It has now become an accepted fact that librarians will need to discover the ways in which the computer is likely to affect their operations. Too often they will only want to know this in order to resist any change to long established and unchallenged methods; nevertheless they will still need to know. It therefore seems an appropriate point in time to lay down some basic laws which will assist them in their task be they machine maniac or Luddite. In order to reach as wide an audience as possible the elegant mathematics on which these laws of bibliodynamics were established, have been omitted, but some must, of necessity, be expressed in mathematical form.