image Oh how I’d hate it if TeleRead weren’t a global e-book blog. Where would we be without posts from Branko Collin in Amsterdam or others such as Carol Jurd in Adelaide or Ficbot in Toronto—or, now, Richard Herley, the prize-winning novelist whose essays reach us from a village in the Hampshire Downs in the U.K., an area shown in the photo?

But no course requirements, no academic details, bedevil us. What about institutions? How can degrees be more similar in a number of places—not just Europe or the United States but also cash-strapped developing countries? And can open source software and the right library resources, including, yes, well-stocked national digital library systems, help? Not to mention OLPC-style computers and variants that can display e-books well.

The World in Your Library conference

image Such topics will come up Friday at an all-day conference called The World in Your Library: International Users and International Librarians: Enriching the Academic Experience, and I’ll be among the speakers along with another name familiar to TeleBlog regulars, Wayan Vota of OLPC News. If you’ll be attending and want to say hello, just shoot me an e-mail. Wayan and I will be part of a 3-4:30 p.m. program and demo XOs afterwards, although we’ll be there all day. Beyond the librarians, I’m also looking forward to meeting Josh Gay of the Free Software Foundation. The event is part of the LACUNY Institute series from the Library Association of the City University of New York.

Where the TeleBlog is weak: We need more contributors from developing countries, such as David Ajao, who wrote about e-books on mobile phones in Africa. E-mail me if you’re working to popularize e-books there and want to write about successes—or challenges.

NO COMMENTS

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.