The Bibliotheque de France will install 200 research workstations in the library’s public areas when it opens in 1995. The workstations will provide a network link to the card catalogs, note-taking and bibliography software, and, most ambitious, a sort of electronic notebook customized for work in electronic libraries … the plan is to allow a researcher to scan pages of text directly into a personal database instead of photocopying them for hard files. Scanned text can then be annotated, indexed, and searched by a variety of means.
Predictor: Browning, John
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, John Browning takes a look at the future of libraries in a networked age. He writes:”The French, inevitably, approach automation with the most panache. They are engineering a whole new national library, called the Tres Grande Bibliotheque, which will start from a grand new building and build a grand new foundation for France’s libraries. According to Helene Waysbord, one of the creators of this new vision, the library hopes to strike a balance between conservation and diffusion – between protecting heritage and communicating it. To that end, the project has several strands. One is a new national library building: a monument to the book now being constructed on the left bank of the Seine… But in addition to building new walls, the French are also trying to create a library without walls. Under the auspices of the Tres Grande Bibliotheque (after the French high-speed trains, the Tres Grande Vitesse), the automation of card catalogs has been accelerated. To go with automated catalogs, the Bibliotheque de France will install 200 research workstations in the library’s public areas when it opens in 1995. The workstations will provide a network link to the card catalogs, note-taking and bibliography software, and, most ambitious, a sort of electronic notebook customized for work in electronic libraries … the plan is to allow a researcher to scan pages of text directly into a personal database instead of photocopying them for hard files. Scanned text can then be annotated, indexed, and searched by a variety of means.”
Biography:John Browning served as executive editor of Wired UK, the English-language European edition of Wired, the magazine established to chronicle the digital revolution. Prior to Wired, Browning spent 12 years at The Economist, writing about business, technology and economics. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Libraries/Databases
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Libraries Without Walls for Books Without Pages: Electronic Libraries and the Information Economy
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/libraries_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stotler, Larry