"The bill provides funding to both NSF and NASA to develop technology for 'digital libraries'— huge data bases that store text, imagery, video, and sound and are accessible over computer networks like NSFNET. The bill also funds development of prototype 'digital libraries' around the country."
The public needs NREN because 300 baud used to be fast and low- resolution graphics used to be pretty. Now we get impatient waiting for fax machines to print out a document from half a continent away, when a few years ago we would have been content to wait days or weeks for the same article to arrive by mail. We are satisfied with technology until it starts to impede our lives in some way. We wait impatiently, sure that we spend half our lives waiting for printers, and the other half waiting for disk drives. Time is a commodity.
I can envision that little girl walking into the public library with the following request: "I'm doing a school report on the Challenger disaster. I need a video clip of the explosion, a sound bite of Richard Feynman explaining the O-ring problem, some neat graphics from NASA, oh, and maybe some virtual reality mock-ups of the shuttle interior. Can you put it all on this floppy disk for me, I know it's only 15 minutes before you close but, gee, I had band practice." This is why public libraries need NREN.
We would do well to remember the words of Ranganathan, whose basic tenets of good librarianship need just a little updating from 1931:
"[Information] is for use."
"Every [bit of information], its user."
"Every user, [his/her bit of information]."
"Save the time of the [user]."
"A [network] is a growing organism."
And so is the public library. A promising future awaits the public library that can be proactive rather than reactive to technology. Information technology is driving the future, librarians should be at the wheel. It is hoped that the new Administration in Washington will provide the fuel to get us going.
_______________________________ SIDEBAR ———————————————————————————- Excerpts from S.2937 as introduced July 1, 1992 102nd Congress 2nd Session IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
Mr. GORE (for himself, Rockefeller (D-WV), Kerry (D-MA),
Prestler (R-SD), Riegle (D-MI), Robb (D-VA), Lieberman (D-CT),
Kerrey (D-NE) and Burns (R-MT)) introduced the following bill;
which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce,
Science and Transportation.
A BILL To expand Federal efforts to develop technologies for applications of high-performance computing and high-speed networking, to provide for a coordinated Federal program to accelerate development and deployment of an advanced information infrastructure, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America in Congress assembled,