Billington at Yale

As reported in the Yale Daily News and LIS News, James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, gave a talk last week on "Freedom as Strategy: the Importance of an Ideal". I was there. He stressed the importance of education in sustaining a free society, and that we're not doing too well in that area. More controversially, he suggested that some kind of religious faith is necessary to prevent knowledge-based liberty from degrading into cynicism and libertinism.

It was also interesting to see how the World Digital Library has become a priority at the highest levels of the Library of Congress.