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Critiques of media consolidation involve a number of issues and notions:
That consolidation and globalization of media over the past decade have been massive.
That media consolidation is served by government deregulation and subsidization of
the airwaves.
That media consolidation and globalization are viewed as predecessors of global
capitalism.
That the bottom line of corporate media is profit, not content.
That media industries have become media oligopolies, that is, media conglomerates
are not agents of a democratic citizenry, but of a business and state elite.
That critiques of globalization and corporate power are marginalized.
That media audiences are treated as consumers rather than citizens.
That the traditional notion of media having a public interest obligation has
disappeared.
That democratically-based media outlets have expanded and while marginalized
provide an alternative to corporate media messages.

http://libr.org/amtf//bibliographies/bib.1.pdf

Check out Jeffrey's index for MRE (it's in PDF format). Give it a glance. Notice the richness, the usefulness. Notice the multiple levels of headings, rather than just two. Notice the careful treatment of fonts and of the ordering of analphabetic symbols. Many another gem is hidden within that index, which you'll notice if you skim it a bit.

This sort of quality you will never, ever get from some freelance, paid-by-the-hour indexer who doesn't know the problem space, who won't have their name on that book's cover. It does make a difference.

For an offtopic, fictional, and non-serious counter-argument, find a copy of Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and read Chapter 55, "Never Index Your Own Book." (you'll have to scroll down with the link I provided, sorry.)

I'm giving the link because it's so weirdly applicable; how often do I get to reference a passage about authors who self-index? Back in reality, I agree with Tom: Friedl's book and index are perfect.

Here are a few leading library blogs
http://librarian.net
http://librarystuff.net
http://lisnews.com
http://libr.org/juice
http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/index.html

a collaborative blog, a guide to problematical library use
http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.buzzword.com

Of interest, at Boston Public Library some BPLers are unable or unwilling to use plain ASCII text when sending email, when replying to reference desk enquiries from BPLusers!

The library is not there to push your pet OS.

Actually, my pet OS is OS X -- I don't own a Linux box.

That said, the NewsForge article made it very clear that the guys who did this were Linux advocates. Thus, my comment was a suggestion towards furthing their expressed goals. Nice, unobtrusive, potentially effective.

Although, indeed, to speak to your point about why Librarians -- or patrons -- should care about Open Source at all, I would counter that Librarians, as a whole, believe that information should be Free; that access to information should be free and accessible; that information is a social good.

To quote from Libr.org:

In this pervasive atmosphere of privately acquiring, processing, and selling information, the public library system, a long-standing custodian of the idea and practice, of information as a social good, is tottering. Its function is being redefined and stripped of its social character...

...Many librarians resist this direction and work valiantly, sometimes successfully...

The values of F/OSS are very much in line with this agenda. The promotion of Open Source software should not be an unexpected manifestation of these ideals.

More power to them. When the only free repositories of information in our society become beholden to a Corporation for their infrastructure, their information becomes suspect. Promote away, guys.

Right now the best way to access scholarly information (in those thousands of academic journals) is through full text databases such as Ebscohost, Proquest, and Infotrac. These databases contain millions of articles. A fraction of a percent of this informaiton is available on the free web. By comparison, the free web looks like crap.

You can not simply pay to use these databases as an individual user, either by subscription or on a pay-per-view basis (though there are a couple of minor exceptions to this). As a rule, access to these databases is through libraries. If you are a student, faculty or staff member at a university, you have access to dozens of these databases through the library. That's right, it's the library that enters into contracts to provide access to these databases to users. (And that access is usually remote, via passwords.)

There are versions of these databases that provide high-quality information for the general public, rather than specifically for acadmic use, and again it's mainly companies like ProQuest, Infotrac and EbscoHost who create these databases. The public-oriented versions of these databases are available for free at your public library. Again, they make the "free" web look like crap.

It's not only because these databases are paid for by libraries that they are part of the library world; it's also because these companies employ librarians, and also because they incorporate strong indexing according to standards developed in the library world to make the right information easily accessible.

Libraries are electronic to a much higher degree than most posters here seem to realize. It goes far beyond having internet access available at the library, though that is a good thing. It is to the point where a large and growing portion of the information that libraries pay for (using your tax money or tuition fees) IS electronic.

But I say this at the risk of discounting the present importance of books. While I think most written communication will "go electronic" eventually, librarians know that we are far from there now. What is valuable about books isn't the fact that they are on paper; it's the fact that they represent comprehensive intellectual effort and an investment of time that you don't find in journal and magazine articles. And at present, they are rarely published electronically. So, at present, it's incumbent upon librarians to provide information in book form.

I am a librarian (who uses linux at home).

I have a short manifesto about the value of libraries, at http://libr.org/Juice/manifesto.html.

I'd also like to direct your attention to an article from the journal Progressive Librarian which argues the importance of keeping paper, called "Why Do We Need to Keep This in Print? It's on the Web...": A Review of Electronic Archiving Issues and Problems, by Dorothy Warner: http://libr.org/PL/19-20_Warner.html. I'm sure that it could create a good discussion here in its own right, as many of you would disagree with it strongly. I post it here to point out that librarians who have not joined the "information party" they way that young techies have have reasons for their reluctance and are thoughtful in their criticism. But I can't say that without remarking that librarians are also a diverse group, which includes luddites and young techies alike.

Right now the best way to access scholarly information (in those thousands of academic journals) is through full text databases such as Ebscohost, Proquest, and Infotrac. These databases contain millions of articles. A fraction of a percent of this informaiton is available on the free web. By comparison, the free web looks like crap.

You can not simply pay to use these databases as an individual user, either by subscription or on a pay-per-view basis (though there are a couple of minor exceptions to this). As a rule, access to these databases is through libraries. If you are a student, faculty or staff member at a university, you have access to dozens of these databases through the library. That's right, it's the library that enters into contracts to provide access to these databases to users. (And that access is usually remote, via passwords.)

There are versions of these databases that provide high-quality information for the general public, rather than specifically for acadmic use, and again it's mainly companies like ProQuest, Infotrac and EbscoHost who create these databases. The public-oriented versions of these databases are available for free at your public library. Again, they make the "free" web look like crap.

It's not only because these databases are paid for by libraries that they are part of the library world; it's also because these companies employ librarians, and also because they incorporate strong indexing according to standards developed in the library world to make the right information easily accessible.

Libraries are electronic to a much higher degree than most posters here seem to realize. It goes far beyond having internet access available at the library, though that is a good thing. It is to the point where a large and growing portion of the information that libraries pay for (using your tax money or tuition fees) IS electronic.

But I say this at the risk of discounting the present importance of books. While I think most written communication will "go electronic" eventually, librarians know that we are far from there now. What is valuable about books isn't the fact that they are on paper; it's the fact that they represent comprehensive intellectual effort and an investment of time that you don't find in journal and magazine articles. And at present, they are rarely published electronically. So, at present, it's incumbent upon librarians to provide information in book form.

I am a librarian (who uses linux at home).

I have a short manifesto about the value of libraries, at http://libr.org/Juice/manifesto.html.

I'd also like to direct your attention to an article from the journal Progressive Librarian which argues the importance of keeping paper, called "Why Do We Need to Keep This in Print? It's on the Web...": A Review of Electronic Archiving Issues and Problems, by Dorothy Warner: http://libr.org/PL/19-20_Warner.html. I'm sure that it could create a good discussion here in its own right, as many of you would disagree with it strongly. I post it here to point out that librarians who have not joined the "information party" they way that young techies have have reasons for their reluctance and are thoughtful in their criticism. But I can't say that without remarking that librarians are also a diverse group, which includes luddites and young techies alike.

... a while back. Right from their site:

"Although the general public often seems surprised when librarians don't fit their pre-conceived image, the profession has celebrated its own differences for years. Librarians are funny, irreverent, interesting, and often radical people. Though popular culture includes considerable library material, it often ignores those on the fringe."

PDHoss