The library was in existence prior to the invention of paper scrolls. At least 2600 years ago in Ninevah, librarians catalogued clay tablets written in cuneiform for King Ashurbanipal's private library. Throughout its long history, the library has witnessed at least six major revolutions in communications technology: the printing press, telegraph, photography, radio, movies, TV, now the digital computer. Although the clientele, sources of funding, classification system, and prevailing media have changed, the fundamental function of the library has remained stable throughout history. Yet, today commentators have forecast drastic and cataclysmic changes for the library. F. Wilfrid Lancaster (1978) asks,

"Can libraries survive in a largely electronic world? Will they be needed when the raw material with which they have traditionally dealt are no longer available in printed form but are all readily accessible, on demand, to anyone with a terminal and the ability to pay for their use?" (418).

Although libraries have consistently assimilated new media over the decades, including microfilms, records, books on tape, audio and video cassettes, and CD-ROMS, prognosticators say the aging institution will go the way of the dinosaur. It will be replaced by a centralized computer network that promises to be more efficient at servicing clients' information needs and which, unlike the traditional library, will be highly profitable. However, before we trade the farm, we owe it to future generations to examine the implications of an all electronic future for the library.

In the 1992, public libraries throughout California suffered major budget cuts up to 65% forcing branches to layoff staff, reduce hours of operation, and eliminate new purchases. In some counties libraries closed down altogether when voters failed to approve taxes that would have supported them. In the same year, according to The Washington Post, the state suspended all construction plans for new university libraries in order to focus its attention and budget on "virtual libraries."

Although the "virtual library" does not yet exist it is envisioned as a massive profit-generating database that will contain full text, graphics, sound, animation, and motion video. It will supply clients with the most up-to-date information on every subject from any location on the globe for a small utility fee. No one doubts the ability of commercial on-line databases to do all this and more. However, zealots of the electronic database insist that their product will replace the services of the library. The computer, according to James Thompson, is a pre-emptive technology that will render the library unnecessary. Michael Gorman, in the February 1994 issue of Library Journal, complained of "technovandals" who think the library can be replaced with a "glorified InfoKiosk," who "know the price of libraries but not their value" (130). He states that such an attitude exposes an underlying ignorance of the social function and mission of the public library.

The public library serves a function that is crucial to the success of American democracy "The community's library stands for much that is cherished in our tradition of equal educational opportunity and freedom of thought and communication. It takes place along with the courthouse, the school, the church, and the town hall as an integral part of the American scene" (Birdsall 125). The public library is an egalitarian institution that is committed providing free access to information and services. It serves the poor, the disadvantaged, and the underprivileged as well as the wealthy. Daniel Boorstin has said libraries "profit nobody except everybody and their dividends go to the whole community" (2). The virtual library, on the other hand, is a profit-making venture. It is predicated on the assumption that information is a commodity that has a market value. Commercial on-line service providers promise to do everything the library does, and to do it faster, cheaper and in the privacy of your own home. However, their services are exclusively for those who have access to a computer and a modem and are willing to pay. Recently Stephen Coffman urged libraries to give up their old-fashioned notions of free access to information in favor of a fee-based services approach. According to futurists, libraries must learn to imitate the for-profit information industries or face extinction. One commentator has questioned, "When the only avenue to libraries is through the network, who will have access to it?" (Seiler and Surprenant 157).

Public libraries serve a diverse population, and the needs of users are often more complex than an urgent search for the most up-to-date information from a current event. Whereas the traditional library felt an obligation to serve the entire community, the electronic library is built upon the assumption that it is enough to serve the information needs of the researcher and scholar, especially in the fields of science and technology where currency is most important. "It may be entirely possible to replace certain functions of the academic or industrial research library with electronic access to technology literature" writes on critic, "but millions of people use the public library every day for purposes as varied as doing research for a high school assignment, collecting the latest James Michener novel, copying down plans for a do-it-yourself piece of furniture, borrowing a record or tape, and having a warm place to read, study or snooze. We should not dispense with the library's social and cultural functions merely because on-line computer databases can satisfy certain needs for reference information" (Stueart 53).

The virtual library has been billed as the "grand achievement of our age" (Seiler 23). Browsing the multitudinous articles on the subject, one quickly realizes that the champions of the "virtual" library are incurably optimistic. They exhibit an uncritical faith in the unlimited transformational power of technology. Anything is possible and there are no difficulties that technology cannot overcome. According to one enthusiast, "We build the electronic library to our own specifications. Our desires are the blueprints for this future" (Seiler 24). The rhetoric which surrounds the electronic library is often littered with popular clichés, clever slogans, and euphoric technohype. It is a utopian world that many visionaries have imagined but none have seen.

In 1961 John G. Kemeny of MIT wrote that the university library would be obsolete by the year 2000 In 1965, J.C.R. Licklider anticipated a machine he called a "Symbiont" which would provide users access to a library via a network. In 1968, Edwin Parker predicted that within fifteen years all library material would be stored in computers. It is generally assumed that the all digital library will be in full operation by the year 2000. Everyday more and more people are coming to expect everything to be already available in digital form. Many young scholars ignore pertinent information sources because they limit their searches to what is available on-line. "The latest Information Please almanac might be on-line, but not the 1955 edition if you need racial statistics to correlate with the Supreme Court decision of 1954 ordering school desegregation" (DeBolt). According to virtual library enthusiasts, "We are converting the entire print library to digits and storing them electronically...All information is being transformed to digital form: books, movies, TV--everything." (29). However, this has proven to be a naive assumption. Collectively libraries house centuries of human expression. If one were to include only the print documents housed in libraries, it would amount to billions of pages, and trillions of words. As Dean DeBolt has written, "Our libraries are full of millions of books, indexes, periodicals....and our archives are full of billions of paper documents--from manuscripts (13th century-on) to typescripts to dot-matrix documents, etc." There is no way in the foreseeable future to convert more than the smallest fraction of this treasure into digital form. Recently the Library of Congress attempted to convert all of the pre-1970's records its catalog to machine readable form. However, the project was abandoned because of the immense size and cost of the goal. As though ignorant of the facts, the visionaries proclaim, "The books, images, and text remaining from over five thousand years of civilization will be stored, probably on optical discs and accessible from remote locations around the globe" (Seiler and Surprenant 157). Clearly, the virtual library is a dream of the future.

It is conceivable that in the future technological innovations may make it possible for us to convert thousands of print documents into digital format. Electronic publishing may yet generate a "paperless society" as F.W. Lancaster predicted and eliminate the need to collect large storehouses of printed documents. Still, this does not mean that the job of collecting, archiving, or database maintenance will disappear. It simply means these functions would have to be taken over by profit-making organizations. The visionaries believe this to be an efficient and cost-effective solution. The problem of businesses keeping archives is classically illustrated by Peter Briscoe in his discussion of the American film industry's track record of cateloguing its own early films collections.

According to two articles in the Los Angeles Times, twenty-one thousand feature- length films were produced in the United States between 1900 and 1951. Half of them no longer exist. In addition, declares Robert Manby, president of RKO Pictures, "more than one-third of all films and television programs produced since 1950 are also gone. (Briscoe 124)

Thousands of films that are the most beloved by archivists and film scholars have been found only in the collections of private individuals...These film documents are important to our cultural heritage. They just don't coincide with profits for the studios. Several film collectors interviewed for this article reiterated stories of how Universal Pictures destroyed all of its silent film in 1947, without offering them to any of the local or national film archives." (Briscoe 125).

The world's libraries guide our future by preserving the records of our past. This is a task that profit making organizations have never done well. According to Dean DeBolt, the reason is simple: "On-line information exists because of publishing profit." If there's no profit, it won't be on-line. A business, no matter what it does, must ultimately be profitable. "Even the most idealistic publishers do not reprint books that have stopped selling...In the long run, profit cannot be made from permanently storing records. Some records must be purged. Any permanent collection/ archive/ database of records can only exist in the not-for-profit sector" (Briscoe 123). Policy makers must responsibly weigh the benefits against potential disasters that may result from the elimination of print libraries and total reliance on electronic archives.

The public library is sometimes called a market place of ideas. By including documents that represent various viewpoints and perspectives it helps safeguard intellectual freedom. Proponents of the virtual library entice taxpayers with the promise that no longer will they be called upon to pay for public libraries. The virtual library will pay for itself. But who, will fund the virtual library? Can we trust mega-corporations and industries to maintain a balance of viewpoints in their digital holdings? Michael Gorman warns, "Those who have the gold make the rules, and those who invest billions in the new digitized world will have control over every aspect of it. The potential for censorship, control of access to knowledge and information, and limitation of intellectual freedom is boundless" (131).

The library also functions to conserve the integrity of the historical record for future generations. It is not uncommon for electronic storage systems and media to become quickly obsolete. The archival life of documents stored on new technologies is at best short-term. There is a potential for cataclysmic disasters when all permanent print sources are discarded and everything that exists is in digital form. If we aren't careful simple computer errors or mistakes could wipe out entire records from the past. Then there are computer hackers who derive pleasure in creating computer viruses. One can imagine the thrill of knowing you could delete all human records for a particular field of knowledge. Throughout the ages rulers have understood the power of controlling, manipulating and revising the past. Segments of our society have worked to impose their own distorted interpretation of the past. In such a world information would indeed be power. We should not too quickly dismiss the warnings of George Orwell in his novel, 1984, wherein Winston was paid to change the past to reflect political expediencies of the moment. Likewise, a totally electronic archive like that espoused by the visionaries is highly susceptible to international sabotage. While the prophets of the virtual library have exaggerated the wonders of their product, we have neglected to estimate the potential disasters such a world may need to face.

Historically, citizens of the Western world have sought technological solutions to their problems. In 1944 Fremont Rider warned research library collections were doubling in size every 16 years and would soon become unmanageable. The innovation of microphotography suggested a technical fix. The full-text of a book reproduced micrographically would solve the problem. Vannevar Bush, an electrical engineer at MIT envisioned a workdesk that could hold the entire collection of a university library, stored on microfilm, and occupy only a few cubic feet. In 1956 the Soviets launched Sputnik and plunged the United States into an educational crisis. The problem was immediately diagnosed: American schoolchildren suffered from inadequate access to current sources of information. The term "information explosion" was coined to explain the problem and Technology was again the solution as computer networks would help us cope with the "information explosion." A plethora of government agencies was formed to improve access to and distribution of current scientific and technical information. Edwin B. Parker, professor of communications at Stanford University, wrote that efficient use of information via nationwide information networks would give American institutions a competitive edge against other nations in the information market. The truism, "Knowledge is Power" became "Information Power" and library schools began adding "information science" to their names to enhance the professional status of librarians now that it was the "information age."

The problem with technological solutions is that problems get defined by the tools and capabilities of technology. Problems are fitted to the solution like lodgers on a Procrustean bed. Whatever doesn't fit the solution gets lopped off or redefined. "That which cannot be done by the computer either will be done by computer in the future or is not worth doing anyway" (Gorman 111). One enthusiast justifies , "our present plans to convert as much as possible of our print heritage to digits might, for the most part, be a waste of money...since, as reading loses favor... in one hundred years almost no one will read the literature--books and journals--from the past because it will be obsolete in the electronic medium. As a consequence," (Seiler and Surprenant 29)

Advocates of the electronic library have attempted to transform the mission of the library to fit what technology does best. Daniel Boorstin, in his 1973 address before the President distinguished between knowledge and information. He asks, "Is the library to be a knowledge institution or a information broker?" and reminds us to reconsider the primary purpose of the library. Libraries "do not deal mainly in the storage and retrieval of information, nor in the instant flow of today's facts & figures which will be displaced by tomorrow's reports and bulletins. Rather, they deal in the enduring treasure of our whole human past...knowledge is orderly & cumulative, information is random & miscellaneous." Boorstin has expressed the fear of many who understand the value of knowledge.

He explains, much like Gresham's law, "information tends to drive knowledge out of circulation. The oldest, the established, the cumulative, is displaced by the most recent, the most problematic. The latest information on anything and everything is collected, diffused, received, stored, and retrieved before anyone can discover whether the facts have meaning." In our time "we see the knowledge industry being transformed, and even to some extent displaced, by an information industry. (3).

In the future there will be no books or libraries. At least that's what the futurists say. F.W. Lancaster flatly states "I see little future for the library." He predicts the library will be both "disembodied" and "bypassed" by technological improvements. Speakers at every library conference will tell that the library is undergoing a major paradigm shift. "Libraries cannot continue as they are. In evolutionary terms the obvious analogy is with the spectacularly sudden extinction of the dinosaurs" (Thompson 16). The library as a place where books are housed and where people visit, browse the shelves, take a class, or bring their child for storyhour will perish forever from the face of the earth.

The library of the future will certainly depend on a variety of electronic formats. Technology will be used more and more in libraries to enhance, not replace library services, combining the function of the library as a physical repository and the new electronic means of distributing information. On-line catalogs of local library holdings, accessible by phone lines make patrons use of physical library efficient. What is needed is a sensible approach to integrating digital mediums into the library. Predictions that the library will be totally replaced by a massive on-line database oversimplify the variety of services provided by the library, and reveal a reductionistic view of the library's mission. Responsible persons need to discuss how the library can combine a rich interplay between library as a physical place and the new electronic means of distributing information while insuring the same commitments to literacy, learning and service to community.

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Mike Roy is a graduate of the University of Michigan; he holds a Masters degree in Library Science/Media Specialist and is currently finishing an M.Ed in Instructional Technology from the University of Virginia. He taught English and mathematics for nine years and is passionate about both libraries and technology. He can be reached via email at mvr4u@virginia.edu.