Bye Bye British Library

Guardian Unlimited reports that the British Library might soon face budget cuts. Unfortunately, if that proves true, some books can't be maintained or at the very least its access will be restricted. And as for the discarded books, well, they can't exactly be bought back even if the library manages to raise funds in the future. (Interestingly enough, the article touched on some points that I'll be tackling in the next two weeks--the blog entries have been written I'm just waiting for Monday to publish them.) Even more disconcerting is that while Britain is worried about its libraries not being able to keep up with modern technology, how much more so the Philippines?

Brindley fears that, while the rest of the world moves into a digital environment on the internet, the British Library 'would be marooned in the analogue era'. The library has calculated that for £3.48 - the price of a cup of coffee and a muffin - everyone in the country has use of a repository that contains treasures as diverse as the original Magna Carta, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Golden Haggadah, Sultan Baybar's Koran and the jottings of Leonardo da Vinci, not to mention those of Lennon and McCartney - and all free at the point of entry.