Opening Remarks

May I add my welcome to this, the Fleur Cowles Flair Symposium 2000, the first to be introduced in this exciting new millennium? I cannot imagine a subject more shrouded by the unknown and by probable change than the subject we shall be discussing, the future of the library: "The Infinite Library." As an author, former editor, and even diplomat, the written word has played a major part in forming my career.

If words are so important, where are most words collected? In libraries.

My own most concise dictionary calls a library a mere collection of books. This can range from personal collections to the impressive Library of Congress (which has a special Fleur Cowles room for my Look magazine material, a room, by the way, used by state institutions and universities).

Libraries and bookshops flourished in ancient Rome, Alexandria, and other centers of the early Mediterranean world. And no one who has ever visited Ephesus in Turkey will forget the awe-inspiring ruins of its Grand Library (small wonder St. Paul was moved to write his epistles to the Ephesians in such a setting). In the grand ducal palaces of Tuscany and Venice, the library, lined with handsome, leather-bound volumes, was the mark of a nobleman of wealth and learning.

But it was in 1437 that Johann Gutenberg, the German printer, invented movable type cast in molds, and the world of books and libraries--and Western civilization--was changed forever. The reaction of some of the scribes of the time has echoes today: they took a dim view of the newfangled, machine-printed books, maintaining that the old way was better.

I recently talked to a Time magazine researcher who loves the new technology. Through Nexis she can pull up research from many sources and print it out faster than she could go upstairs to the Time library and root through the clip folders and reference books.

The impact of the Internet, of ordering books without going into a bookstore, and of reading on-screen (ugh!) will have a massive impact on booksellers and libraries. Both research facilities are used by scholars and public libraries that lend books for no fee.

Because I love anecdotes, I'd enjoy a detour to recall two about libraries. One of them is charming, the other is bizarre. The charming one involves a wistful, personal country scene in which I spent part of my English life. I lived in a beautiful house built in 1572 near a small Sussex village. The village was visited one morning every week by a traveling "country library." No pretensions--it was an ancient converted bus manned by two elderly, gray-haired, tweedy ladies whose combined age as well as that of the bus must have far exceeded a mere century, yet the pleasure and knowledge they conveyed had no time scale whatsoever.

The bizarre story concerns Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who designated himself the "king of Hollywood." When editing Look magazine in the fifties I had to see him regularly, because he and the rest of Hollywood provided our major advertising revenue.

Mr. Mayer usually gave me lunch in MGM's studio commissary. But one day, quite impulsively, he invited me to lunch at the home he'd just built for his new young "trophy" bride. The lunch was scheduled for one o'clock, but, as was his style, he arrived half an hour late, and I was left to wait alone in their new library. I found myself in a room that was done entirely in white leather--the floor, the ceiling, the sofas and chairs, and every book on the shelves that lined the room (the book titles were in gold, of course). I was shocked to discover that they were all written in French.

During lunch I smilingly told my host that I didn't realize he spoke French.

"Who speaks French?" Louis B. Mayer responded testily.

"You must," I replied, "because all the books in your library are in French."

"Are they?" he...