A common fear voiced about the Internet is the possible disappearance of the printed book. We suspect this concern is highly premature. On the contrary, the virtual library makes books accessible in situations where they never before were.
As computers become ever cheaper and ever more portable, they penetrate into every corner of the globe, bringing with them potentially a connection to the virtual library. This library could contain eventually the entire record of human civilization, with the potential to interact directly with those in the avant garde of cultural change.
Such an educational advance will probably increase the demand for books. There will be bibliophiles in remote corners of the world where today there is not even general literacy. However, it will only be possible if books are made universally and freely available.
The "remote" parts of the Earth in question include both the impoverished developing nations and the slums and prisons of the industrial world, places where books are rare because they are expensive. Even the elite in many countries is handicapped by the difficulty of obtaining access to information; industrial development and general education are severely delayed. Electronic media, now reaching every continent, might go far toward resolving these difficulties.
The scanning in of existing out-of-copyright texts and the editing of these texts into interactive, electronic editions form one method of building a universal library. Linking to new and classic texts which people have made available on the Internet is another step in the establishment of a freely available library. Linking to existing Internet encyclopaedias and creating new databases will also build the universally available library.