BL = Betrayed Library

This kind of naive adulation is beginning to stick in my craw:

The British Library is bringing some of the world's rarest books online, with the intent of giving as wide an audience as possible the most accurate experience of reading the real thing.

To that end, it is using a unique piece of software called Turning the Pages, designed to allow readers to look at rare books in a natural way. With Turning the Pages, users can read the books in their original format, almost exactly as they were intended to be read by their original audience.

Why? Well:

A new version, Turning the Pages 2.0™, runs on Microsoft Vista operating system (and on Windows XP with the .NET 3 framework). It will also run on other operating systems using the Microsoft Silverlight plugin.

So the BL's idea of progress is locking down books - you know, those old-fashioned things without DRM - with patent-encumbered technology. That's "giving as wide an audience as possible the most accurate experience of reading the real thing"? Only in the minds of rather dim librarians who understand nothing about the broader implications of the shiny technology they choose. Me, I call it a betrayal of everything the once-great BL stood for....