Of the many distinguished scholars who have figured in that institution's history, I would like to remind you today of Thomas Hartwell Horne. Little wonder, therefore, that it does not figure in histories of either librarianship or bibliography. Printed catalogues, while undoubtedly useful, have generally been helpful only in providing answers to questions already formulated, and susceptible to questions which recognise the constraints of their particular arrangements. The catalogues published by the British Museum since the middle of the nineteenth century have been almost exclusively alphabetical by author. For materials acquired since 1875, there is Fortescue's subject index and its successors, but there are only limited tools for items in the collections before that date.
Information is available to all who can afford it, and it is available whenever needed.
With large computers storing ever-growing quantities of information and small computers able to communicate with them we are seeing the emergence of a totally new way of dealing with the materials of history. The most important benefit being, I think, that these new tools take us a step nearer the methodology of science. For the first time in the history of research it has become practicable to test assumptions. Let me give you an example. An interim result would almost certainly have been a file of several hundred cards.