I've been skeptical and critical of some past Nobel Peace Prize winners, but I'm unabashedly happy about this one: Gore and UN share Nobel peace prize.

Here's Gore's blog entry about the award with a brief video.

Science has been so undermined by the Bush administration in so many ways from curtailing stem cell research to its endless support of the oil industry, it's nice to see someone in politics who has taken the time to understand an issue like this as thoroughly as Gore has throughout his life be recognized for sharing it. As he said in his Oscar acceptance speech, climate change is "not a political issue; it's a moral issue." It's also a scientific issue. In this current climate of obfuscation, that can't be repeated often enough.

Now if only Gore would announce his last minute candidacy for president, so I could have a candidate to be excited about. Unlike John Kerry and this year's democratic crop, I think he actually learned a few lessons from the events of November and December 2000.

Al Gore addressed the opening general session of the Special Libraries Association annual conference in Denver last night. Since I couldn't be there, here's a round-up of blog posts about the event:

[6/05: edited to add several new accounts]

Ann Perbohner reports that Lexis-Nexis introduced Gore with a presentation visualizing the impact of An Incovenient Truth on published news reports. She also bullet points some highlights of the talk.

Eli Edwards appears to have liveblogged the address, including answers from the Q&A at the end. This is the most thorough report of the event that I've found.

[ETA] J's scratchpad has even more detailed notes and quotes.

Robin Niedorf says he pointed out that getting information isn't a problem; the problem is figuring out how to interpret, organize, and present it.

Tracy Z. Maleef calls him a rockstar, and says the event was "like a librarian revival meeting."

Judith Sweet speculates that librarians have a low humor threshold, due to Gore's ability to get people to laugh at the same jokes, even in the book signing line. She also has paparazzi shots of Gore signing books.

Stephen Leary says that Gore's address wasn't quite what he expected, but he was still impressed.

Chris Zamarelli notes while he included some material on global warming and promoting his new book, the speech was clearly written for the SLA audience. As such, it wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable.

[ETA] Jane Dysart sums it up as articulate, funny, and compelling.

[ETA] Lyndsay observed a warm atmosphere in the hall; "his stance is very much ours."

Finally, Jill Hurst-Wahl has the social networking angle, noting that social networking sites can help to create the dialogue that Gore emphasized is so important to our collective intake of information.

The consensus is that Gore definitely gets it re: the power of information. He recognizes the importance of our profession in helping to harness that. The audience appreciated that he gave a mostly original speech, and found him humorous and engaging.

I hope there will be video available eventually. Hey Stephen Abram, does SLA have a YouTube account? Don't you think they should?

Today's New York Times opinion section includes an editorial about Law Day that begins with a history of the day, and ends with a resounding rebuke of the Bush administration:

In keeping with tradition, President Bush has issued a proclamation inviting Americans today to "celebrate the Constitution and the laws that protect our rights and liberties." It rings more than a little hollow, though, as he continues to trample on civil liberties in the war on terror, and stands by an attorney general who has politicized the Justice Department to a shocking degree.

The less committed a president is to the law, the more need there is for Law Day, which makes it a holiday whose time has come.

For more material about Law Day, check out the Law Day section of the ABA website.

There must be some lizard part of my brain that perks up when it hears the word library, because through the sleepy fog this morning after the alarm went off, I heard a bit of this NPR story about the Iraqi National Library and Archives.

I've just listened to the whole thing fully awake, and it's a great listen. I love how excited library director Saad Eskander is about bringing in tech-savvy librarians to update their systems to share and preserve their materials. He also beautifully expresses how important it is to preserve his country's heritage, speaking of his work as a battle on a different front, and his determination never to leave Iraq. The first half of the program covers a sadder story: the recent bombing of Baghdad's book market.

If you want to risk a visit from the Ministry of Homeland Security, you can visit the Iraqi National Library and Archives website. It's still under construction, and some of it is in Arabic. The "NLA Departments" and "Tour in NLA" links in the sidebar tell the library's story in pictures from destruction to restoration and partial re-opening.

In other news, it's always nice when a New York Times editorial rocks like this one:

The Bush administration’s mania for secrecy has been dealt an overdue blow by the House. Significant numbers of Republicans voted with Democrats to reverse the erosion of the public’s right to know how its government operates. A package of strong open-government measures would repair some of the damage inflicted in the past six years on laws governing taxpayers’ access to federal records and presidential archives, while bolstering the standing of whistle-blowers to report abuses in agencies without fear of retaliation.

Overwhelming majorities were registered for the measures despite the White House’s threat of a presidential veto. We say bring it on. The majorities were vetoproof in size, and an override confrontation is just the medicine the administration needs for the hubris it has shown in enshrouding all manner of information.

Bring it on indeed!