Relevant Web Pages for Planning Libraries of the Future--Libraries of the Distant Past!

        In our previous discussions of libraries, and of librarians as custodians of our textual future, we talked about the difficult choices bricks-and-mortar librarians face when the accumulation of printed material threatens to overwhelm the building's shelf space.  What happens when digital information pours into the same architecture, competing with the print collection for funds to maintain it and space to use it.  If you are thinking about a first paper on the organization of libraries of digital text, this might provide some perspective based on what libraries have been in the past.  Before you project your thinking fifty, one hundred, or a thousand years into the future, consider the structure of the world's oldest libraries, such as the monastery at St. Gall, which is over one thousand years old.  Manuscript plan of St. Gall--a medieval architect's ground plan for a complex religious community centered on book-based performances of liturgy.  Model with English labels of the plan of St. Gall.  (You will find the model with English labels easier to navigate!)