This time last year was a very exciting time at linux.conf.au 2008. The conference organisers had arranged for 100 XO laptops to be given away to conference attendees.

The XOs came with the following message attached.

Please do something wonderful with this XO, or inspire someone else and pass it on.

I was fortunate enough to get one of these XOs. I knew however that I wouldn’t have any time in the foreseeable future to actually do anything cool with my XO. At the same time I didn’t simply want to give it away to someone, since I knew at some stage I would actually want to do something with it.

After chatting this over with a few other people I came up with the idea of putting together an OLPC Library. (It was originally going to be OLPC Bank but after chatting it over with Pia we decided that a Library seemed to fit the ideals of the project much better).

So as part of the work I’m doing with OLPC Friends we have finally launched OLPC Library. At the moment this is just a place holder page but hopefully soon we will have a site up to actually enable people to loan out OLPCs whether that be to a developer wanting to write a new piece of software/port an application or a community advocate putting on a demo at a school or trade show.

If you are interested in helping out you can see the beginnings of the ideas for the website at the OLPC Library Project page and you can also join the mailing lists.

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