It has produced PubMed for several years, and this has become the single most used collection of information in medicine. Recently, the National Library of Medicine launched PubMed Central, which, unlike PubMed, hosts full text of journal articles and preprints on the library servers. The obvious difference is the subject matter. Similarly, the National Library of Education has put a huge collection on the Web, its ERIC database. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation also have Web sites offering access to extensive collections of on-line information, and they call themselves national libraries.
All revolutions cause turbulence and anarchy.
Afterwards, there is a new order. That's what history shows. So it is with the digital revolution. We are coming to the end of the period of turbulence and anarchy in the digital revolution. In my view, a new order made up of digital national libraries is upon us.