I know HN has a love affair going with IA and stuff, but as someone who has worked in the digital library world and has traveled in some of the same circles as IA, I don't really see this.<p>The IA is a great project and all, but it's not really the same as the Library of Congress. LC has to be sort of an indelible record of the doings of government and the literature of the day. The scope is big, but it's well-defined.<p>The IA is a moonshot effort at capturing <i>everything</i>, which is another way of saying it's more important to capture more things than it is to capture a given single thing <i>well</i>. It's interesting and important, but it's anti-library in a way, rather than being an enhancement of what libraries do.<p>Not to mention, I don't really believe IA is a pinnacle of digital library engineering by any means. I've heard tell of digital signatures that have shifted over time, for example.<p>I think Mr. Kahle has come to represent "forward thinking" in terms of providing library services in a digital age in the technology world, because he comes from the Valley and founded a successful internet property and whatnot, but that doesn't mean there aren't prominent technologists that come from the library world rather than the tech world who aren't also capable of pushing LC forward on the digital front.