Sapp Article

I liked the how Sapp segmented this article into segments of time because it really helped to show how some ideas about libraries in the future changed with the times but other stayed the same. Speculation during the 1876-1900 period concerned itself with topics that continued to be important in the following 45 years. In both periods librarians predicted that the library would only increase in importance and popularity. Sapp points to the world wars as keeping democratic ideas behind public libraries alive therefore fueling the optimism of many librarians who saw the basic goals of the library to remain the same in the future. Sapp doesn’t really mention how beliefs about the purpose of the library were varied in and across time periods.

According to Sapp the library community seems to have been overwhelmingly welcoming of new technology and in some cases even lamented that it wasn’t reaching them fast enough. Vannevar Bush wasn’t the only one thinking about the problems of access when dealing with so many printed materials and while he was lucky enough to make to prediction that was close to the truth others like Fremont Rider knew that traditional print and storage was not an ideal. There were also inadequacies in areas like bibliography and indexing that librarian knew needed to be refined and they looked to the future which often meant the aid of machines to help.

Another solution to the information overload that occurred to mid nineteenth century librarians was improving catalog and collection sharing between libraries so that individual libraries could make the best use of their funds and users would still have access to the materials they wanted.