At the same time, the last decade has shown an accelerated erosion of the Public Domain, replaced by increasingly sophisticated and entertaining forms of the Private. The essence of the Public is that it is free. Now, it is substituted by accumulations of quasi-public substance that, while suggesting welcome, actually make you pay. The Library stands exposed at its most outdated and moralistic at the moment that it has become the last repository of the free and the Public.

Unless the Library transforms itself wholeheartedly into an information storehouse (aggressively orchestrating the coexistence of all available technologies to collect, condense, distribute, ‘ read’ and manipulate information), its unquestioned loyalty to the book will undermine the Library’ s plausibility at the moment of its potential apotheosis.