PREDICTING THE UNPREDICTABLE

摘要

The modern library movement began in 1876, a year that saw the birth of both the American Library Association (ALA) and Library Journal (LJ). The January 1, 1976, issue of LJ celebrated that centennial. Under the title "The Need To Know," we asked 25 experts and leading librarians to write essays projecting the future of libraries over the next 25-50 years. Now on LJ's 140th anniversary, we've taken a sampling of those forecasts and briefly assessed their accuracy. The result is evidence of how inadequate current knowledge is to predict the future.