Be sure to check out Wired Magazine’s review of Jay Walker’s ‘library’.
While I would prefer these treasures to be conserved in the public domain, what, truly, is the difference between access to Jay Walker’s private collection and the content of many special collections libraries?
The post “Ex Libris URM – IGeLU’s proposals for ‘New CKB’” was removed per request from IGeLU.
The user group is not ready to have drafts of its proposal in the public domain.
I apologize for any confusion caused by the post, which simply sought to expand discussion of the URM product(s) in development by Ex Libris.
On Tuesday, December 2nd, a National Broadband Strategy Call to Action was submitted by an unlikely coalition of
“prominent communications providers, high technology companies, manufacturers, consumers, labor unions, public interest groups, educators, state and local governments, utilities, content creators, foundations, and other stakeholders in America’s broadband future” (quoted from the New America site)
to President-elect Barack Obama and the 111th Congress.
The call to action implores the President-elect and Congress to make the development of a National Broadband Strategy a top priority for the country in 2009. It describes ‘advanced communications capabilities’ as ‘essential for the 21st century’ and credits the broadband-enabled Internet with enhancing everything from
“innovation, economic growth, job creation, educational opportunity and global competitiveness”
to
“public safety, homeland security, health care, energy efficiency, environmental sustainability and the worldwide distribution of millions of products, processes and services”.
The call to action also references the web’s role in increasing civic engagement and economic revitalization in urban, rural, and other under-served areas.
Finally, the proposal cites a broadband strategy as a national infrastructure project akin to the construction of roads and canals in the 19th century and highways, electricity and phone services, and space travel in the 20th.
The National Broadband Stratgey call to action has all the makings of an economic stimulus package that would create jobs, increase opportunities, and improve the standard of living of citizens now and for decades to come.
I wonder how it will be considered alongside out-going FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s plan to deliver ‘free, pornography-free wireless Internet service to all Americans’ and the American Library Association’s appeal for a $100 million library stimulus package.
A study by James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, suggests that rather than democratizing access to and creation of information, the internet serves to ‘tighten consensus’ in a way that has a ‘narrowing’ effect on research.
In her Boston Globe article ‘Group Think’, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow cites the ranking systems of search engines, preferential treatment for new web content over older content, the effects of ‘consumer’ behavior (ie the selective circulation of content in the blogosphere and on listservs), and the difficulty of ‘browsing’ online the same way one would in library stacks or bookstore shelves as characteristics of digital research that may contribute to the shallowing of academic research.
In an age when Ithaka and the Association of Research Libraries are including blogs, discussion forums, and e-only journals in their ‘Current Models for Scholarly Communication’ (see also ‘Scholarly Blogs as Serials?’), I view studies like these as a call to action for librarians to be more pro-active in developing ways to organize and provide access to information in the Web 2.0 environment.
