Cost of Computers in Libraries
- No example is more striking than the situation confronting libraries. They have a 1,000 year plus tradition of storing books made of parchment and wood pulp. Soaring materials costs, the advent of cheap microfiche and microfilm, and expansion of computer databases, and electronic links between libraries will make the research facility of the year 2000 unrecognizable from the large library of today. Those libraries that persist in spending 65% of their budget to keep aged wood pulp warm(and cool) will be irrelevant to the needs of their readers. F. Warren McFarlan 1984, pp.100-1.