Source: Thomas Gould, 785-532-3449, tgould@k-state.edu
Photo available. Contact media@k-state.edu or 785-532-6415
Friday, September 28, 2007
PAUL JONES TO BE UNIVERSITY DISTINGUISHED LECTURER AT K-STATE
MANHATTAN -- Paul Jones, a fall semester University Distinguished Lecturer at Kansas State University, advocates for open sources, saying that libraries and collections must be open, must be collaborative and must be loud.
Jones, an original manager of one of the first World Wide Web sites in North America, will discuss information gathering, sharing and preservation at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17, in the Hemisphere Room at K-State's Hale Library. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Jones is director of ibiblio.org, an expansive online collection of information created and maintained by the public for the public. The site averages around 12 million information requests per day and is a collaboration of the Center for the Public Domain and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Partners backing the endeavor include IBM, RealNetworks and VA Linux.
Jones not only is an advocate for public libraries, but also the public's library in the form of an open-access forum that is creating a model for the future of Internet librarianship.
Ibiblio's current collection expands past 171 gigabytes and includes written works, videos, photos and audio files. The site bills itself as a "free and vibrant exchange of ideas among a large community of contributors who share their knowledge across disciplines." Ibiblio.org uses the open source model to encourage users to help shape the way information is managed and accessed in the 21st century.
More information about Jones is available at his blog, http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/