Krishna Pagadala wrote:
We sorely lack access to good libraries and booksAs far as libraries go, while unaccountable governments are one problem, I think the bigger problem is cost and affordability. The only solution is to use/create Freedom Knowledge like wikipedia. Buy book/magazine/software/videos that is copylefted or public domain only. Write them and release them under a copyleft license.
-Krishna
I beg to differ. There are other innovative ways to spread knowledge in cases where electrical power and hardware cost/access is a problem. Books, magazines and newspapers are the cheapest sources of knowledge still and many people have tried many ideas to have books spread around. Wikipedia is a very good solution to broaden the horizon and collaborate on systematising knowledge. We have to keep an open mind and try various approaches to make libraries viable/ possible. I know of a few innovative approaches and there may be thousands of others. (such as 1 --discounted books bookpool.com(50% costs for latest computer books --doesn't work in India though because of customs/bureaucracy) or 2 --collaborative ventures of an Indian publisher with Oreilly in Bombay which has reduced costs of latest technical books drastically, 3--bookcrossing.com (sharing books), 4--article in the bbc which mentioned revolving libraries at street corners --leave a book at designated street corners and people will read them and return them back to those places --experiment very very successful in beijing or shanghai or some chinese city (no fixed cost for hiring large buildings for libraries), 5--mobile libraries, 6--library networks etc etc)
Cost is not a constraint to an innovative mind (as the saying goes --where there is a will, there is a way). There are analogies to the free software world too --we have quite a lot of ebooks which can be copied onto CDs/DVDs for increasing penetration and knowledge (producingoss.com pragmaticprogrammer.com (ruby version 1) cathedral and the bazaar, unix programming culture, hacker folklore, etc etc) but I don't think anybody has tried to list so many titles and give away documentation etc the way gutenberg.net is doing from a one stop platform or website, in India, either on a state level or a national/regional level. The opencd.org ultimatebootcd.com etc are not known as much as they could be known. Magazines spread a lot of CDs but ultimately they end up as plastic junk --time some innovation was made in reducing the plastic waste by making the CDs recyclable/reusable.
Kush