I was looking into the Budapest Open Access initiative in Europe and came across this interesting find at the public library in the Aarhus public library.
video (scroll down towards bottom of the page to view)
What is incredible about this is that the common law society in Denmark expects that libraries can be all encompassing. The ability to download any type of media whether it be journal texts, mp3s, or movies all in a legal manner through the library Internet infrastructure is incredible. In most American libraries media access is limited to physical multimedia and some online texts. In fact, attempting to engage in legal downloading of mp3s or films would most likely result in being asked to leave the library. Again it is necessary to ask, why would this be the case? In both countries libraries exist for anyone to gain access to information without barriers. This library has transformed itself into a public place and it is clear from the informational video that it is intended to be used by anyone in the city, whether a student, an immigrant, or a local resident.
There could be some possibility of studying how the Aarhus public library became as open towards information as it has. Certainly this appears to be a very different kind of library than the Leon County Public Library, which has mainly physical media for checkout. They do have a website, but it is limited to a relatively small number of databases. No services for legally obtaining most journal articles or multimedia based information exists. Strozier Library does have extensive databases, but even FSU is not able to subscribe to every article database.
Kristian Bredemeyer
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2 comments:
This is a fascinating entry. I was also interested in the links from the Danish website to conferences on the future of children's libraries.
I was not able to make this video play, but I am certainly motivated to keep trying, because it looks so interesting.
I also like you commentary on the economics of open source and why a person would be motivated to create free, open software. It certainly makes sense.
Okay, I got the video to work. I really like thinking about the nature of libraries in the future and how the digitization of a significant amount of media will change (is changing) them. Is the copyright issue an old debate for libraries, and if so, how can we learn from them now?
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