A Brief History of the Future of Libraries

Book excerpt: As we enter a new millennium, librarianship and other information professions are swept up in a period of rapid, almost frantic, change. But while there is widespread recognition that libraries in the future will be vastly different from what we know today, precisely how this change will occur is and always has been a matter of considerable speculation. To this end, Gregg Sapp has analyzed library-based predictions made between 1978, the year F.W. Lancaster published Toward Paperless Information Systems, and 1999;and compared them with seminal works published since 1876, the publication of the first issue of American Library Journal. Includes [between 500 and 700] annotated entries.