Hi and Happy Solstice. The days just start getting longer, starting now. I’ve been spending some time mulling over the various responses to the Google/Libraries news from last week, including Karen’s reprinting of Mark Rosenzweig’s comments with some of her own, Rory, and Chuck. While I don’t have a manifesto-worthy response of my own, I just want to point out that most of the issues that are wrapped up in this one event — issues like privacy, commercialization of information, ownership of information, copyright and the future of libraries — have already been playing themselves out, in smaller ways, in libraries everywhere. The fact that one publicly-traded company has been able to use their vast resources to leverage co-operation with prestigious libraries just forces us to examine a lot of these issues together, and all at once. Learn why this issue matters, and then tell your collegagues and friends.
ALIA photos
This is probably of interest to no one but me, but if you’d like to see photos of the conference I attended in Australia, they are now online along with some cool desktop wallpaper images.
wonder what those 300 pamphlets were about?
A different kind of Iraqi library story. [thanks ken]
RFID from another angle
Are libraries looking at RFID implementation in other industries? The Ska Librarian, who is now also an agribusiness librarian, sends this link to a 2005 RFID survey from Beef Magazine.
“We wish that our library will help educate people. “
Small private libraries in Iraq.
Fadl Abid Oda, 30 years old, has taken it upon himself to do something that western companies in Iraq have failed to do. In a tiny room off a busy street in the Orfali district of Baghdad, Fadl stands in his small library. [thanks tamarack]