The library collection at mid-twentieth century

In all of nature, change is the most constant factor. Throughout manmade civilizations, likewise, change from era to era is continual and inevitable. How amazing it is, therefore, to realize that the product with which librarians are primarily concerned--the book- -has remained substantially unchanged in form for the past two thousand years. Certainly, since the introduction of typography five hundred years ago, variations in the book's format have been relatively minor. I suspect that we would be hard put to it to name any other object in common use today of which this fact would be true. But, we are now living in the twentieth century, a period during which the rate of technological change has been tremendously accelerated. No longer can we complacently assume that the book world, which is so vital to us as librarians, will go on for the next five centuries, or even the next twentyfive years, without profound modifications.published or submitted for publicatio