At the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference in 2011 (toccon.com/toc2011), Kevin Kelly, senior maverick at Wired, discussed the future of publishing in terms of access versus ownership. He believes accessing, not owning, content is the future. As a librarian, I thought this made perfect sense--after all, that's what libraries have offered for centuries.

However, putting myself in the shoes of publishers, those who rely on sales and revenue, this sounded a bit frightening. How would an access-based future alter the publishing and book distribution industry? How, if at all, might this affect libraries?