There’s been tons of good stuff written over the years on how libraries are/need to be evolving to meet the needs of the information age, but I’m really looking forward to reading the NY Review of Books review of The Library in the New Age, by Robert Darnton.  Not only to learn about this book, but because whenever I read a review in the NY Review of Books, I also typically receive an instant and compelling up to date education on the subject matter of the reviewed book by an intelligent and thoughtful reviewer.

The review begins as follows:

Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?

How to make sense of it all? I have no answer to that problem, but I can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.

Somewhere, around 4000 BC, humans learned to write….