Predrag Pale has two passions: technology and human beings. In fact, he is passionate about all the good and amazing things that technology can do for humans.

As Assistant Minister of Science and Technology, in the second half of the 1990s he launched the Scientific Information System (SZI – Sustav znanstvenih informacija), the National Library Information System (NISKA – Nacionalni informacijski sustav knjižnica), the Croatian Scientific Bibliography – CROSBI and the Online Database of Scientific Publications.

In fact, he chose libraries to demonstrate the first practical application of the Internet and the great progress it can ensure. With the help of Jadranka Stojanovski, back in 1992, when the web did not even exist, they showed how it is possible to search the catalogs of many scattered libraries from a remote place if libraries used various library software.

At the time, few librarians realized what a change this was. And over the years, in a dozen lectures to librarians on the impact of technology on librarianship, he tried to point out the changes that would come, whether we wanted it or not. And again, it seemed to many that this was too futuristic, and that these changes would not require them to make major changes in their work.

Now comes the era of robots and artificial intelligence. What kind of changes await us and what transformations are necessary in librarianship? Who is ready for that? What will be the price for those who do not accept transformation? Who dares to discard much of what we know and step into a rather unknown world, to lay out new paths in the place where the library has been to this day? Who is ready to make mistakes?