College and Research Libraries TomOrrow's Research Library: Vigor or Rigor Mortis? Richard D. Hacken The gamut of futuristic visions in library literature-from optimistic to pessimistic, from real- istic to fanciful. Contradictory answers to recurring questions are found: Can we finally say goodbye to Gutenberg? Will the library card be replaced by the telephone credit card? Will book ownership give way entirely to information access? Will"books without pages" and "libraries without walls'' necessarily lead to librarians without jobs? Is it possible to set timetables? After past crystal baU gazers are compared, contrasted, and critiqued, positive plans for progress are suggested. • isions of the ~ture are difficult to debunk until the unforeseen arrives. One 1957 journal, for example, featured "The House You'll Live in Tomorrow." 1 Since the to- morrow in question was 1989, we may now look back with the humor of hind- sight to judge the accuracy of the vision. Color illustrations showed a hard glass dome, under which the living quarters swiveled in phase with the sun, maintain- ing optimum temperature and humidity by solar energy. Children cavorted in the year-round pool, while Sis harvested large heads of lettuce from the hydroponic garden. Mom, dressed in late-fifties chic, sat in her glassed-in "quiet spot" -with TV, intercom and "book-rack" (no elec- tronic publishing in sight!)-and watched the roast self-baste in the radar oven. Dad whirled home from his thirty-hour-a- week job in the family helicopter, skim- ming past the satellite dish. In retrospect, we can see that this futur- ist only made three errors: social, eco- nomic, and chronological. In the· social realm, he assumed Mom and Sis would continue to be the lone "afficionadas" of the kitchen, while Pop would be the sole breadwinner. Economically, he assumed that anything feasible would be imple- · mented, ignoring the fact that thirty-hour work weeks and gigantic glass domes need to be financed, not just engineered and dreamed. Chronologically, he extrap- olated in a straight line from 1957 techno}- . ogy, which correctly presaged a future for microwave ovens and satellite dishes but also predicted hydroponic gardens and family helicopters. How do the library futurists of today stack up against the futurists of yesterday? More specifically, what can systems ana- lysts, scenario painters, brainstormers, role players, and others tell us-with any accuracy-about research collections of to- morrow? There are valid managerial rea- sons to look ahead, not the least of which is the will to survive a~ a profession. NO BOOKS, NO COLLECTIONS, NO LIBRARIANS? Lewis Thomas has commented on how to bring about the collapse of a scientist's career: I have long believed that there is no scientist alive whose career could not be terminated by an enemy, if the enemy were capable of increas- ing the laboratory's budget by tenfold or any- fold overnight and, as well, assuring access im- Richard D. Hacken is European Studies Bibliographer at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602. 485 486 College & Research Libraries 11Could the library profession, with no truly united plans for orderly growth, be relinquishing its fate to sorcerer's apprentices, even while gleefully scrambling to place money and materials in the path of their bur- geoning brooms?" mediately to any instrument within reach of the victim's imagination. 2 Might we substitute the word librarian for scientist and automations budget for labora- tory's budget to show cause for a similar collection failure? Could the laws of indis- criminate instrumentality come to over-: rule the instrument users? Could the li- brary profession, with no truly united · plans for orderly growth, be relinquishing its fate to sorcerer's apprentices, even while gleefully scrambling to place money and materials in the path of their burgeon- ing brooms? The answers to these ques- tions may very well depend on whether those in charge of collections have their brooms firmly in hand or whether they are being swept along by them. Ideas make up the essential core of any research library collection. Since ideas, up to now, have been most readily stored for posterity in symbols found in books, li- braries have purchased many books. It now seems possible that ideas can be stored in digital fashion, possibly mixing drawings, photos, text, data, and signals on a single disc. Databases, in addition, not just of bibliographic entries but of en- tire texts of literature, will come to the ter- minals of those equipped to receive them. Such are the visions of the future, leaving the survival of any library collections in question. Said A. R. Turnbull of the Edin- burgh University Press in a radio broad- cast: "While you were watching televi- sion, the book died."3 F. W. Lancaster, longtime prophet of the library's coming demise (but not that of the individual librarian-who will ap- parently flee to the financially more secure electronic suburbs), foresees a ''paperless society.' ' 4 An important implication of November 1988 technological advancement in electronic publishing and distribution, Lancaster be- lieves, will be the "deinstitutionalization" of libraries. Patrons, having learned to search databases and pull in articles and monographs to their terminals with no need for an intermediary-so the argu- mentation goes-will stay away from book collections. The physical library building will still exist, but as a sort of dinosaur mu- seum, Lancaster predicts, having little to do with the latest research services. Any interim role the library may have in edu- cating the online patron and in facilitating access to information will wither away and crumble shortly after the turn of the millennium. 5 Nor is Lancaster's a lone voice in the wil- derness. One disciple of collection doom, JoAnn Stefani, focuses her attention on the economic facts of life, first pointing to the truism that libraries-in order to gar- ner financial support-are increasingly be- ing asked to prove their immediate and tangible (i.e., marketable) worth in a soci- ety largely indifferent to intellectual pur- suits. Tax dollars, however, are not the only point of competition; she points to an equally threatening variety of social Dar- winism where the collection must adapt or die: the functions of collection, storage, organiza- tion and retrieval of information, which have customarily been performed by librarians, have become the basis for a vast information indus- try outside the domain of the library, and the li- brarian must now compete with private inter- ests for information access. 6 To say that libraries 1 I as we know ~hem'' . will be imbued with-and possibly even superseded by-succeeding technologies does not seem too far a leap in our "post- typographic culture.' ' 7 Problems do arise, however, when a time frame starts to emerge that may be too apocalyptically immediate. Consider again the 1957look at 1989-maybe there will be family heli- copters and glass domes, but when? Per- haps the holdings will be mostly in digital storage, but when? Approximately a decade ago, Lancaster made prognostications about libraries and librarians in the year 2001 that can be mea- sured now with exactitude: about half of the time period between that writing and the next millennium has already passed. Yet a like percentage of his vision has not unfolded. He stated, for example, looking back from the fictive viewpoint of 2001, that ''by the end of the 1980s the market for secondary publications in printed form had dwindled to an insignificant level in the developed world.' ' 8 Since this sweep- ing scenario has not materialized, what can we think of his further extrapolation? "By 1995, of course, print on paper had virtually disappeared for all secondary publications, for many of the primary lit- erature of the sciences and the social sci- ences, and for many types of reference works.''9 Clearly, the underlying technologies are indeed workable and exist here and there in the late eighties. Still, vast a.nd compre- hensive electronic databases of literature-like hydroponic gardens-are not yet the rage. Change always seems to take longer than expected. Bibliographic access to traditional collections has grabbed our full attention, while elec- tronic access to primary information itself sits on a back burner. The rate at which technology can be applied to practice is relatively slow; affordability must catch up with availability, actuality with feasi- bility. Thus the timing errors of Lancas- ter's forecast may be due to a number of ignored or misread factors, not the least of which are economic: matters of distribu- tion, retooling, profit, copyright innova- tions, etc. Despite being contin'-;lally surprised at the rate at which computer hardware and software make last year's purchases obso- lete, I beg to differ with Lancaster when he predicts a "rather fully developed elec- tronic information system'' by the year 2000 if not earlier, at least not to the extent that the book becomes a museum piece within the next ten years. 10 As for the predicted demise of paper, you will find more paper than ever before lurking just a printer cable away from the digital "paperless" wonder. Paper is por- table; who knows when electronic readers of the next kind will be as handy and ca- sual as a pile of scribbled or printed notes? Tomorrow's Research Library 487 Even when we reach the point that ''paper need never exist in this communications environment,'' 11 chances seem excellent that it will exist. Weyerhaeuser and other lumber companies are still reforesting. There are precedents for new and old technologies coexisting side by side rather than competing. It has been noted, for ex- ample: Newspapers originally refused to print radio schedules, believing they promoted a competi- tive medium. Later they found that printing ra- dio schedules led to greater circulation. We need models to account for complementary as well as competitive servicesY 111t seems logical that the book and the computer will be able to exist si- multaneously, because of-rather than in spite of-their differences.'' In like manner, it seems logical that the book and the computer will be able to exist simultaneously, because of-rather than in spite of-their differences. Thus, for the next several generations at least, ''a more plausible prediction than Lancaster's . . . is for a rich interplay between the library as physical repository and new electronic means of distributing information. " 13 Bringing the relationship between the research collection and private suppliers of online information into focus, Richard De Gennaro sees automation in the library not as a source of cutthroat competition or as an imminent threat, but as a symbiosis: Online searching is not putting libraries out of business; libraries have helped put online searching into business and constitute its prin- cipal market. The online services will, in tum, generate new business for themselves and for libraries. 14 For the present, at least, librarians and the new information entrepreneurs are natu- ral allies-complementary and mutually supportive-who depend on each other's services and products in order to prosper. That picture could change, of course. The information industry of the late 1980s is not yet making dinosaurs of our collec- 488 College & Research Libraries tions, but rather "revitalizing them with new technology and services . " 15 THE DWINDLING NEED FOR BOOK OWNERSHIP? Speaking as if looking back from the year 2000, one prognosticator describes · the scene: Technology had freed information and knowl- edge services from the library and its associated immobility. It had given them geographical freedom to serve their user. Technology had peeled the covers off the information content of library collections and had given users direct ac- cess to this information from locations of their own choosing. Technology had given users an- alytic, statistical, and logical techniques to work with information; they no longer had to buy it personally because they had access to knowl- edge networks via screens located for their con- venience . 16 "The core of library service- dispersal of ideas-will have broken loose from the fetters of a physical building to roam the airwaves and optic-fiber byways leading to Every- man. This prospect seems to lead to an increasing emphasis in collection development on access rather than ownership. 11 By a symbiotic relationship between com- puters and telecommunications, the core of library service-dispersal of ideas-will have broken loose from the fetters of a physical building to roam the airwaves and optic-fiber byways leading to Every- man. This prospect seems to lead to an in- creasing emphasis in collection develop- ment on access rather than ownership. One observer goes so far as to suggest: "Where we have thought of collections, we must think of connections as the library's means for making material available." 17 Without collections, will we be engaged in ''connection management'' and ''catalog- ing connections?" Indeed, since "access" seems to be the operative principle of the Brave New Technology, the patron will adapt to on- November 1988 line services to the extent they are avail- able, affordable, and acceptable: "the user base will have diversified to include a higher proportion of patrons who wish to access the service but spend as little time as possible in the building. " 18 This would mean (ostensibly) more demands for in- formation not present in the physical book collection with a concomitant remote pa- tron desire for electronic gratification: "Needs will be increasingly met from di- rect acquisition at time of request, rather than purchase in anticipation of de- mand. " 19 Librarians will not be as con- cerned with guessing at what patrons might want to use in the future as with finding a way to supply what they do want to use immediately. Collection budgets will gradually reflect the transfer from predemand stockpiling to on- demand delivery. Such requests may tum the collection from a warehouse into a su- permarket, with all the service awareness this entails. The electronic convenience store will presumably be open at all hours. Collection assessments-so the thoughts go-may well be replaced by database menus, and library cards may be traded in for telephone credit cards. The actual symbolic information signals-as exclusive property of 1984-Plus Indus- tries, a subsidiary of Brave New Technology-would be located digitally within a throbbing mainframe in down- town Los Silicones. The research library would be leasing the permission to access, with an option to download. Before we consign the concept of re- search collection ownership to the dust- heap of library history, however, let us consider a problem inherent in the con- cept of remote access. In order for any pa- tron to gain access to ideas, the very core stuff of information, those ideas must be ''owned'' in their symbolic manifestation, i.e., housed in archival storage, presum- ably in a permanent fashion . Be they in books, films, electronic impulses, or other types of media, these symbolic represen- tations of information cannot be supplied unless they are preserved. For a library to rely on private business interests to pre- serve humanity's legacies is to ignore the realities of economic forces and the profit motive. As long as it is to the financial ad- vantage for a company to preserve a data- base or other means of information stor- age, it will do so. When that same collection (or connection) becomes a liabil- ity, it is efficiently excised from the human record, and a tax deduction is all that is left for it to be remembered by. Paradigmatic for this antiarchival tunnel vision was Uni- versal Pictures' destruction of all of its si- lent films in 1947, "without offering them to any of the local or national film ar- chives. " 20 The fashionable notion of Access iiber al- les thus has a fatal flaw. A library with an established need in a given area of re- search can never assume that the ''other guy,'' particularly a for-profit vendor, will continue to fill those patron needs in per- petuity. The only guarantee of access is ownership: "Access always presupposes . or depends on ownership-by some party. " 21 To the extent research libraries continue to take seriously their archival function-as a necessary precondition to guaranteeing access-they will ''collect databases just as seriously as they collect books today-and they will safeguard both. " 22 The preservation and integrity of data- bases are other matters of concern as well. Will the clarion call "Let's burn some books!" be replaced by the suggestion "Let's purge some databases!"? Will the free marketplace of ideas be adversely mo- nopolized by an information system that tends to show only one view? Will there be no room for "alternative" databases and dissenting voices?23 Will the tone of a data- base shift with prevailing winds or edito- rial changes of mind? What guarantees will be made that a medium so amenable to change will provide a canon of perma- nence? Besides the possibilities of human inter- vention, the collection manager of the fu- ture will want to consider the transient na- ture of the physical medium on which the ideas are stored symbolically. Storage du- rations on magnetic tape24 as well as those on optical discs 25 have been both esti- mated and proven to be less long-lasting than storage on the most acidic of papers; we are still waiting for the definitive stor- Tomorrow's Research Library 489 age medium. When that preservation panacea does arrive, who knows whether it will be economically feasible? In the meanwhile we will surely have to rely on our laser-equipped monks for regular re- copying as surely as the parchment age re- lied on its hooded scribes. HOW CAN WE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE? A recurring theme in the literature about future librarianship is the verity that the survival of the profession-though not necessarily of the traditional institution- does not depend so much on the rate of automation as on the willingness and abil- ity of librarians to change and adapt. 26 The prime model for adaptation is the . medical profession, which rapidly and smoothly makes use of the latest relevant technologies and pharmaceuticals. 27 An assumption held in the medical community-and one from which librari- ans can learn-is that continuing basic re- search and in-service education are indis- pensable for the profession. Not every librarian must conduct research into the ways information is being transmitted and into the applications for the profession, but such research must be encouraged and subsidized. On the other hand, pro- fessional librarians must be kept apprised of the latest developments in automation and of the impact those developments can exert on the conduct and even redirection of their jobs. In-service training and retraining will probably be conducted through staff de- velopment programs in-house and may · emphasize even more of an instructional role toward the patron than at present. 28 It is likely that patrons will increasingly re- quire instruction in getting at information not as physically retrievable or self- evident as a book on a shelf. Librarians themselves may need reinstruction on how to instruct. Con~inuing education will also extend to solving problems and making judgments, since on-the-spot de- cisions of financial importance will need to be made on a daily basis: In contrast to the present situation where a li- brary will commit a high proportion of costs well in advance and within an extended time 490 College & Research Libraries frame, decisions on the value and cost of infor- mation will increasingly be made at a terminal, with the decision to buy resulting in immediate expenditure. The effects on existing accounting systems will be substantial. 29 We need a model for those researchers who have relied so much on serendipity, self-help, and interdisciplinary browsing for the humanity of their work. With data- bases requiring monitored monies per minute for connection time and with no apparent way for them to match the casual browsing ambience of book ranges, will little segments of research innovation and the delights of physically stumbling upon a find be lost to future humans? Will re- searchers have no equivalent phrase for the following? "I came across a key para- graph while I was leafing through a book someone had left on a table.' ' 30 Or will au- tomation somehow leave open the possi- bility of those chance encounters and intu- itive connections that-like the chance discovery of penicillin in a bread mold- help to move humanity forward? Besides models of new technology, col- lections may need new models of society or of humaneness to balance the yes/no, on/off, black/white essence of a computer- ized global information village perched re- ceptively beneath a belt of satellites trans- mitting in geosynchronous orbit: Our only chance of an appetizing future . . . lies in the hope that the users of information and chips will be people of wisdom and compas- sion, balance, humanity and sound moral val- ues.31 We need librarians who support the users rather than the system, who see the end as clearly as the means. We need other models and plans as well, proper questions before we can hope to get adequate answers. If research li- braries will have the task of collecting, mounting, and managing large databases, · for instance, will these activities be facili- tated by current resource-sharing net- works, such as OCLC or RLG? What might a comprehensive national plan for implementation look like? Herbert Landau has suggested that we create a linkage of government and pri- vate resources in a "coherent, non- redundant network." A "national infor- November 1988 mation resource program" would be set up with the following elements: (1) A national inventory would identify and describe national libraries, databases, and other information archives and re- sources. (2) Critical collections would be desig- nated as national information resource centers and given government support as necessary. (3) The records of the national libraries (Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine, National Agricultural Library) would be linked in an integrated online network and made accessible to the nation at large. (4) National libraries and newly desig- nated national information resource cen- ters would be oriented to serving the needs of the nation, not of specific govern- mental bodies. (5) New national libraries would be des- ignated in areas of critical national need and interest (engineering, education, etc.). Existing libraries with nationally sig- nificant collections should be considered for this status, even if they are under pri- vate control. The hallmark of the entire ef- fort would be a cooperative enterprise be- tween government (at. state and national levels) and the private sector. 32 By such a system, the expenses and problems of database ownership for access would be distributed among collections (and be- tween connections) just as book owner- ship is distributed in theory among mem- ber institutions by present-day research library utilities. Ruth Boaz has suggested a similar plan that involves the participation of library schools in the planning phase. 33 The model of Briscoe and others in- cludes a depository principle broadened to ensure database integrity, physical preservation, and public right to access. This model allows for new applications of the copyright law, whereby "fair use" of databases would include 11 reuse.'' Collec- tion managers would need to decide at what level of use it would be more eco- nomical to 1 'own'' rather than just 11 ac- cess" databases.34 Regardless of whether the research and educational models listed above are adopted or not, I suggest tha~ we begin now to accept our changing roles. We need to keep abreast of new forms of re- corded information, be they on discs or films, in books or boxes. This means new budgetary insights as materials funds are used for software or other means of read- ing the ideas encoded in various ways. Veneration of the book as a material object will become more and more counterpro- ductive, and patron demand for instruc- tional help with emerging technologies will increase. At some point, many now discrete func- tions of the library will likely coalesce. As in-house technical processing recedes into the afterglow of shared-cataloging nir- vana, catalogers and other technical pro- cessing staff will move toward being managers-rather than producers-of on- line records. 35 At the same time, collection development staff will move toward being database access specialists and circulation personnel toward being database usage controllers (regulating delivery, copyright restrictions and so forth). 36 The databases in question may also include local ones supplied by faculty (upon consultation with collection managers) for local curric- ular needs or for their own research. 37 The tasks of reference and collection develop- ment will be even more closely aligned than in the past, since the one who learns how to access the database is the logical one to help counsel and guide the re- searcher. Interlibrary loan and acquisition functions will merge as materials are re- quested directly through a computer ter- minal. To the extent collections become less composed of physical holdings and more of electronic storage, the entire li- brary will resemble more and more one conglomerate ILL department. When these changes will all have oc- curred nobody can say with any accuracy. This inability to establish timetables has been shown by past crystal ball gazers. But that they will occur seems not to be in question. Tomorrow's Research Library 491 As sort of convenience-store proprie- tors, we who do the jobs of collecting and connecting will always be needed: even if patrons know all about database~ and own or lease a number of them, they will look to a research collection for those items too numerous or too expensive to buy. Patrons will look to us increasingly for online access, software, interactive videodiscs, or for whatever else they ei- ther cannot afford or are unable to find on the public marketplace. "Books without pages" and "libraries without walls'' do not necessarily lead to librarians without jobs. It need not be said of the research collection, as of the British empire, that it has a great future behind it. Not yet, at any rate.lf there is to be compe- tition of Darwinian proportions, we are well equipped to survive. Lester Asheim has pointed out that librarians have ac- quired, by virtue of their training and ex- perience, advantages over other occupa- tional groups now getting into the information act. Librarians are skilled at techniques of information retrieval. They specialize in all the several aspects of in- formation handling: selection, acquisi- tion, organization, dissemination, and as- sistance in use. They have motivation as well as skills-they know about searching and delivering, not just about systems. Fi- nally, librarians tend to be people- oriented. 38 A defensive attitude toward automation of either the collection records or of the collection itself might be akin to locking and barring the library door to the express trains of new technology. The freight will roll through anyway. A sacrificial attitude means lying down on the tracks to be run over by the streamliner (being railroaded out of the library?). Perhaps the most rea- sonable approach is to be an active part of the future, taking the offensive and deter- mining directions in which to lay track for the engines of progress. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. Robert G. Beason, "Here's Your House of Tomorrow," Mechanix Illustrated 53, no.6:74-75 Oune 1957). 492 College & Research Libraries November 1988 2. Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony (Toronto, New York: Bantam, 1984), p.91. 3. As quoted by James Thompson, The End of Libraries (London: Bingley, 1982), p.76. 4. F. Wilfrid Lancaster, "The Role of the Library in a Paperless Society," Toward Paperless Information Systems (New York: Academic Pr., 1978), p.153-59. 5. F. Wilfrid Lancaster, "Future Librarianship: Preparing for an Unconventional Career," Wilson Li- brary Bulletin 57:748 (May 1983). 6. JoAnn Stefani, "0 Weep for Librarianship," Show-Me Libraries 35:32-33 (May/June 1984). 7. Eugene F. Provenzo, Beyond the Gutenberg Galaxy: Microcomputers and the Emergence of Post- Typographic Culture (New York: Teachers College Pr., 1986). 8. F. Wilfrid Lancaster and others, "Changing Face of the Library: A Look at Libraries and Librarians in the Year 2001," Collection Management 3:61 (Spring 1979). 9. Ibid. 10. F. Wilfrid Lancaster, "Whither Libraries? or, Wither Libraries," College & Research Libraries 39:355 (Sept. 1978). 11. Ibid., p.356. Emphasis added. 12. Christine D. Urban, "The Competitive Advantage of New Publishing Formats," in Electronic Pub- lishing Plus: Media for a Technological Future, ed. Martin Greenberger (Washington, D. C.: Annen- berg School of Communications, 1985), p.55. 13. Efrem Sigel, "The Future of the Book," in Books, Libraries and Electronics, ed. E. Sigel and others (White Plains, N.Y.: Knowledge Industry, 1982), p.28. 14. Richard De Gennaro, "Libraries, Technology, and the Information Marketplace," Library Journal 107:1051 (June 1, 1982). 15. Ibid. p.1052; 1054. 16. Ruth M. Davis, "Where will Technology Put the Library of the 21st Century?" Bulletin of the Medi- cal Libraries Association 75:5 (Jan. 1987). 17. Dan Lacy, "Libraries and Access to Information," in Electronic Publishing Plus, p.329. 18. Roy J. Adams, Information Technology and Libraries: A Future for Academic Libraries (London: Croom Helm, 1986), p.%. 19. Ibid., p.97. 20. Dale Pollock, "Collectors: Film Heroes or Villains?" Los Angeles Times, Sept. 16, 1983, as quoted by Peter Briscoe and others, "Ashurbanipal' s Enduring Archetype: Thoughts on the J,..ibrary' s Role in the Future," College & Research Libraries 47:123 (Mar. 1986). 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. p.124. 23. Paul B. Snider, ''Libraries of the Future Kind; or, 1984 Is the Day after Tomorrow,'' Illinois Libraries 61:715 (Oct. 1979). 24. Gordon R. Williams, ''The Function and Methods of Libraries in the Diffusion of Knowledge,'' Library Quarterly 50:74 (Jan. 1980). 25. William R. Nugent, "Optical Disk Technology," in In Seroice to Scholarship: Minutes of the One Hun- dredth Meeting of the ARL (Scottsdale, Ariz., May 6-7, 1982), p.78. 26. See Karen L. Horny, "Managing Change : Technology and the Profession," Library Journal 110:56-58 (Oct. 1, 1985); Allen B. Veaner, "Librarians: The Next Generation," Library Journal 109:625 (Apr. 1, 1984). Note that Veaner's article was published on April Fools' Day 1984. 27. Adams, Information Technology, p.92; Lancaster, "Future Librarianship," p.747-48; and others. 28. Irene B. Hoadley, "The World That Awaits Us: Libraries of Tomorrow," Wilson Library Bulletin 61:24 (Oct. 1986); Adams, Information Technology, p. 96. 29. Adams, Information Technology, p.99. 30. Snider, "Libraries of the Future," p.714. 31. Derek Toyne, "People and Books," Library Association Record 88:385 (Aug. 1986). 32. Herbert B. Landau, "The Challenge of the Emerging Information Society: Are We Ready?" in Libraries and Information Science in the Electronic Age, ed. Hendrik Edelman (Philadelphia: lSI Press, 1986), p.36-56. 33. Martha T. Boaz, "Looking Ahead-Managing the Future," in Current Concepts in Library Manage- ment (Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1979), p.282-83. 34. Briscoe and others, "Ashurbanipal' s Enduring Archetype," see ref. 20, p.125. 35. Stefani, "0 Weep," p.30-31; Adams, Information Technology, p.104. 36. Adams, Information Technology, p.104. 37. Ibid., p.105 . Tomorrow's Research Library 493 38. Lester Asheim, "Means and Ends in Librarianship," in Libraries and Infonnation Science, see ref. 32, p.109. FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY YEAR 1939-89 IN JANUARY ISSUE OF COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES ACRL's Fiftieth Anniversary: For Reflection, for Celebration, and for Anticipation by Edward G. Holley The Unintended Revolution in Academic Libraries: 1939-1989 and Beyond by Barbara B. Moran A Statistical History of College & Research Libraries · byPaulMetz Electronic Information and Technology: Impact and Potential for Academic Libraries by Dilys E. Morris Information Support for Academic Administrators: A New Role for the Library by Peter G. Watson and Rebecca A. Boone The Birth of a Network: The Brazilian Struggle by Janet E. Frederick Selected Reference Books of 1987-88 by Eileen Mcllvaine