You see before you a man suckered by his publisher. I thought my wife and I were going to get an expense-account trip to Miami in return for eating dinner and signing a few books. If I had known I was going to have to give this talk, I would never have agreed. I know nothing about the information superhighway said to be lurking around the next bend – and neither does anybody else, don't let them kid you – and what little I know about libraries I have learned from you. If I were a carny, I'd call this a ‘cold reading’. It's what we science-fiction persons do.

Putting my fingers to my temples (without dropping the speech, I hope) and rolling up my eyes in a frightening manner I peer into the future.

Library, Dewey Decimal, Stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks, cataloguing, pettifogging - Preservation !!!

Looks bad. Most of the trends are against you, so let's do roadkill first.

To begin with, free public libraries are a 19th century phenomenon. Andrew Carnegie died in 1919 – if you don't know who Andrew Carnegie was, ask old Mrs. Hwiggins at the Research Desk. The 19th century notion was that it was your duty to educate yourself, and it was nice for the public to help you. Since the poor could not afford to pay tuition, free schools were provided. Since they could not afford to buy books, free public libraries were provided, too.

To underline my point, I'd like to quote here from Cobbett's Grammar of the English Language,published in 1819, exactly one hundred years before Carnegie died. This is how it begins – the first paragraph of the dedication to Queen Caroline: ’May it please your Majesty, a work having for its objects, to lay the solid foundation of literary knowledge amongst the Labouring Classes of the community, to give practical effect to the natural genius found in the Soldier, the Sailor, the Apprentice, and the Ploughboy, and to make that genius a perennial source of wealth, strength, and safety to the kingdom; such a work naturally seeks the approbation of your Majesty, who, amongst all the Royal Personages of the present age, is the only one that appears to have justly estimated the value of The People.