what we have in the Kindle is the possible prototype user interface to a potential knowledge society where knowledge may be exchanged in a network.

Traditionally, libraries have been in the business of sharing. Intricate interlibrary loan networks were built to share resources among libraries, often among competing institutions. Among the law firms in the District of Columbia, for example, law libraries purchased individual state codes solely to lend them to each other. All fifty state codes were thus available to all participating law firm libraries. Today, digital content has stretched library boundaries insofar as patrons’ remote access is concerned. Yet if restrictively licensed content comes to dominate a library’s collection, its reach beyond its own patrons will shrink. While one library can borrow another library’s print treatises, it can’t borrow another library’s commercial database access.