Even Mr Clinton is helping to design a curriculum for students who will attend his planned Clinton School of Public Service at the future Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, starting in the autumn of 2004.

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He said 6, 000 people had responded to a consultation on the future of the library service last year, and most respondents thought "developing partnerships with others was a good idea".

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Last month, at the New York Public Library, Google hosted a conference on the future of the publishing industry.

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Many will be looking closely at his writings in the Public Library of US Diplomacy - and what they find may influence how he is portrayed in the future.

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For one of the newer Black Library writers, Annandale is clearly comfortable with both the grim, dark future and the style necessary for such offerings.

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The director's future ambition is to create a world class research library whose primary specialisation will be the civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean.

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Even while the library represents an enormous investment in careful archiving of print books, it also includes a nod to the paperless future: a well-outfitted preservation and digitization laboratory that librarians will use to scan in books, maps, manuscripts and photographs.

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