The idea of the library in the twenty-first century. Ninety-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association, San Antonio, Texas, May 16 1994

Abstract

The fundamental idea of the library must change. The nineteenth-century idea of the library as the embalming of dead genius and the twentieth-century idea of the library as the repository for secondhand knowledge must give way to the idea of the library as the owner and the librarian as the manager of first-hand knowledge. In the coming era of knowledge capitalism, those individuals and organizations will flourish who are able to apply knowledge to create knowledge and to organize it to produce knowledge. The roles of present-day librarians and libraries will begin to differentiate sharply over the next decade. Some must seize the opportunity to participate in the transformation of libraries into online knowledge servers.