W3C incubator group on LLD – Draft Report for comment

I actually think that the picture is brighter than this. Although libraries haven't been technology leaders, they have embraced new technologies to the benefit of their communities, providing free Internet access, lending ebooks (even before they were popular). This is separate from the struggle to manage the flood of digital content. There is another issue, which is that managing digital content might be better done on a scale that is larger than any one library, while managing physical items is suitable to local institutions. There are tens or hundreds of thousands of libraries, many very small. Digital materials need to be managed globally, not locally, and there is no global library organization to do this.