Click here to read a Q & A with Robert Darnton, a cultural historian and the Director of Harvard University's library system, on the proposed Digital Public Library of America. Mr. Darnton made one comment in particular that speaks to worried murmurs in rare book trade: One thing we have learned from the new discipline known as “the history of the book” is that one means of communication does not displace another. Manuscript publishing actually expanded after the invention of printing by movable type, and it continued to flourish for three centuries after Gutenberg. Instead of lamenting “the death of the book,” I believe we should celebrate new possibilities of combining the printed codex with electronic technology … .The information ecology is getting richer, not thinner. Thoughts?

A bookshelf the size of the world