IP: U Delaware: the entire Library of Congress, or just 12 movies?

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>Date:         Fri, 07 Sep 2001 10:48:30 EDT
>From: Rich Wiggins <wiggins@msu.edu>
>Subject:      U Delaware: the entire Library of Congress, or just 12 movies?
>To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
>
> >>"We have problems with certain students downloading 19 gigabytes of stuff,"
> >>Susan J. Foster, the university's vice president for information
> >>technologies, says with some exasperation. "What is a student doing to
> >>download 19 gigabytes? What is that -- the entire Library of Congress? It
> >>makes us think that it's video."
>
>Obviously Dr. Foster was speaking metaphorically, but those
>Delaware freshmen transferred about 1/1000th of the Library
>of Congress -- or a dozen movies in digital form.
>
>Brewster Kahle (Internet Archive, Alexa) estimates that if every
>book in the Library of Congress were digitized, it would require
>about 20 terabytes of storage.  This is text-only, no images.
>So at 19 gigabytes the Delaware students have downloaded less
>than 1/1000th of the Library of Congress.
>
>On the other hand, a DVD holds about 5 gigabytes of storage.
>Assuming the students are sharing movies in compressed
>form, let's call it 1 gigabyte per digitized hour.  Thus
>the Delaware students have transferred about 12 movies.
>
>If you thought Napster could swamp a campus network, imagine
>what Moviester could do -- or is already doing.
>
>/rich
>
>PS --
>
>Many citizens assume that the Library of Congress has already
>been digitized.  It has not.  Only a tiny fraction of its holdings
>have been digitized.  There are no plans within LC to digitize
>all of its holdings, or even all of its book holdings, or even
>a substantial portion of its book holdings.
>
>http://netfact.com/present/rww-cil-digital-lc-mar2001.html



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