Frederick Kilgour offers a fascinating history of the book in all its forms, a five-thousand year story that begins with clay tablets and concludes with the emerging electronic book. Kilgour, founder and first president of the Online Computer Library Center and a former librarian at Harvard and Yale, breaks new ground in emphasizing the story's technological dimension. Drawing upon a lifetime of knowledge and a historian's curiosity, Kilgour highlights the inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs who created the machinery of production and dissemination which enabled the book to keep pace with the escalating need for information.

Frederick G. Kilgour, a librarian and educator who created an international computer library network and database that changed the way people use libraries, died on July 31, 2006. He was 92 years old and had lived since 1990 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Kilgour is widely recognized as one of the leading figures in 20th century librarianship for his work in using computer networks to increase access to information in libraries around the world. He was among the earliest proponents of adapting computer technology to library processes. At the dawn of library automation in the early 1970’s, he founded OCLC Online Computer Library Center and led the creation of a library network that today links 55,000 institutions in 110 countries.