Fairly Symmetrical

The O'Reilly Network has an interesting article by Richard Koman up, called Lessons from the Internet Bookmobile. The author spent 10 days traveling across the country in a bookmobile. This particular bookmobile was a little different in that it didn't actually carry any books; instead,

Loaded in the back of the Bookmobile were an HP duplexing color printer, a couple of laptops, a desktop binding machine, and a paper cutter. On top was a MotoSat dish with Internet connection. [We took] ASCII text versions of public domain works available online and turn[ed] them into books. When the Bookmobile shows up at a school, kids get to operate the paper cutter to make books, each classroom gets a few books to keep, and everyone gets a lesson in the applications of the public domain.

The entire setup cost $15,000 (plus less than $4,000 for the van itself), a fraction of the cost of many new bookmobiles. A similar (and similarly cheap) setup could revolutionize aspects of libraries, schools, and even bookstores. Imagine walking into a library to borrow a copy of a public domain text—and being handed a freshly printed and bound copy that didn't need to be returned (because it only cost the library $1 to make).

Applications like these depend on a large, and largely digitized, public domain, another point addressed by the article. Fortunately initiatives like the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg exist to digitize our public domain works, but there's always more to do. Here's hoping the SCOTUS rules against the Bono extension act, and keeps adding to our universal data store.