Back to the future: a look at the past to get a glimpse of the future

By Doris Small Helfer Chair, Technical Services Library California State University, Northridge Back in early 1978, while interviewing for a job at the RAND Corporation's Library, I vividly remember the interviewer asking for my predictions as to the future oflibraries. Being a fairly recent, and idealistic, library school graduate at that point, I remember responding that I hoped one day whatever library someone entered would provide access to whatever information the person needed. Mind you at that point, even though the RAND Corporation was one of the first nodes on ARPANET, the system that would evolve into the Internet, I had never heard of it. I just wanted everyone to have access to all information. How such universal access could be delivered did not dawn on me until 1993, when I first used Mosaic (precursor ofNetscape and the first ever World Wide Web browser) to access the Vatican Library collection. I remember the moment as an epiphany. Immediately and completely, in that moment, I understood how the future for libraries and librarians would change. History is full of examples that prove that no one medium will completely take over and obliterate the next medium (with the possible exception of the 8-track tape). Rumors of the death of books have circulated for a while, but e-book vendors still do not dominate the marketplace. Books work and work well for most people. You don't hear everyone clamoring to read War and Peace on their computer. You really don't find yourself wanting to curl up in bed with your computer to read a novel. Will people eventually prefer to read books from their computer or Palm Pilot? Some people, absolutely, but others will still want to take their books to the beach and not want to risk putting their Palm Pilots that close to sand and surf or sandy surfers. Better to risk the loss of $7 paperback then a much more costly PDA. Librarians have changed profoundly in the 25 years since I became one. My library school certainly taught me about automation and MARC records, systems like OCLC and RLIN, online databases like MEDLINE, and supermarket search services like SDC's Orbit and Lockheed's Dialog, but only experiencing them could bring the realization of how each could change the way libraries would work in the future. For the first time, librarians could share cataloging records online and add their holdings to a centralized database. For the first time, alllibrarians, regardless of their collections, could answer a vast array of questions by accessing computer databases. Many of these databases grew out of print indexes, but some were things librarians had not seen before, e.g., full-text searchable articles from newspapers, court cases, and magazines. Clearly we were only at the infancy of automation, and more and more automation would change how librarians served their public in the future.