London Online 2007

A shout out to those of you at London Online this week. Not a whole lot of chatter about it yet around here...I am sure that will change soon enough.

Saw a Jimmy photo on Flickr. He was the keynote. There's a Q and A in the Guardian insert (PDF). The article starts on page 10.

Here's the most interesting bit, from the perspective of the world's largest library cooperative:

Where do you see Wikipedia in ten
years?
JW: When I think about Wikipedia in ten years I
mostly have been focussing my attention on the
growth of the languages of the developing world.
So I’ve been to South Africa twice this year so far.
I’m going again in November and again in March.
I’m really trying to promote the growth in the
languages of Africa because right now we don’t
have a lot of content there. One of the things I
look at when I look at long term trends is there’s
about a billion people online now and we expect
to see another billion coming online in the next 10
years or so. Not from the US or Japan or places like
that- we’re already online for the most part. It’s
coming from the next stage- South America, India,
Africa. All joining the global conversation.

But it's also important, for that matter, to the neighborhood branch librarian. That's the beauty of what you (we) do, as librarians: you bring the world to people!!