by Katie Dishman

It started a few years ago when the Pirates of the Caribbean became a box office success. Then there were the sequels, with Captain Jack becoming a favorite new character. Don’t forget the periodic news stories about Somali pirates kidnapping people over the past several months. Later Michael Crichton’s last book, the posthumously published Pirate Latitudes, is all about those sea-loving rapscallions. But there is a faction of pirates in Sweden that have been making waves the past few years as well.
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by Rachael Clark

Who could have imagined the Europeans, with their centuries of battles over land, wealth, and power, would set an example for the world of collaboration and sharing? While we Americans — smug in our democracy — tussle with issues of intellectual property, copyright, and royalties, the Europeans have banded together to create an unprecedented, free information resource. Europeana.eu is a web portal to the virtually combined collections of one hundred libraries, archives, museums, universities, and other cultural institutions. Visitors to Europeana.eu have free access to books, newspapers, letters, journals, photographs, drawings, paintings, maps, sound recordings, videos, and films. While it is currently a prototype, the European Digital Library (EDL) Foundation intends to present a business model in 2010 that will allow the site to become self-sustaining.
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