Digital Future of the Library of Congress

lesinator writes "On Monday the 28th the US Library of Congress is holding the eighth lecture in its series on Managing Knowledge and Creativity in a Digital Context. Previous speakers include David Weinberger on blogging, Brewster Kahle - founding member of archive.org and the wayback machine, and Lawrence Lessig on intellectual property and the creative commons. After the lecture questions will be taken from the audience and the internet. C-Span will be broadcasting the lecture live at 6:30 PM EST, and also has archives of previous lectures. Audio archives of previous lecture are available at Audible.com in the Selected Free Media section."

Comments

Some ideas

[gowen]

Here an interesting talks they might give:

i) What if the Apostles had had technological means to prevent the reproduction of the New Testament?

ii) Would our culture be diminished if the people who rediscovered Beowulf had been unable to decrypt the manuscript?

iii) Is the continual repitition and reworking of myth and fable through the Oral Tradition disrespectful of the content creators who first recorded these stories?

That's the right idea .. carry it further

[Anonymous Coward]

It is amusing that this story follows directly after a story about Microsoft proprietary file formats.

The Library of Congress should insist that all 'publications' be submitted to it in open formats. What good is it if they have something on file that nobody can read! The extreme is that they have to have a licensed copy of every piece of software that ever created a file. If all the formats have to be open then at least historians can cobble together something that can read a file of interest.

With the ip laws as stupid as they are now, we run the real risk of losing the record of our age.

Re:Dammit!

[lukewarmfusion]

C-SPAN is clearly concerned with ratings. Didn't you see the stuff they pulled out for Sweeps week? I think it was something like "old guy reading boring text to empty room."

Hello, Project Gutenberg?!?

[Infosquawk]

I can never understand why there isn't more acknowledgment of our debt to Project Gutenberg on these issues.

Michael Hart was digitizing books before digitizing books was cool, as far back as 1971, and the Project's efforts have been hugely successful on very little money. Nevertheless, I rarely see any official or media acknowledgment of the Project's efforts. If anyone should be on that panel for their ability to give advice from practical experience and performance in this field, while on a shoestring budget, it would be Hart!

This just in...

[SmokeHalo]

The LOC has announced that they are accepting volunteers to digitize texts. Their first volunteer is Earl the night janitor, who has been busily keying in the last 20 years of New York City phone books. He hopes to move on to Chicago soon.