The ties that bind

摘要

(December 31, 2000) I write this editorial on the cusp of the real millennium. There are no grand parties planned. There will be no world wide watch as midnight moves around the planet. We will not be riveted to the television as we were last year as each community greeted the New Year. It will be a quiet turning of the page as we move into the new millennium and a future we cannot even begin to imagine. The end of the year is always a period for wistful reflection. This year has special meaning for me. At midnight on December 31, 2000, the incomparable Betty Bengtson and I metaphorically will clink champagne glasses. She will retire after ten transformative years as director of university libraries at the University of Washington. I will begin my tenure as the new director, standing on the shoulders of giants. In preparation, I have been cleaning out files, moving offices, and letting go of my former responsibilities and anticipating the new ones. When weeding my reprint file that spans two decades, I was struck by how quaint and old-fashioned manyof the file names now seem--bibliographic instruction, BITNET, super catalogs, information superhighway, virtual libraries, GUIs, Mosaic, CD-ROM networking, and LCS/FBR. However, there were some gems in those outdated files, and I want to share three ofthem with you. The first was a light-brown booklet, measuring 3 by 5 inches, with twenty-four yellowing pages. I nodded in concurrence as I read Five Objectives of a University Library written by William E. Henry, librarian at the University of Washington, in 1927.(FN1) Reflecting on thirty years spent in a university library, Henry wrote that his "conclusions may be wrong. They are at least sincere.