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The author, who is one of the most eminent Italian scholars of Library History and Bibliography, deals with the fate of libraries in the technological age. Until the half of the past century, it would not be possible to think about libraries disappearance, because they were considered fortresses of civil advancement and because even the idea of their destruction would be considered a barbarity. Nowadays, we are facing a profound crisis that led to radical transformations. In the current scenario, libraries are condemned to be "irrelevant" and the only way to control their decline is to transform them into museums, making collections available and preserving library buildings. These opinions are also true with respect to less prestigious libraries, whose collections often testify the history of a territory or a community. A honest reflection on the future of libraries could not take into account "the cultural realities in the different layers of society, of their tendencies, of their needs, and of the technological ways already existing for their satisfaction". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The author, who is one of the most eminent Italian scholars of Library History and Bibliography, deals with the fate of libraries in the technological age. Until the half of the past century, it would not be possible to think about libraries disappearance, because they were considered fortresses of civil advancement and because even the idea of their destruction would be considered a barbarity. Nowadays, we are facing a profound crisis that led to radical transformations. In the current scenario, libraries are condemned to be "irrelevant" and the only way to control their decline is to transform them into museums, making collections available and preserving library buildings. These opinions are also true with respect to less prestigious libraries, whose collections often testify the history of a territory or a community. A honest reflection on the future of libraries could not take into account "the cultural realities in the different layers of society, of their tendencies, of their needs, and of the technological ways already existing for their satisfaction".

The author, who is one of the most eminent Italian scholars of Library History and Bibliography, deals with the fate of libraries in the technological age. Until the half of the past century, it would not be possible to think about libraries disappearance, because they were considered fortresses of civil advancement and because even the idea of their destruction would be considered a barbarity. Nowadays, we are facing a profound crisis that led to radical transformations. In the current scenario, libraries are condemned to be "irrelevant" and the only way to control their decline is to transform them into museums, making collections available and preserving library buildings. These opinions are also true with respect to less prestigious libraries, whose collections often testify the history of a territory or a community. A honest reflection on the future of libraries could not take into account "the cultural realities in the different layers of society, of their tendencies, of their needs, and of the technological ways already existing for their satisfaction".

The article focuses on the Susan Barbara Tallmon Sargent Collection, one of the numerous digital collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah centered upon the papers of Susan Tallmon Sargent, a physician who served as a medical missionary in China in the early 20th century. The collection includes correspondence relating to her education which culminated in her graduation from Northwestern in Chicago in 1902 and other documents about medical missionaries in China.

The study examines the number of backlinks to the websites of libraries belonging to Central Universities of India. The study has presented seven categories of library webpages based on their features. The study was conducted in five rounds to get the primary data through four selected search engines. Analysis is presented for each search engine separately. Study concludes that index page/home page of library websites attracts more number of backlinks than any other webpages of library websites. Search engine Yahoo Site Explorer retrieved highest number of backlinks for library websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]