Misappropriated Dongles?

When you read documents with phrases like this, “ISPI misappropriated the dongles,” is it any wonder that people want to return to darker ages (before computers and maybe even before electricity!) or want desperately to flee into the forest, or hide inside a beer, for a long while until the madness settles down?

I’ve been reading, in a rather desultory fashion I admit, news about the (not yet final and not the only digital book project on the planet (see Open Content Alliance story in NYT)) Google Settlement and drifted from the excellent Library Law blog to Rebecca Tushnet’s posts on the subject (which is where the dongle discussion came from).

What’s a person to do to keep up with it all? Not much. My recommendation is to keep up with the things you find interesting, the things you have to keep up with for your work and your families, and turn to the experts when you need a primer on something you’ve never heard before or just confuse you.

Wikipedia is a great place to begin to look for Answers, but no place to end.

Your public library is another place to begin – and continue, and if questions of law are involved, your public law library! Libraries are filled with print and online Primers, Encyclopedias, Handbooks, and the like.

Let you libraries be your extra set of eyes and ears. You can find on your own a lot of what you need, but libraries sometimes have some incomparable reference resources you didn’t know about and that might make you want to come back from endless wanderings in the forest.