YES!!!!

I have been meaning to get to this all week, but I found out on Peter Brantley's blog about the new project from the Internet Archive, called the Open Library.  You can read about it in their own words here, but, in short, they would like to create a single, central, and most importantly, OPEN (both as to use and to contribution), repository of data on all the books in the world.  This is exactly where things need to go.  The current Balkanized state of library information creates a real impediment to the open flow of ideas.  While some organizations like the OCLC have made efforts to open up use of their catalogs, they are still trying to stay in control of how and by whom the data gets used.  I am rooting for this project to succeed and more importantly, I am incredibly hopeful that they will be truly open and allow others to Mash-up what they produce.  At Carmun, such a resource would be tremendously helpful to our vision to allow people to create and share collections and network to each other based on their research and intellectual interests.  So, I say, "Way to go!"