NY Times: Opinion/Ed Pages: "Books and Other Fetish Objects"

A very interesting read in the NY Times today. Make sure to read the full text.

Here’s a small portion of a column by James Gleick:

The raw material of history appears to be heading for the cloud. What once was hard is now easy. What was slow is now fast.

Is this a case of “be careful what you wish for”?

Last month the British Library announced a project with Google to digitize 40 million pages of books, pamphlets and periodicals dating to the French Revolution. The European Digital Library, Europeana.eu, well surpassed its initial goal of 10 million “objects” last year, including a Bulgarian parchment manuscript from 1221 and the Rok runestone from Sweden, circa 800, which will save you trips to, respectively, the St. Cyril and St. Methodius National Library in Sofia and a church in Ostergotland.

Reporting to the European Union in Brussels, the Comité des Sages (sounds better than “Reflection Group”) urged in January that essentially everything — all the out-of-copyright cultural heritage of all the member states — should be digitized and made freely available online. It put the cost at approximately $140 billion and called this vision “The New Renaissance.”

Read the Complete Column

Filed under: Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Libraries, National Libraries, Resources