Libraries will only survive if the communities they serve want
and need them to.
Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they have
always thought, and at the same time imagine that they are thinking
something new and daring: it combines the advantage of security and
the delight of adventure. -- T.S. Eliot
Beliefs and Assumptions about the Future
The network changes every thing!
The need for physical distribution and storage is no longer
needed, or greatly reduced, in the digital age. The physical library
is obsolete.
Users expect discovery and information access to happen
at the network level. By that I mean physical location doesn't matter,
(either for the user or the content) and content will be highly distributed.
Scholarship and science, and the artifacts that they
create, are now embedded in the digital environment.
The future belongs to those who understand how the digital
environment works and are able to create and manage digital content.
(see Rushkoff below)
