Scrolling
Interesting Guardian article about the new Alexandria library, intended to be "the sum of all human knowledge" as the old one was - except that there's already censorship going on of its contents and many of the mere 200,000 books they've got in there are out of date... a fantastic idea though. The paper version has a good pic of the library which, if nothing else, looks stunning.
Perhaps more vital is Brewster Kahle's current ploy of printing books on demand from the back of a van for schoolkids and libraries - the Internet Bookmobile has been travelling around America and using the Net and desktop publishing to deliver public domain books straight off the press into people's hands. Salon carried a great article about him last week - its idealism is something of a headrush because it seems so achievable. Printing on demand is definitely the next distribution revolution not only for books, but music, films - any type of media that can be digitised and catalogued to be called up at will. The technology is pretty much already there - the next issue is getting all the bookstores to buy into it without pricing it out of the pockets of the very people who need it most. Even so, Kahle's efforts are a great extension of Project Gutenberg and the beginnings of something that will become inexorable, I think. Ok - everyone go ahead and puncture my enthusiasm...
