1. Cultural Heritage Forum – Oxford – 7 February 2013
How has technology transformed
access and dissemination?
“Libraries don’t have to change –
do they?”
Wolfram Horstmann
Bodleian Libraries

2. Pre-Gutenberg Library Technology
http://www.flickr.com/photos/merrymerrycozy/14195692
Writing tools, manuscripts and letters

3. Gutenberg Library Technology
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aplumb/121285772
Gutenberg, Books, Catalogues, Shelves

4. 20th Century Library Technology
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lawbod/4166705318
Word processors, Articles and Images, Directories, Metadata, Search Engines and Screens

5. 21st Century Library Technology
http://www.scottbot.net/HIAL/?p=9584
Atomization of knowledge resources, Ubiquity of Access, Multimodal Interfaces

6. What stayed the same?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spoinknet/8226203822
Libraries provide a memory for cultural heritage & extend access from the few to the many

7. What has changed?
http://blogs.sas.com/content/text-mining/files/2011/08/computer-head.jpg
Analogue & digital -- knowledge resources atomized -- access and dissemination one

8. Implications
– Libraries to become digital memory institutions
• The Bodleian is preparing for digital preservation
– Libraries to understand better the connection
between knowledge resource and the human
• The Bodleian put the ‘reader’ in the centre of its
strategic plan
– Libraries to transform catalogues into context
• The Bodleian is preparing for a semantic Oxford

9. Conclusion
– Technology massively accelerated access and
dissemination of knowledge resources and this
somehow changed the nature of knowledge
– Thus, libraries still are as facilitators of access and
dissemination, and did not change their function –
but they change their content

10. Thank you
wolfram.horstmann@bodleian.ox.ac.uk