*Classics

Library definitions often emphasize access to or management of information. However, the library has a much stronger generative role in the cycle of knowledge creation.

We now amplify conferences - combining various engagement options for people who are not present face to face at the event. Physical presence is increasingly seen as one mode only of participation.

The diversity of systems and resources that libraries manage means that integration is a major challenge. Libraries incur 'stitching costs' in tying these together to build services and to reduce complexity for the user.

The disappearance of the card catalog evokes nostalgia, resistance or celebration. Reactions are symptomatic of a larger reordering of experience in a network environment.

Lorcan Dempsey considers how the digital library environment has changed in the ten years since Ariadne was first published.

The condition of reading is in the news. At the same time, Alan Bennett's fictional discussion of the Queen's developing literary taste, The Uncommon Reader, has been published. But are we reading The Uncommon Reader in the right way?

Lorcan Dempsey reviews Volume III of a landmark collection on the history of libraries in 'Britain and Ireland' from 1850 to 2000.

You no longer need to come to the library to discover library resources. And the library is makings its resources discoverable in the flow of its users' network lives.

Workflow is important. We often think of the network as multiple individual opportunities: a mass of websites. However, just as we increasingly work, learn, research, and play in a network environment, so will services evolve to reduce effort and improve effectiveness.

Individual books have histories. In some cases those histories are significant.

Fintan O'Toole has a wonderful essay on the public library in 'The university of the people: celebrating Irish public libraries.' He calls it: "Reading, writing and rebelling: growing up with public libraries".