While the solutions Clapp reviewed were drawn from existing CLR and other projects, especially the Library of Congress "Automation" report, his larger contribution in The Future of the Research Library was to clarify needs of research libraries and their solutions in abstract form and as a set of principles. As such, Clapp ventured into the possibilities of "electronic computers", not for their limits but for their possibilities. For example, Clapp wrote that "Telefacsimile has long offered an attractive possibility; for more than three decades it has been successfully used in newspaper work; why not also for libraries?"The Future of the Research Library, 45 Ever practical-minded, Clapp recognized the cost of such systems (an entire day would be required for "scanning articles in journals while the whole pile of books could have been delivered by truck in an hour"), noting that, instead, "machine-readable form" can be "rapidly and inexpensively" transmitted by telephone.The Future of the Research Library, 39-40, 44-47 As a biographer noted, "It seems Clapp foresaw the possibilities of networking and the necessity for strong regional and local systems before such terms were even fashionable, let alone discussed seriously."Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 82
