F. W. Lancaster's Scenario about Disappearance of Books and Libraries

Abstract

　This paper consists of three parts. First; an introduction of Lancaster's personal history and his main works, second; an essence of his new work Libraries and librarians in the age of electronics, third; the writer's view about Lancaster's scenario about the disappearance of books and libraries. Although Lancaster provides excellent view on the future of information system, his assumptions are vulnerable to criticism, especially with regard to the disappearance of them. He seems to stress on the current and up-to-date informations, which are of easy to change into electronic form. However, according to writer's opinion, such informations are included only in some parts of whole amount of publications. Besides, there still remains majority of “inspirational and recreational books” which are rather hard to change into electronic form. Libraries have been acquiring and processing all kindd of man's intellectual works and have been making available all of them. In the writer's view, libraries will remain much the same as facilities, never-theless they will become the focul points of the informational communities and their capabilities will be largely enhanced by variety of communication media.