First, let me say how pleased I am to be able to present this Mary Donaldson Lecture to you this evening and I want to thank you very much for giving me this opportunity because it allows me to say some of the things I've wanted to say to an audience of librarians, an audience in which I know that books s till hold an inestimable value in a world that has been listening to doomsayers predicting the death of the book for many years now.