The latest edition of "Bear in Mind", conversations with Chancellor Birgeneau, has just been released
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/chancellor/bim/ .

The Chancellor talks here of the Hewlett Challenge Grant, the Energy Biosciences Institute, and the new VC for Equity and Inclusion.

What struck me as being pertinent to our New Directions initiative were his comments about UC's "public obligation."

I found myself replacing some of his projects with those spearheaded by the library, and finding our goals sounding very much in line with his notion of public service.

Here are a few quotations for us to ponder as we reconsider The Library's local, national and global roles:

"...we have a commitment to working on problems which are important for society, which have huge implications for society..."

"...the crisis that we're facing...the people who will suffer the most overwhelmingly are the poor..."

"there's an extraordinary pool of talent ...which never get tapped because barriers get set up..."

These statements were made with reference to global climate change, and finding ways to fund undergraduates whose family incomes don't allow them to meet minimum co-pay requirements for financial aid.

It seems to me, that current issues of scholarly communication, intellectual property rights, and the Library's historical value of freely sharing information plug into these statements just as easily.

Just as global warming is a topic that affects people around the globe, so does the free flow of information -- the current model of high-priced subscriptions limited to the elite largely located in the developed world, is a huge "barrier" that puts severe limitations on the worldwide "extraordinary pool of talent". As study becomes more interdisciplinary, and as problems in the rain forest affect our own health, I don't believe that information dare be held so close to the vest.

The Library is here to serve and support the research and needs of faculty and students.

Don't we also have a role, as librarians, to preserve, protect and further the dissemination of information to all who need it?

Certainly we would benefit our own authors by increasing how many minds could connect with their material.

I believe it's quite likely that the people of California will benefit directly from discoveries made by people in perhaps small, perhaps far away countries who solve problems for themselves that in fact may already be washing up on our coast, or showing up on the alert lines at the Center for Disease Control.

As part of a public instituiton, what obligation does The Library have to California to ensure that information we have been able to aggregate gets to all those worldwide who are working to solve the same problems we face at home?