ABSTRACT
Contributors to this collection have sought to understand current practices and future implications of changing technologies for libraries through accounts that have been analytical, critical, and at times visionary. While maintaining a focus on present conditions and future possibilities, we nonetheless turn back the calendar a century in order to shed light on the issues of today. Although involving different technologies of information and communication, the following historical cameo, Mato’s fez, provides a useful contrast to explore issues of arobase place and space, the implications of the arobase for knowledge and the library, and the meaning of arobase capital as discussed in the book. We draw from the narrative of Mato’s fez here because it enables us to ground the analysis materially and to link the past with the present and the future.
