Da Vinci on Vista: Should Leonardo and the British Library Promote Microsoft?

Does anyone besides me feel queasy about the willingness of the British Library---the U.K.'s national library---to serve as Bill Gates' promotional platform for yesterday's launch of Microsoft's new Vista operating system?

No doubt the British Library has benefited mightily from its longterm "strategic partnership" with Microsoft to digitize material from its collections, and the Vista launch showed off the new operating system's potential through the digital reunion of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Arundel (owned by the Library) and Codex Leicester (owned by Gates).

But as part of the bargain, the library has been commercially co-opted, allowing its 2005 press release to double as an advertisement for Microsoft's MSN Internet portal---"a world leader in delivering Web services to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide. The most useful and innovative online service today, MSN brings consumers everything they need from the Web to make the most of their time online."

And the Library's new press release, announcing the new digital version of the codices, touts Microsoft as "the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential."

The NY Times coverage of the European launch details the dicey aspects of the Library's allowing its codex to be coupled not only with Gates' codex, but also with his Vista promotional campaign.

Thomas Crampton writes:

While Mr. Gates and Microsoft emphasized the project as opening knowledge and education to the world, only users of Vista will be able to access the 35 pages owned by Mr. Gates, who is making the digital version available to British Library for six months. Mr. Gates paid $30 million [actually $30,8 million] for the manuscript in 1994.

Over the course of the codex project, the British Library has received software development assistance worth some $200,000 from Microsoft in addition to technical assistance for more than year, said Lawrence Christensen, a library spokesman.

In other word, the Codex Leicester, formerly owned for the public's benefit by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, is now being exploited as a commercial asset. And it's taking the British Library's Codex Arundel along for this reckless ride.