The Future
Large scale digitization projects are underway at Google, the Million Book Project, and Internet Archive. With continued improvements in book handling and presentation technologies such as optical character recognition and ebooks, and development of alternative depositories and business models, digital libraries are rapidly growing in popularity. Just as libraries have ventured into audio and video collections, so have digital libraries such as the Internet Archive. Google Books project recently receive a court victory on proceeding their book-scanning project that was halted by Authors guild. This helped open the road for libraries to work with Google to better reach patrons who are accustomed to digital information. One factor that gave Google an advantage is the librarie's fair use argument.
According to Larry Lannom, Director of Information Management Technology at the nonprofit Corporation should be for National Research Initiatives, "all the problems associated with digital libraries are wrapped up in archiving." He goes on to state, "If in 100 years people can still read your article, we'll have solved the problem." Daniel Akst, author of The Webster Chronicle, proposes that "the future of libraries — and of information — is digital." Peter Lyman and Hal Varian, information scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, estimate that "the world's total yearly production of print, film, optical, and magnetic content would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage." Therefore, they believe that "soon it will be technologically possible for an average person to access virtually all recorded information."
Read more about this topic: Digital Library
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“One merit in Carlyle, let the subject be what it may, is the freedom of prospect he allows, the entire absence of cant and dogma. He removes many cartloads of rubbish, and leaves open a broad highway. His writings are all unfenced on the side of the future and the possible. Though he does but inadvertently direct our eyes to the open heavens, nevertheless he lets us wander broadly underneath, and shows them to us reflected in innumerable pools and lakes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)