5- What is the future of the local public library?
Worse yet, I'm worried that the reason they are phoning the Library of Congress in the first place is that their local public library has shut its doors, sold off the book stock, and dismissed the librarian. What can public libraries do to avoid that future?
Brief Background: The Internet Today
Computers all over the world are linked by high speed telecommunications lines. On the other side of their screens are people of all races and nationalities who are able to exchange ideas quickly through this network.
This "brain to brain" interface brings both delight and despair, as evidenced by the following True Tales from the Internet:
— Children all over the world participate in class collaborations, sharing holiday customs, local food prices, proverbs, acid rain measurements, and surveys such as a recent one from a fifth grade class in Argentina who wanted to know (among other things) "Can you wear jeans to school?".
— During the Soviet coup in the summer of 1991, hundreds read eyewitness accounts of developments posted to the net by computer users in Moscow and other Soviet cities with network connectivity. A literal hush fell over this side of the network after a plea came across from the Soviet side. We appreciate your messages of encouragement and offers of help, it said, but please save the bandwidth for our outgoing reports!
- Proliferation of discussion groups on the Internet means one can find a niche to discuss everything from cats to Camelot, from library administration to lovers of mysteries, from Monty Python to Medieval History.
— Predictably, Elvis has been sighted on the Internet.
Besides electronic mail, full text resources may be downloaded from many Internet host computers. Some of these are religious materials, such as the Bible, and the Koran, others are the complete works of Shakespeare, Peter Pan, and Far From the Madding Crowd.