry. Their work is incomplete until they have made their results public, available to anyone, now and in the future, who can understand and make use of them.

YES!

There’s the work, but the work requires reach, distribution, god forbid: marketing. Reachability. The ability to influence the community.

If it cannot be found, it may as well not exist (oh hey Gregor Mendel).

I guess, eventually is better than never:

What is unread has no contemporary influence and does not change anyone’s mind, but it may nevertheless be, or contain, a contribution to public knowledge that will be discovered at a later time. The scientist who publishes his results presumably wants to influence his colleagues and make a contribution to knowledge. If his work is unread, the first aim is not attained, but the second may still be.

Here’s the thesis of the book (gp4o):

The book argues that despite the democratic promise of information access, U.S. information policy systematically fails to empower citizens due to structural inequities, ideological biases, and institutional weaknesses. To bridge the gap between public knowledge and private ignorance, Wilson calls for a comprehensive, democratic overhaul of information policy centered on public interest, transparency, and civic engagement.

Here’s a per-chapter breakdown (gpt4o):

Chapter 1: Introduction
Thesis: The modern democratic state increasingly relies on access to information, yet public policy fails to ensure equitable access and understanding. The chapter introduces the tension between public information availability and private ignorance.

Chapter 2: The Structure of Information Access
Thesis: Access to information is shaped by structural factors including economic, technological, legal, and institutional frameworks. These structures often favor elites and reinforce inequality.

Chapter 3: Libraries and the Public Good
Thesis: Libraries historically represent public access to information and democratic ideals, but they are under threat from privatization, funding cuts, and shifting policy priorities that undermine their role.

Chapter 4: Public Policy and Private Interests
Thesis: Information policy often serves private interests under the guise of neutrality, with decisions about classification, access, and dissemination influenced by political and economic pressures.

Chapter 5: The Ideology of Information Policy
Thesis: Information policy is deeply ideological, reflecting assumptions about power, authority, and citizenship. The public is often constructed as passive recipients rather than active participants.

Chapter 6: Toward a Democratic Information Policy
Thesis: A truly democratic information policy would involve participatory policymaking, increased transparency, and a reinvigoration of public institutions like libraries to support informed citizenship.

It might be pitched at the wrong level for my interests.

LLMs do bridge the gap for people to public knowledge, e.g. via gpt4o:

Public knowledge is what’s been made available—e.g., in texts, documents, records. But most individuals remain ignorant of this knowledge due to barriers of access, relevance, comprehension, or organization.

LLMs can act as dynamic tools for bridging this gap, transforming vast amounts of public knowledge into personally accessible insight. They collapse information retrieval, synthesis, and explanation into a single interface, potentially democratizing access like no previous tool.