Please feel free to e-mail this article to a friend, a principal, a parent, a colleague, a teacher librarian, a college professor, a poet, a magician, a vendor, an artist, a juggler, a student, a news reporter or to anyone else you think might enjoy it. Now On , written at a time when schools were just beginning to network, at a time when the promises of great virtual libraries were being trumpeted far and wide. The 1995 article struck a cautionary note, arguing that printed books would remain essential for quite a long time. Five years later, the printed book seems even more important as the free Internet has spawned a new information landscape that often seems blemished and disappointing, dominated by pop culture, commercials, entertainment values and a billboard sensibility.
Information is more freely available than ever before, but quality is elusive.
Noise often exceeds signal. We are finding that the most thoughtful current writing will often surface first as printed text in books and periodicals. While digital and electronic versions of some work might eventually find their way to the Internet, these often come with prices attached to them in the form of subscriptions or download fees. The public library and the school library have offered virtually free information services for decades, with most of those services being delivered through books. This article argues that those services have become more important than ever before as the quality and the depth of information has sometimes suffered as the world has rushed to network.