The Library in the New Age

From American Libraries Direct

A number of you have already seen or sent me the following article but it might be of interest to those who have not yet seen it.

The library in the new age

Robert Darnton writes: “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? 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.”...The New York Review of Books, June 12