Introduction

This chapter takes the long view of the digital library, and reflects on the historical context of library developments, identifying some of the key ways in which digital transformations have enabled libraries around the world to educate, inform and delight their readers. These developments are then considered in a case study that highlights ways in which these changes have been implemented at the National Library of Wales, illustrating the ways in which these changes are impacting research in the arts and humanities.

A celebration of the library

The Argentinian bibliophile Alberto Manguel possesses a huge private library, which he has installed in a 15th-century barn at his home in the Loire Valley. In his book The Library at Night (2008), Manguel describes the magical atmosphere of his library at night-time, when pools of light over the library desks expunge the outside world, so that sounds become muffled and the very thoughts in the books seem clearer and louder. The comforting smells of the wooden shelves and the musky leather bindings permeate the library, and these smells seem to convey connections with ancient human knowledge and dreams. In this private world of public knowledge, connected through its books to countless other cultures and literatures, Manguel's mind roams through other great libraries, from the great building at Alexandria to the private collections of authors such as Dickens or Borges.

Manguel's book is a celebration of the library as a space for study, reflection, exploration, inspiration, privacy and sharing. Whether it is an ancient room lined with oak bookcases, a large and extravagant Edwardian municipal building, or a clean and functional modern block, the library is an evocative space where the mind can take wing, finding new connections and discerning new possibilities. It is a space that is at once private and public, where people of all social classes, intellectual accomplishments and enthusiasms can discover new thoughts and intellectual vistas. The library is one of the most potent of all spaces created by humanity, eliciting deeply personal reactions from all those who encounter it, from members of the public to wizened researchers. The architect of the British Library at St Pancras, Colin St John Wilson, expressed this library fever very well when he declared that ‘To every scholar the library is a realm of secret topography’ (Losh, 2004, 378).