The library in 2000 : from the perspective of the library

Nowadays, the enormous extension of geographic networks makes the vision of a global library - the set of all libraries linked in a network, to which the user can access from his office or home to search and receive the documents that interest him - increasingly feasible. However, this demand for a completely "electronic library" appears often to come from people who have little true awareness of the role of the library in knowledge transfer. At the moment, the preservation, transmission, and future exploitability of electronic documents is still too uncertain, both because the integrity of the electronic support devices is not guaranteed for periods greater than some tens of years and also because the readability of the data is still too dependent on hard- and software tools which, as experience has taught us, can be made obsolete within the arc of a few years. These unknown factors, that for some time now have been a source of preoccupation for those working in the field [1], must be solved before deciding on the completely electronic production of documents for which we want to guarantee the possibility of transmission in the future. In agreement with [2], we feel that we can thus confidently affirm that the shelves of the library of 2000 will stili contain books and joumals in printed formo In this report on with "electronic document" we are thus referring to electronic images of printed documents; whe the topic of the discussion is the completely electronic document, the difference will be made dear.