Behold! The Library of Congress's audacious plan to digitize and share the nation's treasures

The Library of Congress has published its latest digital strategy, laying out a bold plan to "exponentially grow" its collections through digital acquisitions; "maximize the use of content" by providing machine-readable rights data and using interoperable formats and better search; to support data-driven research with giant bulk-downloadable corpuses of materials and metadata; to improve its website; to syndicate Library assets to other websites; to crowdsource the acquisition of new materials; to experiment with new tools and techniques; and to preserve digital assets with the same assiduousness that the Library has shown with its physical collection for centuries.

The LoC has a curiously outsized role in the digital era: because it contains the Copyright Office -- and because the Copyright Office is patient zero in the epidemic of terrible internet law that reaches into every corner of our lives -- the Library has become a political football, with Congress vying to put it under Congressional oversight (and in reach of heavily lobbied Committee chairs) and/or to tear out the Copyright Office.

The new Librarian of Congress is the most freedom-friendly, internet-friendly, access-friendly leader in the Library's history, replacing unfit leaders who were brought down in grotesque corruption scandals. But her leadership has fallen short: the Copyright Office is still a creature of Big Content, and it has direct oversight over your ability to modify, repair, sell, and use all of your digital property.

So this digital strategy is a very bright light, but it shines in a dark and menacing cave. Read the rest