Robert Darnton, historian and Harvard library director, has proposed a national digital library system — to much fanfare in The Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere. But Professor Darnton’s vision fails to mention the history of the national digital library idea in the U.S. And it lacks bureaucracy-fighting features that could help cost-justify the library and save Americans billions while also aiding the private sector.

The dream hasn’t just “been in the air for a long time” – Professor Darnton’s words to the Chronicle, after his closed-door meeting with the members of the library and foundation elites. National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., for example, in the 1990s praised the basic concept as “bracing.” I’m the liberal who convinced him to write two “On the Right” columns on it. WFB had accidentally started me off as a digital-library booster with his lament that college students were relying too heavily on CD-ROMs rather than library books in research. ”Fine,” I more or less replied, “let’s get the books online. And not just the classics.” WFB happily succumbed.

I was a David-come-lately in many respects; in the Atlantic Monthly of July 1945, for instance, Vannevar Bush proposed a microfilm-based knowledge system that in some ways was preceded by H.G. Wells’s World Brain concept. Nonetheless, starting with a 1992 article in Computerworld, I have published thousands of words of details. Via an acknowledged e-mail, I sent Professor Darnton some key citations a year ago, and the referenced material included mention of a bureaucracy-fighting wrinkle that helped endear the plan to WFB, just as did the inherent economies of paperless books.

More recently I’ve updated my cost-justification and library ideas on the Atlantic website. No voodoo here — rather, precisely targeted tax breaks and other popularization and smarter use of the right technology. Optimized, for example, the same tablets useful for e-books could lower the cost of healthcare paperwork, reduce bureaucracy hassles for patients, improve Americans’ health through better doctor-patient communications, and boost e-commerce. Intrigued? Feel free to drop me a line at [email protected].