Books, Bricks and Bytes

Libraries in the Twenty-first Century

Stephen R. Graubard, Paul LeClerc

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138519725
• eBook ISBN: 9781351531009
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Libraries are experiencing a technological revolution that goes well beyond anything that has existed since the invention of printing. Not surprisingly, the digital library, with all that it portends for the future of the book and the periodical, but also with all that it implies for the kinds of information that will be collected and disseminated, will necessarily preoccupy those responsible for libraries in the new century. Everything from copyright, access, and cost to the nature of the reading public itself is now up for re-examination.'Books, Bricks, and Bytes' brings together an extraordinary array of authors at the cutting edge of these concerns, not only within the United States, but experts drawn from Germany, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and India. James H. Billington discusses the Library of Congress in the information age; Ann S. Okerson outlines two models for securing scholarly information; Donald S. Lamm discusses the shaky partnership of publishers and librarians hi this new environment; Klaus-Dieter Lehmann provides a framework for maintaining the intellectual heritage of the past in a digitized future. Each contributor shows hi concrete detail and vivid illustration that the library as a world of holdings is increasingly valued as an incomparable place to access information. In his preface to the book, Stephen Graubard reminds us that whether or not one believes in the reality of the information revolution that is said to be overtaking the world, it is obvious that the libraries being built today do not resemble those marble sanctuaries constructed hi the Victorian age or in the early twentieth entury. This is a work that shows how libraries have been transformed from "refuges" from the external world, to places that reflect the social and intellectual values of specific societies. The idea that the library is a public trust and public resource is at the center of this unusually fine collection at the cutting edge of professional and public life.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• What is a Digital Library? Technology, Intellectual Property, and the Public Interest
• Libraries, the Library of Congress, and the Information Age
• Buy or Lease? Two Models for Scholarly Information at the End (or the Beginning) of an Era
• A Library Historian Looks at Librarianship
• Librarianship: A Changing Profession
• Libraries and Publishers: A Partnership at Risk
• Searching for the Catalog of Catalogs
• The Yin and Yang of Knowing
• The Centrality of Communities to the Future of Major Public Libraries
• Redefining Community through the Public Library
• American Public Libraries: A Long Transformative Moment
• Bricks and Bytes: Libraries in Flux
• A Distant Mirror: The Story of Libraries in South Africa
• Libraries, Social Inequality, and the Challenge of the Twenty-First Century
• The History of the French National Library
• Problems of Russian Libraries in an Age of Social Change
• Making the Transitory Permanent: The Intellectual Heritage in a Digitized World of Knowledge
• Allocated Parts: The Story of Libraries in Germany
• The Story of Libraries in India