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“A” library she says…she has no idea how small she’s thinking.

Technically libraries can hide beneath a united search function.

Behind the curtains it isn’t as simple as that. But new machine learning technology has tricks that may help searching the odds and ends of scattered databases.

My point being that – the possibility of simply belonging to multiple online libraries notwithstanding – the databases she gets access to through the internet far eclipse the contents of a single library.

And that’s before we even consider what her frame of reference for a library is. The contents of modern libraries are enormous compared to what they were a few centuries ago.

Seems we agree. But of course we are also hampered by old frames of reference.

“In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words “DON’T PANIC” inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.”

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