Content area
Full Text
Libraries are set to become more important than ever.
Carl Sagan, the laic astronomer, raconteur and television personality, once wondered aloud how many books an individual could read in a normal lifetime. "From here, to here", was his estimate, as he walked the length of a single, not very long, shelf of books in a US library. Sagan's point was that our capacity to read was nothing compared with the vast volume of editions contained in a normal library.
Today, with the Internet, the librarians job of sorting and providing access has become even greater. Not that paper-based information has been replaced; in fact, there is more printed paper produced today than 20 years ago. But the real changes have been brought about by the so-called digital revolution.
Fortunately for librarians, the new developments in information technology that have led to such explosive growth in information have also come to their rescue by revolutionising the way information is stored and accessed. The creation of bibliographic databases, the digital catalogues to complement the trusty Kardex, and the use of barcodes to store books, are just a few valuable innovations. The new challenge is how to manage and alleviate the already existing problem for researchers of "informalion overload". The Internet and search engines like Google or Yahoo may have brought sorting and retrieval of front-line information...