May 31, 2006
A Book Sale to Die For
The Bodleian Library isn't just the first stop for researchers at the University of Oxford; it's also one of Europe's oldest and most revered archives. So English Web surfers must have been more than a bit surprised to see the library listed on eBay with a reserve price of about $350-million.
Of course, Oxford isn't really holding a fire sale: The Bod, as locals call it, was put up for sale as a symbolic gesture by Oxford students disgruntled over rising college rent costs. (Those costs, the students say, have increased by an average of 30 percent over the past five years.) (BBC News)
The auction may have been a nice piece of political theater, but it was short lived: eBay officials, who aren't fond of symbolic uses of their site, have already taken the Bod off the market.
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