Lynch Article

Lynch looks at the three historical periods of developments of technology in libraries in a slightly different way than Rayward did. The three phases according to Lynch are modernization, innovation and transformation and each is named after the relationship to technology that academic libraries took on at a given time. Lynch accounts for three things that Lancaster didn’t when he made his predictions about the future automation: The marketplace that technology and libraries exist, the evolution of practices in scholarship and the user. Phase one was characterized by librarians learning about working with and managing computer systems. Phase two meant that services changed from the user’s perspective. And phase three dealt primarily with on-line access to full text documents.

Lynch calls the forth and current phase “the Network Information Revolution” and consists of further dealings with innovation and transformation. He predicts that in the future libraries won’t be exemplified by their digital collections but by the access to such collections that they allow to users. Some issue that face libraries presently aren’t all that new they have just taken a different form. For example, with the ever increasing volume of scholarly resources, libraries have to examine what is necessary and what needn’t be included. Is really is a matter of rethinking collection development. Lynch emphasizes what sounds like an old rallying cry; the need for future libraries to assert their presence and importance in the community. While libraries are at an apparent in between point when digital, various multimedia and traditional print resources are all necessary it’s important that libraries give appropriate attention and financial resources to each.