We should be clear concerning the problems characteristic of the Paper Library so that we can know what we want the new technology to change for us. The service is localized. Paper and reader have to be in the same place. This may seem a trivial and obvious statement, but this one characteristic has dominated the design of library services. Paper Libraries have serious space problems.
Paper is a relatively inflexible medium.
Documents on paper are not suitable for revision or reformatting. In a Paper Library the catalog is separate from the documents cataloged. Finding a catalog card is not the same as finding the document. The users are separate from the library. They have to travel to it.