Informant38

LJ: You've been very involved in helping the world to get online, especially in developing countries. How is that progressing?

JB: I was in Africa this year. I went into a cybercenter, and there were probably 500 people in there 24 hours a day. Every single terminal was constantly occupied. That's significant. I was also in Cambodia, and every place I went to there I could get e-mail. This is going on everywhere. Now this may not have a lot to do with the dot-com economy, but it has a great deal to do with the stuff librarians are interested in, which is access to human knowledge and the capacity to spread it. Because it really is conceivable that in ten years, if we can somehow deal with the national lines on copyright protectionism, every child on this planet will have access to every book on this planet. Think about what kind of a society that would create.

LJ: As cyberspace develops, do you think libraries will maintain a physical role in their communities?

JPBarlow: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I think physical libraries will be even more important in the future. Communities need that physical element. But libraries will have to be places where people do more than go to get books, because a lot of what people want they will be able get online. Libraries will be places where people will go to exchange ideas, and librarians will be even more essential than they are now, guiding people to information, knowing where to find it. I look at the potential for librarians and for libraries as being venues for all manner of salons, where the objective is not silence but conversation.