This report of research on concepts and problems of "Libraries of the Future" records the result of a two-year inquiry into the applicability of some of the newer techniques for handhng information to what goes at present by the name of library work -- i.e., the operations connected with assembling information in recorded form and of organizing and making it available for use.
Mankind has been complaining about the quantity of reading matter and the scarcity of time for reading it at least since the days of Leviticus, and in our own day these complaints have become increasingly numerous and shrill. But as Vannevar Bush pointed out in the article that may be said to have opened the current campaign on the "information problem," The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that pubhcation has been extended far beyond our present abihty to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships. * (*footnote: Vannevar Bush, As We May Think. Atlantic Monthly, 176, 101-108, July 1945.)
It has for some time been increasingly apparent that research libraries are becoming choked from the proliferation of publication, and that the resulting problems are not of a kind that respond to merely more of the same -- ever and ever larger bookstacks and ever and ever more complicated catalogues. It was with this realization that the Ford Foundation in 1956 established the Council on Library Resources to assist in attempts to discover solutions to these problems and to bring the benefits of modern technology to the correction of maladjustments for which modern technology is to a large degree responsible. Somewhat later the Foundation earmarked a specific sum to enable the Council to concentrate its work in the storage and retrieval of information in a center involving the activities of specialized personnel.
Accordingly, early in 1961 the Council commenced a search for an appropriate site and for qualified investigators to undertake an inquiry into the characteristics of the "library of the future." In this search it consulted a number of persons especially thoughtful and knowledge- able in this nebulous area. Among them were Dr. William O. Baker, Vice-President for Research, Bell Telephone Laboratories; Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, President, Graduate Center of the Southwest; Dr. Richard H. Bolt, Chairman of the Board, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., and at that time also Associate Director for Research, National Science Foundation; Dr. Caryl P. Haskins, President, Carnegie Institution of Washington; Dr. Gilbert W. King, at that time Director for Research, International Business Machines Corporation, now Director of Research, Itek Corporation; Dr. Edwin H. Land, President, Polaroid Company; Prof. Philip M. Morse, Professor of Physics and Director of the Computation Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. John R. Pierce, Director of Research in Communications Fundamentals, Bell Telephone Laboratories: Dr. Emanuel R. Piore, Vice-President for Research and Engineering, International Business Machines Corporation; Dr. Earl P. Stevenson, then Chairman, since Consultant, Arthur D. Little, Inc.; and Dr. Warren Weaver, Vice-President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
There is perhaps no question that makes more instant demand upon the combined experience and imagination of the respondents, or as a result more widely differentiates one response from another, than does the question, "How should one explore the library of the future?" In this matter, too, the pattern was set by Dr. Bush in his 1945 article, to which reference has already been made, in which he invented the "Memex," the private memory device in which all a man's records may be stored, linked by associative indexing and instantly ready for his use. Just so, in its consultations the Council received as many answers as the number of persons whom it questioned, each answer widely different from the last: from one, an exhortation to investigate the fundamental processes of cognition; from another, an admonition on the importance of building consecutively from things as they are to things as they may be; from a third, a case history demonstrating the essential role of serendipity in the solution of difficult problems.
In one particular and only one was there agreement among the consultants: find the right man. And more and more frequently, as the consultations proceeded, the name of an individual emerged.
Dr. J. C. R. Licklider was at that time the supervisory engineering psychologist of Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, consulting engineers with a primary interest in acoustics. (Dr. Licklider had been President of the Acoustical Society of America in 1958.) Behind him, at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Licklider had left an enviable record of research on problems of human communication and the processing and presentation of information. This combination of training and experience seemed to the Council to offer an admirable background from which to prospect the "library of the future." On his side, Dr. Licklider was attracted by the problem and almost overnight wrote an eloquent prospectus for the first year's work. This, with very slight revision, was adopted, and the study commenced in November 1961.
In October 1962, Dr. Licklider took a year's leave of absence from Bolt Beranek and Newman on a special assignment for the Department of Defense. However, the "research on concepts and problems of libraries of the future" continued under his general direction in his absence. But when the year came around again it was not found possible to extend the relationship, and the study was brought to an end with the rendition, in January 1964, of the final report upon which the present volume is based. The reader will not find here that a bridge has been completed from things as they are to things as they may be, but he will find a structure on which he can take some steps out from the here and now and dimly descry the may be on the other side.
Verner W. Clapp
Council on Library Resources, Inc.
Washington, D.C. August 1, 1964