I have been thinking about the technology available today in context with the libraries available. It makes me wonder about what some of the people of the past would make of it all.
If we consider Voltaire who was a champion of the French Enlightenment, or Erasmus who wrote over seventeen million words in his lifetime, or the remarkable range of works created by the likes of Aristotle, what would they have managed with a personal computer. Everything was painstakingly done by hand, often through many drafts.

When we consider the progress of technology and the increasing sophistication of information tools, the computer is pretty bloody awesome. Considering the legendary status of the library of Alexandria and book collections such as that of the Library of Congress or the famous Bodleian library of Oxford, what is available through open access on the internet is obviously priceless. Great collections available to search in our own homes, what amazing potential.
Some examples which make me think positively:

• Directory of Open Access Journals
• Public Library of Science
• Project Guttenburg
• PubMed Central