Proposal: Put Library of Congress' Contents Online

Mark_Uplanguage writes "The idea to scan in all materials available at the U.S. Library of Congress was presented at the Web 2.0 conference this week (as just one of many ideas presented). The proposed cost of $260 million would create a huge benefit to society (well, at least to those who can read English)."

Comments

Can't do that.

[Pig Hogger]

This would violate the publishers' god-given right to milk their "creations" until the heat-death of the Universe.

Re:Can't do that.

[InfiniteWisdom]

until the heat-death of the Universe.

Hey its still a finite time
- Walt Disney

Storage

[Neon Spiral Injector]

How data much storage would this require? Could someone give it to me in laymen's terms?

Re:Storage

[jrockway]

About 1.0003 libraries of congress.

Re:Storage

[Ghostgate]

This will require 1.28 Libraries of Congress to store. The overhead is for all of the faulty copy protection to be added, which a 13-year-old somewhere in Europe is already working on cracking.

Re:Storage

[operagost]

Don't use a Pentium chip next time.

Homeland Security Savings

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea to scan in all materials available at the U.S. Library of Congress was presented at the Web 2.0 conference this week (as just one of many ideas presented). The proposed cost of $260 million would create a huge benefit to society

It would probably pay for itself too since FBI agents would no longer have to travel to libraries to secretly gather records of who borrowed what. They can just use Carnivore to do it instead.

Ametrica!

[Doc Ruby]

Finally, Slashdot can establish that for official purposes:

1 Library of Congress = $260M

And the 2004 US Federal budget can be spec'd at 0.000243754522 LoC:s (Libraries of Congress per second).

The theory of everything

[antikarma]

At long last, we shall finally know just how much one unit of Libraries of Congress is. This could quite possibly have profound effects on how we understand the universe. For example, for many years we have known that the universe is approximately 42 Libraries of Congress. Now we can fully understand its meaning.

Halfbaked

[n08ody]

you've perused the Libray of Congress, but have you perused the Library of Congress Online

Missing something?

[ravenspear]

In a traditional library it's not really easy to...

1. walk in and pick up a book
2. strike the author's name from it and replace it with your own
3. replace the copyright notice with your own
4. Make one thousand perfect copies
5. Offer it for sale, start taking orders, and PROFIT!

...all within 30 minutes.

I could easily do that on the internet.

Re:We need to get our priorities straight

[Zoop]

Since Congress and the President can so easily pull out a hundred billion dollars to bomb the hell out of another country, I see no reason we can't come up with a whimpy $260 million for something as worthwhile as this.

I'm sorry, I don't get it. How does your proposal bomb anybody?

Are you suggesting we should bomb libraries?

I mean, I see libraries, I see money, but I'm missing the bombs.

Tell you what, rewrite your proposal with bombs and maybe some cool submunitions and make sure they're Furin libraries, and we'll talk.

What, you want me to starve to death?

[Banner]

Oh yeah, put 'em all online. I have a hard enough time already in libraries and book stores! If I could read any book I wanted to (even if they're only the ones already out of copyright) online, I'd probably not leave my computer until I passed out!!

Now I have a real problem...

[HellYeahAutomaton]

I just downloaded the LoC.ps.tgz from the local WPI Internet2 tap using gnutella and my printer just ran out of ink....