re I'm going to think more about this, especially from a(n) historical viewpoint... books, etc...

Food for Thought?

PBS Online Newshour
Library and technology experts join Ray Suarez for a look at Google's plans to make reference libraries searchable online.

Extract:

RAY SUAREZ: Well, a colleague of yours said today, Daniel Greenstein from the California Digital Library of the U.C. system, that our world is about to change in a big, big way. What does it mean for the New York City Public Library to be available in this way?

PAUL LE CLERC: Well, the world is going to change and the world has been changing very dramatically over the course of the last ten years, minimally ever since the worldwide web came into being and libraries started, as we did, to put our collections on line, but this is going to blow open things in ways that are hard to even imagine I think over the course of the next decade.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec04/google_12-14.html