Automating the Library

Most Compelling Sentence: "Reinvention is necessary because the library no longer has a lock on information resources" (Marcum, 11).

While one has to break a few eggs in order to eventually achieve positive results, in the case of men like Haas, Clapp, and Cole, they were simply too radical before a time that radicalization as shaped by technology could lead librarianship in the proper direction.

"Some of the work CLR backed (microfilm gadgets and Project Intrex) had gone astray or been too expensive to continue" (Marcum, 9). The men mentioned above were men of action at a time when the most effective path was unclear. The revelation that was the Internet was a trail yet to be blazed, so they wasted money trying to discover what the future of the library should be. Microfilm and Intrex were "closed" projects that seemed to try to implement themselves at the wrong time. According to the article, CLR may have just gotten lucky with respect to furthering library automation of the library.

The library game now appears to have been realized. "The most interesting questions are connected to the role of the paper-based "artifact" in the new environment, the legal and organizational requirements of preserving digital information, and the preparation of a new cadre of professionals technically and intellectually equipped to be tomorrow's stewards of and guides to information resources" (Marcum, 12).

These [Haas, Clapp, Cole] do not appear to have been men who were ahead of their time so much as they were men floundering around in a future that never came to pass.