Prelude: Computing from Ancient Times to the Modern Era - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 20

Information storage and access are critical features of modern computers, and
modern software has played a huge part in improving information retrieval.
Table 1.4 shows topics that have been difficult for large volumes of information
for thousands of years and that in fact are becoming worse in the modern world.
For most of human history, information collections seldom topped more than
10,000 volumes, even for large libraries. In today's world of almost instantaneous
recording of all books, magazines, research papers, images, and other forms of in-
tellectual content, there are now billions of documents. Every week that passes,
more and more information is published, recorded, and added to cloud libraries
and other forms of computer storage. There is no end in sight.
There is an urgent need for continuing study of the best ways of recording
information for long-term survival and for developing better methods of sorting
through billions of records and finding and then aggregating topics relevant to spe-
cific needs. The emerging topic of “big data” is beginning to address these issues,
but the solution is not currently visible and is still over the horizon.
The first and most long-lasting method of storing and accessing data was
by means of libraries. Throughout civilized history, many famous libraries have
served scholars and researchers. The library of Alexandria, the library of the
University of Nalanda, the library of Perganum, the five libraries of Ugarit, the
Roman libraries of Trajan in the Forum, and the library of Constantinople were all
famous throughout antiquity.
Modern libraries such as the Library of Congress, the Harvard Library, and in
fact many large college libraries still serve as major repositories of information for
students and researchers.
Books have been used for thousands of years to record and convey knowledge
from human to human, especially from teachers to students. Personal libraries of
reference topics are the normal accoutrements of all professions, including engin-
eering, law, medicine and, of course, software engineering.
More recently, e-books, web search engines, and intelligent agents are making
it possible for individuals and scholars to access more data and information at
greater orders of magnitude than was possible at any time in human history up un-
til about 25 years ago.