Much contemporary library thinking and planning hinges on the belief that the true telos (or mission) of libraries is to merge into the new electronic environment, usually referred to metonymically as "the Internet." In this article, I argue that those who propagate the Internet as the coming information paradise, subsuming and superseding…

Scholarship conducted in an increasingly online environment requires the services of a trusted third party in order to ensure that scholarly communication remains reliably accessible and applicable over the longer term. The library, by virtue of its most fundamental values and attributes, is probably better suited at this time than other…