The current library environment is first examined, and an attempt is made to explain why the standard approaches to the library problem have been less productive than had been anticipated. A new design is then introduced for modern library operations based on a two-fold strategy: on the input side, the widest possible utilization should be made of cooperative and shared operations, whereas dynamic, user-controlled procedures should be used for the subsequent internal processes. The dynamic environment applies in particular to the maintenance of the indexing vocabulary, the organization of the stored information files, the performance of search and retrieval operations, and the control of the library collection necessitated by document growth and retirement. Some experimental results are included as an illustration for the proposed dynamic operations.