1. The combination of a funding organization that does not know what it is doing (that would be the Mellon Foundation) combined with an incompetent staff (that would be the Cambridge University Library and Corpus Christi Library) is all that it takes to produce inaccessible and expensive dreck (Mellon is now funding Sankt Gallen; maybe someone whispered something in their collective ears).

2. Good news: American University libraries have teamed with Google to digitize thousands of rare and out-of-copyright books (although the quality is not always great). The Staatsbibliothek in Munich is reshaping the cyberspace world by digitizing thousands of manuscripts and books.

3. We seem to be at a crucial point in the evolution of scholarship and knowledge on the www. Will scholarly libraries with their rich treasures follow the examples of Bologna, Cambridge, and Stanford or Cologne, St. Gall, and Munich? For Americans, the question also is whether the cultures of private foundations (e.g. Mellon) and public granting institutions (e.g. NEH) could be changed to act like the Deutsche Forshungsgemeinschaft?

4. The use of web-based manuscripts and books for classroom teaching is also of great importance for the future. The programs used on the Bologna and Cambridge sites are designed to make projection of their images on large screens for classroom use difficult if not impossible --- even if the institution has subscribed (Cambridge) or individual (Bologna). If pay sites are the future, why can't reasonable individual subscriptions be offered? I would buy them.