The Universal Library: Not As Close As You Think
This recent New Yorker article gives a lovely overview of the progress we’ve made, as humans, in digitizing our intellectual output. You may notice that the article’s author, Anthony Grafton, is a clear library supporter, as all good and right-thinking people are. However, even if libraries aren’t your cup of tea, Mr. Grafton makes clear the sheer scale of effort that truly “putting it all up on the Web” entails. As any of our researchers in pre-1900 areas know (Poole’s Index, anyone?) the bulk of our intellectual heritage is not digitized. Who’s going to digitize it? And who’s going to organize the resulting mass of stuff so it’s usable?