H.G. Wells argued that it is only by creating "a permanent organization of knowledge, systematically assembled, continuously extended and made freely and easily accessible to every one, that there is the slightest hope of our species meeting the serried challenges of destiny that are advancing upon it."  Such an organization, he believed, was best described as a "world brain," so capturing an old idea in a new metaphor and raising still vitally intractable problems of usable knowledge, social control, and  technological determinism.  The idea takes on new life today in the world of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and speculation about the capabilities of complex self-adaptive systems.
Few individuals have though as long and systematically as W. Boyd Rayward about changes in the organization of, and access to, information.  Dr. Rayward earned his M.S. in library science (1965) from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he went on to become a member of the faculty and then dean of the Graduate Library School.  At the University of New South Wales he has served as head of the School of Information, Library and Archive Studies and, most recently, as dean of the Faculty of Professional Studies.

Cosponsored by: Graduate School of Library and Information Science