Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Head Librarian


The Mark O Hatfield lecture with Librarian James Billington was a bit of adisappointment for me. He did not speak much at all about his role as the Nation's (and maybe world's) librarian and instead read a speech about prescriptive actions the United States should take in the current state of the world. Still little factoids would reveal themselves that worth taking home such as his observation that the United States was the only major government evolve out of the age of print. Or the fact that one of the greatest harms America can do to itself is in the perception of cultural imperialism. Billington sees the United States as a country that is filled with multiculturalism at home but is quite monoculturalistic abroad.

Yesterday (longish story of why I would discover this) I found that the word fortune appeared in Shakespeare's Hamlet 47 times. I am sure in his one hour speech Billington said the word freedom (The signature ideal of America) at least that many times in his hour speech. Billington is 78 years old and has been spent decades in public service and scholarship. Has he earned the right to rock the mike in just about anyway he chooses to? Perhaps so.

The Library of Commerce and Billington were early Internet heroes of mine. The efforts at www.loc.gov were well conceived and executed at a time just after just being able to get the CIA Factbook was a big hit stuff. I remember encountering the Thomas database for the first time impressed with the combination of technology and citizenship. It was exceptionally cool to look up activities and members of congress. The Library of Congress was definitely the bomb during the years when a lot of the rest of the planet were not taking the potentials of the Net nearly as seriously.

Billington feels that electronic digital imaging should be a large part of America, but he asks what are we doing with it. He sees terrorists and radical Islamists making good use of the technology as well. But Billington isn't giving it up, he believes that people can come on line and it can lead to a better understanding among the world's peoples. He points to the The World Digital Library as an example of how the free and instantaneous nature of the Internet can be highly effective. It utilizes the seven languages of the UN: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Billington does not believe that new technologies do not substitute the old and that one media does not necessarily replace another. To his mind, digital still has the basic values of print. The book is not going away and neither are librarians or libraries. He seemed especially impressed with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. And he believes there will be a need always for those who will be doing the business of "acquiring, presenting, and disseminating information. In other words, folks that are doing the work of librarians.

Great trivia of the evening. James H. Billington is only the 13th person to serve as the Librarian of Congress since the Library's creation in 1800.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:43 PM
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