The terminal librarian Available to Purchase

DURING 1974–5 I was in the wilds of Northern Nigeria, where electronic technology was scarcely a smudge on the horizon, like a dust storm coming down from the nearby Sahara. During that time I spoke on the telephone once, watched television once and saw the ‘Educational Technology Centre’ get its first cassette tape recorders. Then last year I went to the States and suddenly found myself surrounded by on‐line, interactive computer systems, able to type a message onto a big typewriter attached to a computer and get an immediate, personal reply.