By 1988, when the holdings of over 800 libraries in Europe, North America and Australasia have been entered on the file, the identified corpus of an author's work will be easily ascertainable. Chronologically arranged bibliographies, such as Adams' pamphlets on the American Revolution, will be very much easier to compile. The use of keyword searching to determine a first list of books on a subject where keywords are helpful will reduce considerably the time spent on scanning catalogues. Much of the labour involved in discovering where copies of books are to be found will be reduced through the comprehensive locations which ESTC will incorporate, and there is a searchable field reserved for microfilm copies. It was to such ends that the ambitious schemes for a universal bibliography were directed a hundred years ago.
Research is a highly sophisticated form of play .
When we play we observe, as sociologists are continually reminding us, a subtle obedience to a grammar which is as unmistakable as it is indefinable. I am confident that the new technology will assist us in the revelation of the past. The extent of that revelation will depend, in large measure, on the contribution which all of us, whatever our preoccupations of the moment, can make.