ABSTRACT
Every year, some 700,000 new book titles are produced around the world—perhaps a little less than that now since the publishing rate, at least for a time, has leveled or even declined in a number of countries in recent years. To these may be added unnumbered additional millions of less controllable bibliographic items, such as pamphlets, newspapers, printed documents, technical reports, videotapes, maps, data tapes and bases and so forth. These serve to swell the ocean of 70 million or more titles published in the past. Adequate access to this sea of resources for scholars and other library patrons is the ultimate concern of this paper, and so to the centrality, I think, of the whole discussion. How can we get them to all of this material?
