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The best of Fred Kilgour“It is very likely that libraries will in
some way in the next half century
begin to make use of magnetic,
electronic, or other types of memory
units for handling and producing
information.” “Libraries now find themselves forced to a dynamic
state of instability, which should not be confused
with insecurity. Since the age of Pericles, the unstable periods in human history have been the most
productive periods. Certainly, the period of instability
into which libraries are now entering after a long period
of changelessness will be one of the intellectually
productive periods in librarianship.” “The outstanding accomplishment
of the year was
the implementation,
operation, and enhancement
of the online union catalog
and shared cataloging
system. Participating libraries cataloged a total of 336,307 titles on the system, and during January through June 1972, cataloging was at a rate higher than a half million per year with annual catalog card production at a rate of over 3.4 million.” “To continue to be vital to society, libraries must adopt new objectives. In particular, they must strive to participate with individuals in their cultural activities; passive, depersonalized service is no longer enough. Developments in modern,
information-based society
are forcing onto libraries
this new objective of
furnishing an individual
with information when
and where he wants it.” “Production of information in part or in whole of a separate distinct corpus will invalidate the basic assumption on which library systems have been based since Gutenberg—that each copy of a book is an exact duplicate of every other copy of the same printing. This development will clearly turn libraries toward information servicing and away from dealing in packages of data—namely, books, serials, maps, and films.” “To travel from the large, passive, monolithic libraries of today to the active library of the future will require imagination and hard work. Tremendous new areas of unknown will open up that will cry for research investigation and production of new knowledge.” “The unacceptability of the present electronic book is
often expressed in what as come to be known as the ‘can’t
curl up in bed with it’ syndrome, closely followed by the ‘can’t read it at the beach’ complaint. Both protests are
valid, but it may be supposed that advances in technology
and design will soon overcome these insufficiencies as
they have overcome others in the history of the book.
After all, second- and third-century codices, many a foot
or more tall, hardly constituted bedfellows, any more than
did the seventeen-inch-tall 42-line Gutenberg Bible, or the
taller-than-a-foot folios that followed in 1457, 1459, 1460,
and 1462.”
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