Williams Library Spotlight

The article, “Buried Seed Vault Opens in Arctic,” in today’s New York Times covers the recently built Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.   Accord to the SGSV site the vault is “designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections from around the globe … If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be reestablished using seeds from Svalbard.”  The article also discusses one noteworthy perspective.  The group disagrees with the creation of the SGSV. “The group worries that such moves take away intellectual property rights to crop varieties from the farming communities that developed them and provide a false sense of confidence that safe storage, on its own, can sustain agricultural diversity.”  In seems this group’s argument is similar to arguments against Google Books and other Western-based online and print book collections.  Are these projects leading to a world monoculture?  Is the group’s argument accurate?  I do not have the answers, but it is an interesting area to investigate.