I was talking with my partner the other evening about information, and the hurdles websites usually create to its distribution.

For example, a site she is involved with produces research reports, almost exclusively as .pdfs. This is not necessarily bad, per se, but only a very few search engines index the contents of .pdf files and so this research is not searchable, it cannot be discovered serendipitously by a student or policy wonk who happens to be searching using something other than, say, google.

But, even worse, this charitable research group wants to know who is downloading its files, so all links to the .pdfs actually go to a form which asks a few minor bits of information from the reader - where they are located, what professional field they are working in - before redirecting them to the file. BAM. no spiders. So none of these files are available even on the big search engines.

Maybe there are cases where you want to avoid your research getting the widest coverage, but for a charity that's pretty unlikely. Especially since part of the mission is to distribute the research results as widely as possible.

But what about libraries? this is the crux of my current complaint/whine.

I was just visiting the National Library of Australia (NLA). They have this fabulous chart from Jacob La Maire, the gent who discovered the route around Cape Horn and into the Pacific Ocean, and incidentally died for his trouble because the Dutch East India Company didn't want anyone to know about it. Yes, NLA has the chart. Clearly they have a lovely high-quality scan of the chart somewhere. But no, you can't find it online.

So why the hell do they have the damn thing, if they don't let anyone see it?

I mean, let's look at this logically: The taxpayers of Australia have paid to purchase this artifact, to preserve it, and to have it digitized. The Library exists to share knowledge and information, again paid for by the taxpayers. The chart itself is clearly not copyrightable, not even Australian, and is likely registered as a world treasure for its historic value to the entirety of human culture. What possible justification could there be for it to not be online?

I can think of one: the archival scan would undoubtedly be large, and the cost in bandwidth might be high. (There are clear and simple solutions to this problem related to IP addresses, but we won't go into it here.)

Stupidities like this, "we have to hide away our data because, well, just because", drive me absolutely bonkers. Take the BBC. If you're a UK citizen you can freely and easily download their content, because after all your fees helped create it. Everyone else in the world is SOL.

That's inane. Whatcha gonna do wid it now that you have it? Oh, sure, about 1-2% of the content can be boxed and sold in about 3 years. But the news broadcasts? the commercials? get real.

So you don't want to pay for the bandwidth? fine; make it available via YouTube or torrent or some other system. Shouldn't cost you more than a tiny fraction of your bandwidth to seed the files out into the internet.

It was interesting to note the brief article regarding Abû 'Uthmân Sa'îd ibn Hakam al Qurashi, but sad to find that following links to the Balearic Islands and Menorca completely disregards this moment of history, the only time in recorded history that Manùrqa (a name completely missing from Wikipedia) was ever an independent political entity.

Not that Wikipedia might have an anti-Islamic bias or anything.

Okay, so I'm running out the door to pick up my jacket and I wanted to tell this real quick story before I forgot it.

There was this old guy at the mall where I was shopping, and he had a denim jacket, which looked out of place to begin with 'cuz he's kinda old like I am. And he had about a dozen little buttons on the shoulder of the jacket like he'd thought about doing the *really* teeny-bopper thing of collecting a buncha buttons with cute snide comments or, worse, spiritually uplifting messages or fan buttons of some rock band or heartthrobofthesecond.

Anyway, I got all smug and stuff because I have cooler buttons on my purse.

Well. Rye Cove, VA does not exist, neither does Rye Cove High School, the latter of which I normally would not be averse to. However, I have this song and I thought I'd look up a wee bit more about the 2 May 1929 tornado which killed 12 students and an instructor, injured dozens, when it struck the school.

Cyclone Of Rye Cove

Oh listen today and a story I'll tell,

In sadness and tear rimmed eyes,

Of a dreadful cyclone that came this way,

And blew our schoolhouse away

Rye Cove (Rye Cove), Rye Cove (Rye Cove),

The land of my childhood and home,

Where life's early morn I once loved to roam,

But now it's so silent and lone

When the cyclone appeared it darkened the air,

And the lightning flashed over the sky,

And the children all cried, don't take us away,

But spare us to go back home

There were mothers so dear and fathers the same,

That came to this terrible scene,

Searching and crying each found their own child,

Dying on a pillow of stone

Oh give us a home far beyond the blue sky,

Where storms and cyclones are unknown,

And there by life's strand we'll clasp the glad hand,

Our children in their heavenly home

I think I'm going to do a series of complaints about articles I find which are misinformation, errors, vandalized, spam... etc. on Wikipedia. Only because it's really bugging me.

Now We Are Six is a book by A.A. Milne, and an article which has been butchered a bit, with myspace spam and more.