braries much bigger than any
conventional one. These phenomena are questioning the library as point of
reference and as public repository of knowledge. Not only is its bulky
physicality being questioned, but the core idea that, after the advent of
truly ubiquitous networks, we still need a central place to store, preserve,
index, lend and share knowledge.
Tablet-PC on hardcover book. Photo: Anton Kudelin. Source: Shutterstock
It is important not to forget that traditional libraries (public and private)
still guarantee the preservation of and access to a huge number of digitally-
unavailable texts, and that a book's material condition sometimes tells part
of the story, not to mention the experience of reading it in a library. Still,
it is evident that we are facing the biggest digitization ever attempted, in a
process comparable to what Napster meant for music in the early 2000s. But
this time t