[Web4lib] Paperless society

[Avrum Shepard]

This discussion of eliminating paper that we read and use for 
historical purposes has given me a chuckle. I participated in the 
formation of the National Automated Clearinghouse Association (NACHA) 
in 1968. NACHA is the vehicle that banks use to distribute electronic 
automated payments. 1968 was the year that my employer, then the 
world's largest bank, decided that mankind was ready for the 
"paperless society". The objective was to eliminate the use of paper 
checks. After having spent close to seventy years convincing 
consumers that they needed to put their money in a bank instead of 
under the mattress, and write checks instead of give cash, we 
initiated a project to eliminate paper from the equation. By the time 
I retired in 1999, that bank was processing in the neighborhood of 
ten million checks each day, many times the number thirty years 
prior. Although it is not still the largest bank, it has grown 
significantly and processes much more paper each night. I doubt that 
we've seen the last of paper even with Amazon's Kindle, books on 
tape, reliable offline data storage such as cd and dvd, the Internet, 
and the National Automated Clearing House.

At 06:29 AM 2/11/2008, Jocelyn Shaw wrote:
>I had to chuckle at the quote:
>
>  "'Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is,' says
>Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a
>nonprofit digital library. 'Paper has been dealt a complete deathblow. When
>was the last time you saw a telephone book?'"...
>
>Having used the phone book twice in the last 20 minutes to answer reference
>questions I found it quite humorous.
>
>
>Jocelyn Shaw
>Librarian
>Hackley Public Library
>316 W Webster
>Muskegon MI 49440
>
>The Smartest Card. Get it. Use it.
>@ the Hackley Public Library
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