ABSTRACT
As early as 1980 people were heralding the demise of the book. Yet the earliest use of computers in libraries was not to replace text but to streamline cataloguing systems. This was an appropriate response to an emerging technology as it offered the ideal, but unreachable, aim of bringing together all the bibliographic references of recorded literature. Visions of large printed volumes containing universal catalogues of publications were replaced by visions of banks of computer terminals giving direct access to those catalogues via the most powerful communications technology – the Internet.
