The future of libraries

The New York Review of Books: Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape says Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?

...How to make sense of it all? I have no answer to that problem, but I can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.

Somewhere, around 4000 BC, humans learned to write.

The history of books led to a second technological shift when the codex replaced the scroll sometime soon after the beginning of the Christian era.

The codex, in turn, was transformed by the invention of printing with movable type in the 1450s.

The fourth great change, electronic communication, took place yesterday, or the day before, depending on how you measure it.

Each change in the technology has transformed the information landscape, and the speed-up has continued at such a rate as to seem both unstoppable and incomprehensible.

Says Darnton: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns. As a citadel of learning and as a platform for adventure on the Internet, the research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future

[From The Library in the New Age - The New York Review of Books ]