The Future of Libraries

Introduction

Surfing the World Wide Web at the new San Francisco Publiclibrary.  (Photo Credit: Steve Fisch)

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Overview

Several years ago, farsighted citizens in historic Alexandria, Va., approached city officials with a futuristic proposal: They wanted to wire up the town surveyed by George Washington. They envisioned an electronic community network linking home computers with each other and with the mayor's office, the Chamber of Commerce and the police and fire departments.

When the network was launched in 1994, however, only one city department was ready to hook up: the library system. Indeed, library users had been surfing the Internet for two years. The library system's home page on the World Wide Web provided easy access to the network, dubbed ALEX. And ALEX also dovetailed with the library's 24-hour telnet service, which lets patrons with computers consult library catalogs from home. The Web site also informs Alexandrians about civic happenings, including expansion plans that will give local libraries a total of 32 computer terminals and 56 laptop data ports.

This new world of information makes me feel like I'm reborn in my profession, Library Director Patrick M. O'Brien says. Five years ago, most libraries were in the throes of budget cutbacks. Now, whether it's the overall economy or libraries positioning themselves better, the decline in budgets for the most part has stopped, and libraries have reinvented themselves. Having always dragged behind in technology, libraries are now smack dab in the middle of it. 1

Not all of O'Brien's modernization efforts have been well- received. There is opposition, for example, to his plan to move the city's collection of rare books and manuscripts from an 18th-century house to a newer, and roomier, facility. But the move would place the old and the modern under the same roof. The collection is best appreciated, its overseers say, in a period setting, not sharing space with CD-ROMS.

But overall, O'Brien's embrace of technological change is at the cutting edge of libraries across the United States.

From 1994-96, the percentage of American public libraries offering Internet service rose 113 percent, to about half of all libraries, according to the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. 2

State and local library systems are becoming interconnected, enabling previously isolated rural libraries to share resources and eliminate redundancy in reference works and magazine subscriptions. 3 The Library of Congress, which on March 1 ended its 96-year-old practice of selling printed catalog cards, has watched the percentage of its budget spent on Internet transactions rise more than 2,000 percent over the past five years. (The percentage of its budget spent on maintaining reading room hours, in the same period, shrank 17 percent.)

Though trained librarians can still recite Dewey Decimal System classifications, most can now be found checking the Web site for Hot Flashes/Library News or various news feeds and listservs offered by commercial and nonprofit Internet access providers. Graduates of library schools today are finding a lot of different kinds of roles they can play, such as being a Web master, in addition to helping people find information they need, says Jean Preer, associate dean at the School of Library and Information Science at Catholic University in Washington. The Internet is a vast universe of information waiting to be organized. Librarians are the professionals who can do it.

The Information Age is also shaking up the working habits of researchers and scholars, whose patronage is the lifeblood of libraries.

There used to be a four-year time frame for publication of work in journals, but now, with listservs on the Internet, people learn about things immediately, notes Richard Hill, executive director of the American Society for Information Science. What's more, biologists are talking to physicists, and sociologists are talking with mathematicians on the same problem, often across international borders.

The Clinton administration's goal of connecting every school and library to the Internet by 2000 - plus the discounted online telephone rates for libraries authorized by last year's telecommunications reform bill - led the American Library Association (ALA) to set up an Office for Information Technology Policy in Washington. Given that not all American children have a home computer, the ALA realized that we were needed as an advocate for libraries in important policy issues concerning the information superhighway, explains the office's director, J. Andrew Magpantay. 4

Yet the American library's rapid evolution from a quiet temple of books to a dynamic, high-tech mall has also produced a backlash. A movement that some describe as made up of technophobes and Luddites worries that the virtual library that chases information more than knowledge is a library that is losing its soul.

Hordes of academics, engineers, cyberpunks and self-advertised 'infonauts' roam the Net looking for treasure troves of information, like so much gold, writes author Stephen L. Talbott. It's almost as if the 'electrons' themselves exuded a certain fascination - a kind of spell or subliminal attraction. . . . The dissonance occurs only when one tries to imagine these same adventurers standing in a library, surrounded in three dimensions by records of human achievement far surpassing what is now Net-accessible. Would there, in these surroundings, be the same breathless investigation? 5

Critics of Internet-worship point out that despite the free news, data and graphics online, most substantive information not in the public domain is still withheld from the Internet by commercial copyright holders. 6 Other critics - particularly parents - worry that sending young people onto the Internet exposes them to indecent material. Then there is the question of how to pay for all the new hardware, software and training.

Finally, it has become common for people to predict that the book is dead, or that libraries are doomed by the ability of patrons to easily access information from the convenience of their homes. At the ALA's annual conference in San Francisco next month, a sociologist, a scientist and a humanities scholar will speak on a topic that is anxiety-provoking for librarians: The New Generation of Scholars: Do They Really Need Us? (Maybe/Maybe Not!)

So far, such anxieties have not proved justified. In a 1995 Gallup Poll for U.S. News & World Report/CNN, 67 percent of the respondents reported that they had used a library in the past year, up from 51 percent in 1978. And fully 91 percent of those who used computerized libraries felt confident that libraries will still be needed in the future.

I can understand the fear of digital technology, says George Farr, director of the Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which is overseeing the development of a policy on digital preservation of books and manuscripts. But the Luddites eventually had to lay down their weapons. Too many critics, including many apostles of digital technology, see the whole thing as an either/or situation, when it's not.

What is gaining ground in the library profession is a notion of balance between the tradition of the library as a democratic, community-service provider and the new vision of an up-to-the-minute, speed-of-light, electronic information nexus.

We believe in the enduring mission of libraries, two librarians write in a study for the ALA. Clinging to the past for the sake of the past is as futile as sweeping away the past for the sake of a delusionary future. We advocate a straight and narrow path between the librarianship of nostalgia and the ill-informed embrace of any technology that happens to capture the magpie fancy of the moment. 7

How libraries will arrive at such a balance in the future will hinge on the following issues:

Will electronic information technology render libraries obsolete?

Just like a hurricane, the Internet is sweeping away many long- established practices, procedures and traditions, Donald T. Hawkins writes in Technotrends, a column about the computer industry. The Internet has made it possible for anyone to become a publisher. 8

In libraries, such enthusiasm for things digital has raised the possibility of the virtual library. Spurred by futuristic predictions of the demise of the book, techno-soothsayers in the past decade have played out ever-expanding visions of an everyman's desktop communications center that pulls in limitless quantities of up-to- date, verified, custom-tailored information from around the globe. 9

Some observers have gone so far as to say that this information utopia will prompt society to stop spending tax dollars on the quaint, old, reading rooms we call libraries and convert those familiar buildings to homeless shelters. I don't think libraries as places to store physical-information containers have a terribly lengthy future, says John Perry Barlow, the former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, who co-founded the Internet-boosting Electronic Frontier Foundation. The library is becoming an increasingly dumb place to store information. 10

The consensus in recent years, however, is that while the library's physical plant may well change and modernize, there is one key ingredient in a library that is likely to stay as vital as ever: the librarian. We're now in a world where people need more data faster, and knowledge work has become the backbone of our economy, O'Brien says. All these electronic search engines are wonderful in how they access data far outside the local library, but they don't give the patrons exactly what they're looking for. There's nothing that can replace librarians using their expertise to sift through the vast amount of stuff coming in.

Others emphasize the enduring importance of librarians as educators rather than mere data clerks. Public libraries were always a unifying force in the communities . . . a communal tribute to the culture and values of the books, which have in many ways undergirded our democratic system, writes Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. The Internet's current flood of unsorted, unverified information will not replace knowledge in the country if librarians can transform themselves from information dispensers to knowledge navigators. 11

Demand for career librarians is only going up, according to Linda McKell, president of Advanced Information Management, a headhunting firm for librarians in Mountain View, Calif., that reported 1996 as its best year yet. 12 And though the job titles may change (library aides and media specialists have given way to library technicians and computer specialists), the onslaught of new technology may have created more personnel needs than it has eliminated.

Take CD-ROMs, for example. Surveys of library patrons show that they are very popular for their search capability and the way they group back issues of a publication on the same disk. But the introduction of CD-ROMS in academic libraries has created an increase in demand for point-of-use assistance by the reference staff, notes one study. With the technology explosion in libraries, the number of workstations, databases and queries for assistance has multiplied in reference departments, but the number of staff has not increased accordingly. 13

Perhaps most important, in the view of the ALA, is the role libraries play in assuring that the blessings of technology are not confined to a wealthy few. Libraries are still needed to make sure that all Americans will have access to specialized information sources, which is important in a democracy, Magpantay says. Pooling of information, he adds, has always been good economics, because each person probably does not need to own a personal copy of a world atlas or the Oxford English Dictionary. Now we're in a time of transition with the electronic industry. Print is still the prime media, but electronics is becoming important. What will we do if certain information is available only electronically? What will the [non- computer-literate] do? Some people still aren't comfortable navigating the Internet and can't yet think critically about how to evaluate sites on the Web.

Libraries and librarians will continue their critical role in providing access as we marry the worlds of print and electronic media, says Liz Bishoff, vice president for member services at the Dublin, Ohio-based Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), whose huge Union Catalog over the past 25 years has made 36 million titles in 370 languages available to 23,000 member libraries around the world. Librarians bring skills to organizing information according to the user's interest or personal slant.

The modern electronic library, far from atomizing patrons by sending them home to their private terminals, can actually increase onsite use. Jerry Campbell, dean of the library at the University of Southern California, says that the school's new Leavey Library has become a symbol of the digital age: It was so popular that as soon as it opened we made it a 24-hour building. The library has an information commons and peer learning rooms in addition to the 100,000 new books recently ordered for its undergraduates. I don't think the college student's ideal is working all alone in one's room, Campbell says. We make certain that our constituency has what it wants.

Those who assume a future in which all citizens cruise the market as independent database clients may be surprised to learn that commercial information marketers do not - at least not yet - expect to eclipse the role of public libraries. Libraries now are more of a customer than a competitor, and we're very comfortable with them, says Daniel C. Duncan, vice president for government relations at the Information Industry Association. Librarians are efficient information brokers who respect copyright law, limit redistribution and copying and are willing to sign an information licensing agreement. Most information content providers want a trusted relationship and an agreement that's enforceable, as opposed to the Internet, where the general public has no understanding of this and often wants only a one-time buy.

Duncan adds that librarians play a key role in designing information systems and deciding what providers should put on them. We're happy when there's more of a hunger for quality information, he says. And though he can see commercial providers taking over for libraries eventually, we're a long way from having computers as ubiquitous as televisions in every home. No one knows how fast technology will develop.

Are libraries embracing technology at the expense of their traditional mission?

The difficulty with the Internet is knowing when to stop! warns a children's librarian in explaining how to manage a search on the World Wide Web. 14

Some would say the same applies to the headlong rush of many in the library profession to go high-tech. Most who tout the blessings of the digital library are careful to be concrete about the advantages. Hence computer scientist Michael Lesk notes that the French National Library in Paris has 100,000 books online that can be read by multiple readers and take up practically zero shelf space, compared with the two huge buildings the library needs for its 22 million conventional volumes. 15

Hill of the Information Science Society gives the example of a new software technology, DR-LINK, manufactured by Manning & Napier Information Services, which will search for companies that have become profitable under new management: You simply couldn't find that in an old library, he says.

Public librarians explain how computers allow patrons to scan the past borrowings in their library records online or check out their own books.

Though only a true Luddite would deny any benefits from digital, the number of people who are uneasy with the changes technology has brought is growing, and vocal. Last year, author Nicholson Baker went so far as to file a lawsuit against the newly modernized San Francisco Public Library, demanding to inspect the card catalog it had dismantled.

Some worry that fascination with technology encourages short-term attention spans and a preference for entertainment rather than a deep quest for knowledge. Transitions like the one from print to electronic media do not take place without rippling or, more likely, reweaving the entire social and cultural web, writes literary critic Sven Birkerts. We don't need to look far to find their effects. We can begin with the newspaper headlines and the millennial lamentations sounded in the op-ed pages: that our educational systems are in decline; that our students are less and less able to read and comprehend their required texts. . . . Tag-line communication, called 'bite-speak' by some, is destroying the last remnants of political discourse. 16

The joy that technology-lovers take in customized research and personalized Internet news feeds is troublesome to many. I worry that the reader of the 'electronic books' of the future will choose to sample only the information that he knows he wants to know. In many cases that's probably not the information he most needs to know, complains physicist and public policy adviser Lewis M. Branscomb. 17

Finally, there are many who chafe at proposals to turn libraries into expert-driven systems in which engineers and artificial- intelligence specialists design software that automatically guides patrons sitting at terminals through complicated problems.

This bookless library is a hallucination of online addicts, network neophytes and library automation insiders, complains astronomer and one-time computer addict Clifford Stoll. Let me describe my idealized library of the future. There are lots of books, a card catalog, a children's section with a story hour, a reading room with this morning's newspapers, plenty of magazines, a box of discarded paperback books (selling for a quarter each), a cork bulletin board stapled over with community announcements, a cheap photocopier and a harried, smiling librarian. I'll see a couple of library volunteers shelving volumes. Oh yes, locate this library smack in my neighborhood. 18

Contrary to popular impression, conventional books, newspapers and periodicals still make up the vast majority of library holdings: 71 percent of the holdings in public libraries and 63 percent in academic facilities, according to a recent survey. 19 The average library last year spent about $15,000 for print acquisitions vs. $6,400 for online services and $5,300 for CD-ROMs. The trend for the future, however, has swung dramatically in favor of electronic products.

I haven't heard many librarians say it's an either/or situation, says OCLC's Bishoff. You can still get access to print at the New York Public Library, and many libraries still give browsers direct access to the stacks. But the real advantage of this online world is how it offers access to collections regardless of the time or day or the place.

The ALA's Magpantay points out that whenever a technology is still new, some people will question its place or its use. Is the Internet a broadcast or a private medium? Is it for graphics or text? We need to have these discussions for the technology to mature. Radio was supposed to be killed by television, and movies were supposed to be killed by the VCR, but each of these technologies now has its proper niche. The book is portable, can be read in the bathtub and does not require a machine. A computer has the advantage of the key word search, which is what you'd want if you are analyzing, say, the role of nature vs. nurture in the works of Shakespeare. But you wouldn't take a CD-ROM to the beach.

Besides, Magpantay adds, libraries don't have the power to dictate what the market wants. Some local libraries still offer old 78 rpm records.

Others point out that the book-publishing industry is still flourishing. Witness the power of talk-show host Oprah Winfrey to launch a best-seller; witness the crowds at superstores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble; and witness the recent public stock offering by Internet-based Amazon.com, which enables online customers to order from some 1.5 million book titles.

In the foreseeable future, we won't have a satisfactory replacement for the book, because there's nothing as convenient, says Robert Zich, director of electronic programs at the Library of Congress. But certain reference books, like the Britannica, which are usually read non-consecutively, are being transformed in order to compete with $40 electronic encyclopedias.

In addition, Zich says, more pure information is becoming available online, such as Census Bureau data and tourist information on bed and breakfasts. But right now we still need books in order to interpret the raw materials, and many online offerings - the Library of Congress' digital photographs from the Civil War, for example - send people into the stacks to learn more. At some point, however, there will be much more online, and we will have portable computers to replicate the convenience of the book.

USC's Campbell speaks effusively of the extraordinary love affair that a great portion of humankind has had with the particular medium called the book. It's a legitimate love affair, and I love rare books. But after all, people used to read and write on rocks, he notes. The next generation will have its love affair with something, and we don't know what that medium will be.

Clearly, Alexandria's O'Brien adds, Internet technology would not have emerged the way it has without tremendous numbers of people getting into it, a popularity that exploded not from efforts by commercial entities but from users who expect the free and open access one gets from a public library. But I don't believe in the death of the book. I don't want to sit at my computer and read a whole book, or even a long magazine article. The first thing I do is hit the print button.

One area where many battles over technology will be fought is cost. Boosters such as Lesk point out, for example, that it costs only about $2 to store a 300-page book on a disk, compared with about $30 for the actual book. Others emphasize that much government information is now free on the Web or through specialized agency services that have replaced expensive private services. They also brag that libraries that can't afford to subscribe to hundreds of magazines and journals can sign licensing agreements with periodical databases that permit patrons to pay only for single articles they actually need.

The problem with this apparent bounty, however, is that publications that lose all their steady subscribers to libraries and individuals on the Net will no longer have the revenue to pay their writers, editors, designers and business staffs. They could sink. This sobering reality has recently become more apparent to people who previously assumed the Internet was a bottomless sea of comprehensive information, according to Anne Caputo, senior director of information professional development for Knight-Ridder Information, which sells the Dialog electronic article service to libraries across the country. Yes, we are in the business of providing selective needs, but part of our responsibility is to the publications, she says. They bring expertise and value to the mix, too.

Those designing the library of the future do not consider it realistic to digitize every book or periodical that future patrons might request. Selectivity is inevitable, so libraries should coordinate to share costs and start with the best-sellers to create interest in lesser works, according to Clifford Lynch, librarian for the University of California's Office of the President. If too many books are left undigitized, he warns, visitors to a library 20 years hence may find everything online except a strange pile of books published from 1920-1990, a kind of Sargasso Sea of publishing relegated to the stacks. 20

The most important thing is for libraries to avoid losing sight of their mission, says Edwin S. Clay, the library director for Fairfax County, Va. We're not a movie theater or a bookstore. And not everyone in the community wants to use the same media as the others. If a person wants to hold a book and have no sounds around him, then you provide him a quiet study room. If someone else does not, you must accommodate them. I hope there's lots of freedom and latitude to carry out the mission.

Perhaps in a few years, when the novelty of the Internet settles down, there will be less friction about which is the best technology.

What's exciting on the Web is how easily you can get its information, not how great the information is once you get it, observes Washington Post cultural writer Amy E. Schwartz. At the risk of sounding technophobic, it may also be useful to remember that the proposition also holds when run the other way; old, slow, creaky ways of getting your data may still be the secret to finding really exciting information. 21

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Background

There are numerous men and women perambulating the earth - in appearance much like ordinary respectable citizens - who have warm, loving, passionate - even sensuous - feelings about libraries. 22

This wry observation from a journalist in 1970 goes a long way toward explaining the sound and the fury that have accompanied the recent transformation of America's libraries. For centuries, the emblematic image of a library was as a temple for the book, a community-scale version of the personal collections that are bound up in the identities of many avid readers. Note the caressing imagery in this passage from a noted book-lover:

As I build pile after pile of familiar volumes (I recognize some by their color, others by their shape, many by a detail on the jackets whose titles I try to read upside down or at an odd angle) I wonder, as I have wondered . . . why I keep so many books I know I will not read again. I tell myself that, every time I get rid of a book, I find a few days later that this is precisely the book I'm looking for. . . . I delight in knowing that I'm surrounded by a sort of inventory of my life, with intimations of my future. I like discovering, in almost forgotten volumes, traces of the reader I once was - scribbles, bus tickets, scraps of paper with mysterious names and numbers, the occasional date and place on the book's flyleaf which take me back to a certain cafe. 23

Lovers of creamy-paged books and wood-paneled libraries can't help but sense a shudder of doom in the past decade's explosion of computer communications. They worry that information and data have been elevated above knowledge and wisdom. And, like all consumers in the modern era, they have watched as new products and formats come and go with ever-shorter half-lives.

For every new technology that today functions beside an old one (e.g. television and radio), it is possible to identify a new technology that actually was replaced by a new one (e.g. teletype by radio, typewriters by printers), notes a report on preservation issues in digital technology. 24

In their enthusiasm for working online, many of today's librarians may lack a proper skepticism, says Fairfax librarian Clay. But the notion of librarians taking an active role in helping society incorporate new communications technologies is nothing new. We've been techno-dudes since before there was such a thing, he adds, citing the public library's applications of electricity and the telephone early in the century. We've been in this business a long time.

Road to Automation

The groundwork for today's electronic library was laid in the 1960s, on a variety of fronts. First, the concept of information science was emerging in industry and in academe. In 1962, economist Fritz Machlup identified more than 50 information-oriented activities in education, communications media, research and development and machinery. 25

In 1963, a conference of librarians in Great Britain developed PRECIS, a new cataloging system that formulated rules for a new indexing system that could be manipulated by computer. In 1964, the U.S. National Library of Medicine was already running on-demand information services, and a year later, abstracts of technical articles about chemistry were available through the miracle of magnetic tape.

It didn't take long for the consumer angle to take shape. In 1965, Popular Science published an article that asked: How would you like to have the Library of Congress, occupying 270 miles of bookshelves, in your house? Sounds impossible? Well through a new microphotography process, you may, one day, be able to have the entire contents of the great library in your den on film - all contained in about six filing cabinets. 26

By 1968, computer scientists at a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm had won the first federal contract to build interface message processors for the Defense Department, which led to the birth of the Internet. One of the firm's earliest ideas was to create computer networks that would wire up hospitals and libraries. 27

On campus, meanwhile, computerized card catalogs began their takeover, gaining a first toehold at research libraries such as the one at Northwestern University. By 1973, the machine-readable cataloging (MARC) format had become the international standard for communicating bibliographic information. OCLC, the consortium of college libraries in Ohio, was soon expanding its computerized cataloging at such a rate that it overtook the Library of Congress in the number of cards provided to libraries. 28

By 1981, the Library of Congress had ceased updating its traditional card catalog, and a new set of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules prompted reconsideration of the old systems. The only reason automated cataloging didn't happen faster, argues one history, was the absence of a sense of permanence or stability of any one system that would give library administrators enough confidence to invest in them. 29 Even so, they argued, eventual arrival of the computer did not alter cataloging's basic logic: The fundamental principles of catalog organization have been in evidence in catalogs produced in a variety of forms for at least three centuries. A close examination of these principles reveals that they exist independently of any medium.

The 1970s brought several other changes that would mold today's information revolution. An Alternatives to Libraries trend appeared among profit-seeking information entrepreneurs catering to researchers, beginning in the San Francisco area. 30 Michael Hart, a professor at Illinois Benedictine College, launched Project Gutenberg, an effort to make 10,000 public-domain classic works of literature available on computer. (It currently is up to 624 volumes.) 31 And most dramatically, long-distance communication using the Internet began to spread from a select few users in the military and scientific communities to the popular consumer medium it has become today.

San Francisco Shootout

Though countless library patrons have expressed frustration at all the newfangled machinery, the inevitable clash between the tekkies and the technophobes came to a head most dramatically last fall in San Francisco. Author Baker had received a cry for help from unionized staff members at the San Francisco public library. The new headquarters facility had just opened to crowds who came to bask in its ultra-modern, high-tech atmosphere and community meeting rooms. But the architecture's lack of emphasis on books and stacks, and the names of corporate donors on its walls, also brought out critics who called it anti-book. The new main is a betrayal of what a public library is supposed to be about, said Tille Olson, a poet and short- story author. The rush into technology has meant that it has left its soul behind. 32

Word came out that while creating the new building, the library had discarded some 100,000-200,000 old books in a landfill, and that poor records had been kept of which were discarded. This prompted action from San Francisco locals such as the Grey Panthers, who organized a salvage operation to rescue some of the books.

Baker took his case to the pages of The New Yorker, asserting that many of the discarded books were old, hard to find, out of print and valuable and that the new building was short on storage space for books. 33 The real story is a case study of what can happen - what to a greater or lesser degree is happening in a number of cities around the country - when telecommunications enthusiasts take over big old research libraries and attempt to remake them, with corporate help, as high-traffic showplaces for information technology, Baker wrote.

But that wasn't all. Library Director Kenneth Dowlin, who'd been planning the new library since 1987, announced that a $1.2 million deficit was forcing him to cut 93 staff positions and reduce hours for part-timers. That was too much for Mayor Willie Brown, who announced, I will take it over, if necessary, to prevent cuts. 34 Dowlin resigned in January amid charges of bad management and overspending on computers. (He is running for president of the American Library Association.)

Defenders of the new library point out that much of the fear of vanishing books is belied by the fact that book acquisitions in the San Francisco system rose from 61,000 in 1991-92 to 238,000 in 1995- 96. They point out that books were buried in a landfill because of a city ordinance against selling them. They also note that the new library was drawing huge crowds. Dowlin says that an outside audit of the library released in May confirms the steps he took.

To librarians around the country, the episode provided several lessons - the public relations sensitivities in computerization, and the need for library managers to avoid getting too far out in front of their staffs. But the main lesson revolved around the standard practice of deaccessioning, or weeding books that are out-of-date, damaged, obscure or duplicative. When I was in library school, says Zich of the Library of Congress, I had a professor who stood in front of the class and tore up a book and threw it in the trash. One of the most important tasks is getting past the idea that we must keep everything forever. The Library of Congress is the library of permanent record, but the public libraries are not. Most are constantly weeding.

To O'Brien, the least understood aspect of public education on libraries is weeding. It's not a sexy issue, but it gets people excited in that 99 percent usually agree on 99 percent of what to weed, but that 1 percent will raise a ruckus. It's a judgment call, and a librarian has to be judicious. It's a fact of life that all libraries at some point hit capacity. You can't have a zero-growth collection.

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Current Situation

When it comes to funding, Public libraries by and large are doing OK, says Mary Jo Lynch, director of research and statistics at the ALA. The number of new library buildings in cities indicates something about how city and county governments feel about libraries in general, though it depends on the region and the local economy. Still, with the arrival of new Internet technology, she adds, there's never enough for equipment, installing lines, maintenance and constant training.

Public library budgets are up by 6.4 percent over last year, according to a Library Journal survey. 35 About half the nation's libraries are engaging in fund-raising, up from 42 percent last year. Of those that have trimmed jobs, 25 percent cited budget cuts, while only 3 percent cited technological advances.

At the federal level, prospects are also favorable. President Clinton is a library booster (he mentioned libraries twice in his last State of the Union address). House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., also has lent his support, having countered an outside consultant's recommendation last year and recommended increased funding for the Library of Congress.

The Clinton administration is seeking $137 million for aid to the nation's libraries. Though the ALA would favor a $150 million appropriation, it says it is pleased with recent hikes. The Library of Congress, meanwhile, says it needs $388 million, a 7.1 percent boost.

Technology is the area where this Congress is willing to see federal money spent, says Carol Henderson, executive director of the ALA's Washington office. The Federal Communications Commission's ruling this month in favor of unprecedented discounted telephone rates for libraries for use online is also greeted as good news.

One new way that public libraries are solidifying their funding is to share a building with house mates such as seniors centers, police stations, schools and government offices. 36 Others, such as the public library in San Leandro, Calif., are opening cafes as revenue- raisers. Libraries also are tapping increasingly into money from corporations and foundations, coordinated by the ALA's Fund for America's Libraries, which has raised $8 million in two years.

Since November 1995, Microsoft Corp. has been working with the Seattle Public Library and the ALA on Libraries Online!, a program in which the computer giant is funneling more than $16.5 million in software, technical assistance and grants to 43 libraries around the country. Christopher Hedrick, senior program manager for corporate contributions at Microsoft, says the project is designed as a sustained effort to expand access in disadvantaged communities so that there won't be two classes of people in America. We think the public library is a great place to do that because it is staffed by people who help lead the way to knowledge.

Preservation Funding

Another budget debate in Washington is being watched closely in the library community. Funding for preservation efforts and digital policy research by the NEH will depend on larger issues: Congress' efforts to reduce the federal deficit, as well as the tactics of some Republicans who have vowed to eliminate the endowment, along with its sister agency, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). It is the NEA, headed by actress Jane Alexander, that has drawn the most criticism, due to its past funding of certain artists whom some consider indecent or sacrilegious. 37

But the NEH has also provoked skepticism among Republicans who saw waste in its National Conversation program, which over the past four years has organized some 3 million Americans in a dialogue about being an American.

For fiscal 1998, Clinton has requested $136 million for the NEH, which would include $21 million for preservation. That would be $26 million more than last year's budget, and $3 million more than last year's preservation allotment. At a March 24 Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee meeting, NEH Chairman Sheldon Hackney (who is retiring in July) remarked that the budget request is still far below the $172 million that the NEH was given in 1994, the year before the Republicans took over Congress and slashed NEH spending by 36 percent.

We made the transition with pain, but with imagination, by seeking private-sector help as we enter the digital age, Hackney said. He also said he had learned the importance of telling Congress and the public the story of the NEH's unglamorous but necessary work of keeping the culture alive.

John Hammer, director of the Washington-based National Humanities Alliance, which advocates more NEH spending, points out that the impact of Republican cuts in the fiscal 1996 budget was softened in the preservation area, out of deference to the preservation program's original patron, Rep. Sydney R. Yates, D-Ill. It was cut only by 25 percent, which meant that other research areas at NEH took a 60 percent cut, a pattern not likely to be repeated, Hammer says. 38 We expect flat funding in 1998, an expectation echoed by a spokeswoman at NEH.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, said that once Congress enacts a budget resolution and resolves the question of abolishing the NEA, the panel is likely to approve either the $110 million the NEH received last year, or the $99 million that the House backed last year.

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., chairman of the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, recently complimented Hackney on his handling of controversies at the NEH. But Clinton's request for $136 million, he said, does not have a snowball's chance in hell.

Policing Indecency

In addition to all the treasures on a library's Internet hookup have come the real-world bugaboos of pornography, hate literature and sexually oriented material that may be suitable for adults but not for children. In June, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act, a Clinton-backed attempt to regulate Internet content passed by Congress in February 1996 but struck down by a panel of judges. In the meantime, many libraries have responded to complaints from parents by subscribing to filtering services that block texts that contain a prescribed list of sexually oriented words and images. In Orange County, Fla., for example, the public library spent $6,000 to subscribe to such a service. 39

In Alexandria, the library posts a disclaimer reminding patrons that if they link to Web sites outside of the library's home page, the library can no longer control the suitability of the content. In Fairfax, most computers do not carry filters, except for a few that were donated, according to librarian Clay. We think it's the adults' responsibility to monitor their children, he says. But we're realistic, so we place all computers in open areas within eyesight of staff.

Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom, opposes filtering devices, saying it is mostly the large libraries that are getting them. My theory is that the smaller libraries have more of a sense of community, and the kids, as with books, mostly stick to what they came for, she says. Krug sees filters as censorship. And as she and many librarians have pointed out, a program that blocks the word breast will censor material on breast cancer or on how to cook chicken breasts, while a program blocking sex will also block sex education and Mars exploration. It's the adults who want to protect the children, and they're the ones accessing the raunchiest sites and then complaining, she says. They're transferring adult interests, concerns and even desires to children that really aren't there. She predicts that the problem might be solved in a couple of years with individualized filtering software that will erase itself when a new Internet user logs on.

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Outlook

At a Smithsonian Institution panel discussion in April, several of the scientists who helped create the Internet looked into the mind- boggling future of computers. They envisioned telephone lines being replaced by wireless networks, and computers everywhere - even an Internet address for every light bulb to sound an alert when it burned out.

Everyone will have access to as much information as they can use, and then some, said former National Science Foundation researcher Steve Wolff. But all the panelists predicted that individuals would always prefer their reading with a book, and that humanity's social and community needs ensured the survival of libraries. 40

Evidence that the Net is around for the long haul can be found in the establishment of the Internet Archive. Run by a staff of 10 in San Francisco, it is preserving for posterity important Web sites such as those that affected debate during the 1996 presidential campaign. 41

The same can be said for all the library digitization projects being launched around the country. Research scientist Lesk predicts that by 2000, half of the material accessed in major libraries will be in digital format. Such a pace may be necessitated by space limitations - futurists estimate that scientific knowledge is now doubling every 12 years. 42

But more and more naysayers point out that the Internet is still a library without librarians, that its World Wide Web and its search engines are littered with expired sites, disappointing links and incomplete indexes. 43

Some say libraries or information systems should be designed to make using them more self-evident, so you can find what you want without intervention, says the ALA's Magpantay. Libraries are ideally suited to provide someone to show you. The two systems can coexist, they're not opposites. Whether the library means a good building with good signage or interfacing with a computer, there will still be a need for experts on information.

And though thousands of librarians have plunged into mid-career computer training, there appears little danger that their old- fashioned concept of serving patrons will fade away.

Total, cataclysmic change is not coming, writes John N. Berry III, editor in chief of Library Journal. We have learned, once again, that most people don't want to be experts in what we do, they don't want to be librarians. They will want what we offer, even though they may not always understand how much expertise it takes to provide it. 44

This is a very challenging time for libraries, a time of dynamic change that is driven partly by technology and partly by the needs of users in the information age, says OCLC's Bishoff. But libraries are well-positioned for it, even if we have to re-evaluate ourselves and continually educate our users. Libraries won't be all online. There will still be a need for a place to meet, a community place, even as more people telecommute. The Post Office just can't play that role. Only libraries can.

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Short Features

In an Age of Terminals, Cursors and 'Mice' Some Miss the Old Wooden Card Catalogs

The conversation piece in Andrew Pace's living room has shiny brass fittings and a familiar walnut finish. Pace and his wife use the old-fashioned card catalog cabinet to store everything from bottles of wine to flashlight batteries.

Pace spotted the relic at a consignment shop when he was studying for his master's degree in library science, and it's a daily reminder of how libraries are changing. But even though he misses the handsome card catalog of bygone days, as a systems librarian at a library automation firm in Emeryville, Calif., he says the on-line system that replaced it is better.

Nothing in the world of libraries has heralded the Information Age so dramatically as the evolutionary sequence that has been unfolding in libraries across the country over the past decade: First, the venerable card catalog is declared frozen, and new entries are barred; then new acquisitions are catalogued only by computer; and finally, once all card entries for the standing collection have been transferred to electronic format, the space-hogging cabinet is hauled from its time-honored spot in the reading room.

A catalog, of course, is a library's sine qua non. (The ancient Sumerians, in fact, referred to catalogs as ordainers of the universe. 1'

Few in the library profession missed the fusillade of criticism aimed at them three years ago by best-selling author Nicholson Baker in The New Yorker magazine. 2

Baker's diatribe was echoed a year later by Clifford Stoll, a self-described former computer addict. In his book blasting the hype of the information revolution, Stoll describes the frustrations of popping into the library in search of a few books and watching instead as a computer screen offers a not-so-handy list of 622 possibilities.

Computerized subject searches can't discriminate between Saturn the planet, Saturn the God and Saturn the car, he writes. So researchers learn a logic system to express their needs - library patrons become computer programmers. 3

Critics of online searching acknowledge some clear advantages: Computers permit library patrons to consult catalogs from the comfort of home, including out-of-town catalogs; they can check which branches have a copy of the book they want and whether it is checked out or on the shelf. Computerized catalogs, they agree, are more wheelchair- accessible, and less vulnerable to damage from mildew, theft and defacement, which have long been frustrating to librarians. In libraries where access to stacks is not permitted, an online catalog can even tell a browser which books are shelved right next to a given book.

But such progress also has introduced new hassles. Often, a patron must learn new software when using an unfamiliar library. Computer systems crash, and there are often long lines at working terminals. The formats of many of the varying catalog designs require the reader to wade through scads of confusing and peripheral information - the call number, for example, often isn't supplied until the third page of a record, in a location on the screen that varies by library.

Baker has other complaints. He writes of a high error rate on the part of computer clerks who keyboard bibliographical information; he bemoans the loss of decades of handwritten corrections and elaborations that professional librarians contributed to the old card catalogs; he laments the loss of ancient cards that document the history of the library itself.

What's more, Baker complains that a computer can't tell when an author's name has changed due to marriage or knighthood, for example. They have a low tolerance for deviation, he says, noting that tiny differences in punctuation or capitalization in a search might cause relevant items to be missed. He gripes that many search systems reject a lot of key words that are just common sense, and that after wafting off in a cyberspace search, it is too easy to lose one's place. Finally, he cites a 1989 study showing that schoolchildren had a lower success rate in finding a book on a computer than in a traditional card catalog.

Jerry Campbell, dean of the library at the University of Southern California, replies that many of Baker's technical criticisms are just plain wrong. Baker's argument is equivalent to saying the printing press was a failure because the folio [the large books common in Elizabethan times] wouldn't work, he says. Online is still in its first generation, and it currently mimics the card catalog. It's getting better all the time.

There is a certain nostalgia attached to the card catalog, particularly among patrons with socio-historical and cultural leanings, says Liz Bishoff, vice president for member services at the Dublin, Ohio-based Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the nonprofit consortium of thousands of libraries worldwide that creates the massive Union Catalog, which contains 36 million separate titles in nearly 400 languages. Bishoff explains the limits of the old card catalog: In the early 20th century, catalog cards were handwritten or typed. To minimize the workload, many libraries had policies that permitted only, say, two subject headings, or no descriptions from the book's contents page. One benefit of going online, she says, is that we're no longer so constrained. We add more than a million new titles a year, so yes, there is bound to be a percentage of typographical errors, but we are looking at ways to curb them through training.

A skilled librarian, Bishoff adds, can help a researcher by structuring a search with effective key words and cross references that guide the user from his own subject headings to headings that the catalog recognizes. An online librarian can also create new combinations, such as biographies of an individual published only within a certain time frame, which ultimately allows the patron more independence in research. Those annoying variations in where different libraries place the call number, she says, stem from the fact that different branches of a library system may keep several copies of a book, one in the juvenile section, one in reference and one in general circulation, for example, each of which requires a slightly different number.

Robert Zich, director of electronic programs at the Library of Congress, which once boasted the largest card catalog in the world, acknowledges that online systems have shortcomings.

That is why there are the Nicholson Bakers of the world, he says. But most of those problems will be solved. I try not to be a fanatic on either side of the question.

Zich points out that he regularly found errors in the LC's old card catalog back in the 1960s and reported them to his superiors. They were from filer inattention, or typos, different names for, say, the Russian czars, or foreign names that the filer didn't understand. And the errors all came from the same source data and went out to OCLC as well. But with the card catalog, the errors were hidden and discovered only inadvertently, whereas with online errors, the mistakes are easily highlighted. With machine-readable data, we can run it through a spell check.

What favored the old card catalog, Zich adds, was that a user could size up a large collection of drawers and get an instant intuitive sense of how much material was available on a topic. (The U.S. government section, for example, comprised hundreds of drawers, which sent many researchers scurrying away.) Experienced researchers, for example, knew that there were about 1,000 cards in each drawer, or 100 cards to an inch.

In addition, the old card catalog allowed for more physical control, he adds. You could place a little piece of paper to mark your place in the drawer and get a feeling of making progress. In the digital environment, you lose the ability to form a quick impression, and adjustments are needed. A digital watch, for example, is more accurate than a traditional watch, but your brain must process it differently, he says.

The advantage of online, Zich continues, is that the catalog can be instantly and quickly updated with a previously non-existent search term, such as Mudbikes. With the card catalog, by contrast, it took months for librarians working by hand to change European War to World War I after World War II changed history. And with all the opportunities for advanced searches nowadays, we've gone so far beyond the old catalog, there's hardly any comparison.

(Indeed, the Library of Congress Web site offers home users round- the-clock choice of four types of searches, using varying combinations of linked words, browsing by subject, custom-tailored commands and more experimental methods that rank catalog records by relevance and permit the user to E-mail results to a home computer.)

The challenge of online, Zich says, is to find out what it was people liked and found effective about the card catalog and make the accommodation.

The transition to the new catalogs is intimidating to some patrons, particularly the older generation - the kids have no problem with it, says Patrick O'Brien, director of public libraries in Alexandria Va. At first, library patrons got confused when he supplied computers that mixed Windows programs with all-text programs, or mixed a keyboard with the mouse or trackball. So he made operations more uniform.

The next step in online catalog searching appears to lie on the Internet's World Wide Web, he notes. Ironically, the way the information is displayed on a Web site is very much like it was on an old card catalog.

[1] Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (1996), p. 191.

[2] Nicholson Baker, Discards, The New Yorker, April 4, 1994, p. 64.

[3] Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway (1995), p. 201.

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Digital Revolution Offers New Way to Preserve Decaying Books and Papers

In the 1970s and '80s, America's libraries and archives took stock of a daunting threat. The crisis, explains Jan Merrill-Oldham, the preservation librarian at Harvard University, was - and still is - the decay over time of millions of valuable books, manuscripts, photographs and sound recordings. Throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries, information was recorded on highly ephemeral media, including acidic paper, unstable film and short-lived magnetic tape, she says. Think about the cultural and intellectual output of this period - the scientific findings, great fiction, the critical records of government. Do we believe that future generations can do without this legacy?

Surveys of North American libraries showed as many as 80 million books threatened with destruction, primarily because they were printed on acidic paper. (Modern publishers have converted to more durable alkaline paper.) In testimony before Congress, historian James McPherson recalled that in the course of reading original books and pamphlets in his research on slavery and the Civil War, I turned these precious but highly acidic pages, [and] some of them tore and crumbled in my hands no matter how carefully and delicately I handled them. I was horrified by the experience of damaging, perhaps destroying the very sources that nurtured my knowledge. 1

In 1985, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) stepped in and set up its Office of Preservation. Two years later, a documentary on the crisis, Slow Fires, was funded by NEH, the Library of Congress and the Council on Library Resources and shown on public television. And in 1989, the NEH announced a 20-year plan to reproduce the pages of 3 million of the nation's most important brittle books and serial publications on microfilm. In 1990, the endowment launched a new program of grants for improvements in climate control for collections held by museums, historical societies and other cultural repositories. At the same time, the NEH increased its support for the efforts of states and territories to catalog and microfilm endangered 19th-century U.S. newspapers.

As a result, NEH Chairman Sheldon Hackney recently told Congress, the NEH is the acknowledged national leader in the effort to preserve cultural resources made from high-acid paper. With NEH grants and private funding, some 750,000 brittle books and 55 million newspapers have been microfilmed, and 27 million objects of archaeological, ethnographic and historical importance have been preserved through improved housing and environmental control. 2

Yet just as the microfilming movement was proceeding apace, the world of books and manuscripts was swept by new digital technology. Digitization may ultimately become an effective means of preserving as well as enhancing access to cultural resources, says George Farr, director of the NEH's Division of Preservation and Access. But these new technologies also present a tremendous preservation challenge due to the incompatibility and rapid obsolescence of computer software and hardware. The nation's cultural institutions must therefore arrive at a shared understanding of the strategies that will be necessary to ensure access to electronic resources as far forward into the future as possible.

Information specialists have been wary of the risks of incompatible technologies for decades. In the mid-1970s, the National Archives decided that data from the 1960 decennial census had long- term historical value, but was bewildered to learn that all of that data was accessible only with a 1960-vintage UNIVAC type II-A computer. The only two machines capable of reading the data were eventually found in Japan and in the Smithsonian Institution. 3

Another problem peculiar to digital technology is fixity - using computer graphics programs to alter text and visual images of documents, raising opportunities for untold mischief. You can put trees on a landscape where they did not exist; you can show Forrest Gump with John F. Kennedy, Farr says. The authenticity of the original is open to question in the absence of some method of protecting the original version as it is transmitted and used. (Indeed, this spring, Kideo Productions Inc. patented an inexpensive technique for placing images of people into existing photographs, for entertainment or educational videos. 4

Digital enthusiasts, notes Merrill-Oldham, often overlook the new challenges inherent in the digital environment. There is this notion that once something is digitized, it leaves the material world. But digitized information resides on tapes and disks, which present greater preservation problems than paper. They must be read by complex machinery and require significant ongoing maintenance, she says. What's more, technology is not as advanced as people are led to believe by the popular press. Try scanning in a page from a 19th- century text that has small, light, spidery text and many broken characters. The results will be pretty disappointing. Nor, she adds, can you buy low-cost equipment that can capture images at high resolution from bound volumes.

The problems of digitization, however, may well be dwarfed by the medium's advantages in expanding access. The NEH, for example, has been instrumental in digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls, Egyptian papyri, an array of ancient Greek texts and the original works of Shakespeare for use by limitless researchers online. One of the wonderful things about digitizing is that it enables the juxtaposition of materials that heretofore have been separate, Merrill-Oldham says. You can gather together virtual collections from different sources, be they huge libraries or local historical societies - some of which have incredible collections. You can distribute widely and use them in new ways. Tiny details on an illuminated manuscript, when scanned at high resolutions and enlarged on a computer screen, really come to life.

To meet the challenges of digital preservation, the National Digital Library Federation was established last August. A combined effort of 12 universities, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the New York Public Library and the Washington-based Commission on Preservation and Access, the group intends to formulate best practices for discovery, retrieval and archiving of digital information as well as create models to clarify economic and intellectual property issues.

A preview of possible solutions to digital preservation conundrums appeared in a pair of reports this spring, both of which assigned a central role to public-sector information specialists. Librarians and archivists can influence vendors and manufacturers to develop new systems that are 'backwardly compatible' with existing ones, wrote the Commission on Preservation and Access. Librarians and archivists can help exercise control over the integrity of digital image files by authenticating access procedures and documenting successive modifications to a given digital file. 5

Not everyone is convinced that digital technology is worthy of high-priority effort. The National Archives' National Historical Publication and Records Commission, for example, in addition to its traditional funding of document preservation is currently exploring the problems involved in preserving electronic records. But it was recently criticized in print by a Yale University historian for neglecting longstanding projects such as publication of the private papers of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The new head of the National Archives has decided that it is more important to preserve modern electronic records in local and state archives than it is to publish the papers of the dead white males who created the government for which he works, he complained. 6

Finding enough money will remain a major obstacle to broadly based digital conversion, Farr continues, in addition to the problem of standardizing procedures among hundreds of libraries and archives. It is somehow appropriate that the cultural patrimony of our democracy is lodged not in one or two large institutions, but in a variety of smaller libraries, museums and historical societies across the country. He notes that the Mellon Foundation is supporting a series of projects that seek to determine whether digital will in fact save libraries money in the long run.

The amount of valuable information held in U.S. repositories calls for funding that goes far beyond the means of any individual research library, adds Merrill-Oldham. When are we going to make a reasonable investment in the survival of our history? When it comes to a broad, national commitment to preservation, we're simply not there yet.

[1] Testimony to House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, April 18, 1991.

[2] Testimony before Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, April 24, 1997.

[3] Commission on Preservation and Access, Preserving Digital Information: Report of the Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information, May 1, 1996, p. 2.

[4] The New York Times, April 21, 1997, p. D2.

[5] Commission on Preservation and Access, Preservation in the Digital World, March 1996, pp. 16-17. See also ibid.

[6] Edmond S. Morgan, Honor The Founding Fathers, The Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1997.

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Bibliography

Books

Birkerts, Sven , The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, Faber and Faber, 1994. An author and critic of English fiction meditates on society's fascination with electronic communications, lamenting what he sees as a decline in patience and depth of knowledge that he associates with the printed word.

Branscomb, Lewis M. , Confessions of a Technophile, American Institute of Physics, 1995. A physicist and public policy adviser weighs the pros and cons of the Information Revolution, arguing that true benefits of science flow not from laboratories but from people in industry, universities and government who cooperate to achieve desired ends.

Michael Gorman , Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality, American Library Association, 1995. A senior analyst at the Research Libraries Group and the dean of library services at California State University, Fresno, weigh the arguments in the debate over the role of libraries in the electronic age.

Dickson, Paul , The Library in America: A Celebration in Words and Pictures, Facts on File Publications, 1986. The rich social history of the library's role in American history, education and community life is dramatized in this compilation.

Paul J. Fasana , The Future of the Catalog: The Library's Choices, Knowledge Industry Publications, 1979. Two New York Public Library technical specialists produced this analysis of the history, structure and outlook for library cataloging, weighing the early versions of electronic cataloging against the card catalog that has been vanishing.

Jane Holland , Information Brokers: Case Studies of Successful Ventures, Haworth Press, 1994. A practitioner of private-sector information service (so-called alternatives to libraries) examines the history and profiles of businesses that sell information to customers.

Manguel, Alberto , A History of Reading, Viking, 1996. A Canadian author and translator penned this lyrical examination of the joys of reading, discussing the role of libraries through history. He writes, At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers - shivered into meaning.

Stoll, Clifford , Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway, Doubleday, 1995. An author and early adapter to computer technology who has since given it up lays out his case for why the electronic revolution may be bringing more troubles than it is worth.

Talbott, Stephen L. , The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, O'Reilly & Associates, 1995. An editor and scholar critiques the claims of pundits who tell you that the computer is ushering us toward a new Golden Age of Information. He examines whether the Internet is an instrument for social dissolution.

Articles

Baker, Nicholson , Discards, The New Yorker, April 4, 1994, p. 64. A novelist and scholar offers a history of the card catalog, bemoaning its demise and finding fault with online electronic searching as its replacement.

Baker, Nicholson , The Author Vs. the Library, The New Yorker, Oct. 14, 1996, p. 50. Baker attacks the new public library in San Francisco, which has been controversial for its emphasis on computers and for discarding thousands of old books that some thought valuable.

Reports and Studies

Douglas L. Zweizig; , The 1996 National Survey of Public Libraries and the Internet: Progress and Issues, National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Final Report, July 1996. This survey of the nation's public libraries found that library connections to the Internet rose 113 percent from 1994-1996, so that nearly 50 percent of libraries are now online. The survey will be updated in 1997.

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The Next Step

Periodical Abstracts Database (for further research)

Filtering

Anand, Geeta , New Library Chief, Menino Clash on Internet Censoring; Filtering Software Would Limit Adults, Invite Tampering, BPL President Argues, The Boston Globe, March 12, 1997, p. A28. The new president of the Boston Public Library and Democratic Mayor Thomas M. Menino appeared to be on a collision course yesterday over whether to censor Internet access at library computers. A library spokesman said yesterday that Bernard Margolis, the library president who began work Monday, would try to persuade the mayor not to use the software because it would limit adults from pursuing legitimate research and make the library's computer system vulnerable to tampering.

Baldauf, Scott , Parents Push for Libraries Free of Internet Porn, The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 19, 1997, p. 15. Some kids don't known much about pornography until they find it on the Internet - at the public library. The issue recently caused a stir in Boston, Mass., when officials at the Boston Public Library admitted they had no way of keeping children from stumbling onto X-rated sections of the Internet on library computers. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino last week ordered the city to install software on library computers to filter out adult-only information. Many, including officials in the American Library Association in Washington, D.C., say that restricting adult Web sites could be the first step toward a cyberspace book burning.

Brown, Diana , Filtering the Net: Libraries Eye Boston Compromise, The Boston Globe, March 30, 1997, p. 1. As many suburban libraries in Massachusetts prepare to give patrons access to graphic images over the Internet and World Wide Web, librarians are being forced to choose between using software to block pornography and violence or remaining true to their ideals of uncensored access to information. Suburban librarians are watching the results of Boston Public Library's decision to use the filtering software.

Kramer, Art , Libraries Online; What About Pornography?, Atlanta Constitution, March 27, 1997, p. F1. Libraries in Georgia's metro-Atlanta area accept varying degrees of responsibility for protecting library patrons from Internet content that many find objectionable. But even libraries that use Internet filtering software advise concerned parents to supervise their children at all times.

Carolyne Zinko , Online Smut in the Reading Room; Net Access Poses Library Dilemma, San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 1997, p. A1. Even though most school children are regularly blocked from browsing X-rated Web sites in class, they can access pornography on the Internet in the most public of places - the local library. Some library patrons are upset at the free-access policy, which is followed by most public libraries and goes along with a policy set by a national library association that fiercely opposes any form of censorship.

Wheeler, Sheba R. , Internet Addicts Pose Library Dilemma; Restrictions Weighed as Porn Appears, Denver Post, March 13, 1997, p. A2. Internet addicts are hogging the computers for hours - sending electronic mail, talking with anonymous friends in chat rooms and leering at Internet porn. On Saturday in Denver, Colo., officials at the city library will begin restricting access to chat rooms and e-mail to free up computer time for bona fide research. In Weld County, the public library is looking at ways to install software to block access to pornographic Web sites after one patron recently left obscene pictures on a public computer terminal. The person also bookmarked World Wide Web sites containing X-rated pictures, leading curious viewers directly to the images.

Funding

Allen, Frank R. , Materials Budgets in the Electronic Age: A Survey of Academic Libraries, College & Research Libraries, March 1996, pp. 133-143. Academic libraries have a host of expenditures for products and services. A survey of the extent to which academic libraries fund these services through materials budgets found that most librarians are continuing to allocate materials budgets in a traditional manner.

Page, Susan , Clinton: Give Schools, Libraries Free Internet, USA Today, Oct. 11, 1996, p. A2. The Clinton administration on Oct. 10, 1996, urged federal and state regulators, who are scheduled to meet in November, to give all schools and libraries free access to basic Internet services. President Clinton also announced he would propose spending $100 million in 1997 on the software and wiring to begin connecting 100 major universities and national laboratories to the next generation Internet.

St. Lifer, Evan , Public Library Budgets Brace for Internet Costs, Library Journal, January 1997, pp. 44-47. Strong national news and encouraging numbers locally are helping public libraries deal with their greatest challenge - finding a way to pay for their new role as the community access point to the Internet. The costs of plugging into the Internet and ways that public libraries are adjusting their budgets are discussed.

Michael Rogers , Discard Charges Roil Dowlin's 21st-Century Library, Library Journal, August 1996, pp. 14- 15. The new Main Library in San Francisco, Calif., has been subjected to heated criticism for discarding approximately 100,000 books, its ties to corporate and special interests and its planned disposal of its old card catalog.

Wiley, Peter Booth , The Library: Tradition vs. Technology, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 26, 1996, p. A19. Wiley comments on the budgetary problems that confront San Francisco's new Main Library, and the trade-off between spending funds for new media vs. print collections.

Internet

Ideas for Our Community Libraries' Online Challenge, Atlanta Constitution, April 7, 1997, p. A6. A May 1996 survey by the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, a presidential advisory group, found that one public library in four provided free Internet access. To boost that figure, the Federal Communications Commission next month will reveal details of a plan to help set up low-cost Internet access at libraries.

Gentili, Kathleen , School Library mMdia Specialists New to the Internet Ask: Where Do I Begin? School Library Media Activities Monthly, January 1997, pp. 25-27. One school library media specialist found it difficult and very time-consuming to locate useful professional resources on the Internet, but she was finally able to build a list of worthwhile sites to use at school. Advice on using the Internet is given.

Pack, Thomas , A Guided Tour of the Internet Public Library, Database, October 1996, pp. 52-56. The Internet Public Library at http://www.ipl.org/ receives 50,000 to 60,000 hits a day. Once online, a user can go into several divisions, rooms and services.

Wilson, David L. , Colleges Welcome Plan to Make Internet Access Cheaper for Libraries and Schools, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 22, 1996, p. A22. A plan to make Internet access less expensive has been hailed by educators as a first step toward directing the information highway to libraries and schools. The program involves government subsidies and discounts.

Libraries' Role

Billington, James H. , Libraries, the Library of Congress and the Information Age, Daedalus, fall 1996, pp. 35-54. Billington examines the history of the American library system and the effect of the information age on the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress has worked to integrate electronic information into traditional sources.

Kent, Susan Goldberg , American Public Libraries: A Long Transformative Moment, Daedalus, fall 1996, pp. 207-220. Kent examines the future of public libraries, stating that while libraries will need to change to accommodate the information age, they will not disappear in favor of cyberinformation filtered in by cyberlibrarians.

Lang, Brian , Bricks and Bytes: Libraries in Flux, Daedalus, fall 1996, pp. 221-234. Lang examines the future of libraries, including what new responsibilities they will need to meet. A national library is key in insuring comprehensive collection and recording of the nation's published archive.

Marcum, Deanna B. , Redefining Community Through the Public Library, Daedalus, fall 1996, pp. 191-205. Marcum examines how public libraries have developed and how they have been maintained in the community. A delicate balancing act between the information-providing purposes, the social purposes and the cultural purposes of the institution is visible in public library systems.

President Clinton on Libraries, Funding, the Internet and the CDA, American Libraries, December 1996, pp. 34-37. In an interview, President Clinton discusses some issues facing the library community and his administration's plans for a second term. Topics examined include the Internet, the Communications Decency Act and the government's movement toward converting to nonprint formats.

Stearns, Susan , The Internet-Enabled Virtual Public Library, Computers in Libraries, September 1996, pp. 54-57. Virtual libraries, their use of the Internet and their prospects for the future are discussed. One way libraries are forming a global virtual library is through the use of Web sites.

Online Cataloging

Akst, Daniel , The Internet Lends Itself to Searching Library Catalogs, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 21, 1996, p. D4. Akst comments on Internet access to online library catalogs.

Lee, Claire , Cataloging a Small Library Collection With a Bibliographic Database Management System, Library Software Review, summer 1996, pp. 82-87. Lee demonstrates how a bibliographic database manager such as Library Master can be used successfully as an online catalog.

Online Libraries

Apple, R. W., Jr. , Library of Congress Is an Internet Hit, The New York Times, Feb. 16, 1997, p. 18. Exactly a hundred years ago, in 1897, the Library of Congress's Jefferson building opened, inaugurating a new, populist era in the history of one of the world's great repositories of knowledge. For the first time, the library's books were available not just to members of Congress and their staffs, not just to scholars and specialists, but to everyone. Now the library is doing the same thing with its special collections, the more than 70 million items in non-book format that it holds, such as the papers of eminent men and women, including those of the first 23 presidents of the United States, Mathew Brady's Civil War photographs, newspaper cartoons, maps - 6 million of them - Gershwin scores and theatrical posters. The goal is to put 5 million items on the Internet by 2000. Already, the library has raised $23.5 million from private sources and has won commitments of $15 million more from Congress, more than half way toward a goal of $60 million. A foundation started by the late David Packard, the California computer magnate, and the telecommunications billionaire John W. Kluge have each given more than $5 million.

Cibbarelli, Pamela , IOLS Software for Special Libraries: An Overview of Today's Best Options, Computers in Libraries, June 1996, pp. 32-39. An overview of the top-selling software for integrated online library systems for special libraries is presented.

Fox, Robert , Tomorrow's Library Today, Communications of the ACM, January 1997, pp. 20-21. Cyber-age form and function combined with public Internet access, electrically operated movable stacks and vast electronic data resources update the old paper-based library model. A list of library and research Web sites is presented.

Lifer, St , Evan, Born-Again Brooklyn: Gates Wires the Library, Library Journal, Nov. 1, 1996, pp. 32-34. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and New York City's political elite announced the launch of Libraries Online!, a program that provides low-income communities with access to online information by wiring public libraries to the Internet. Microsoft will give grants to link 41 libraries nationwide to the Internet.

Reidy, Chris , Infomercial Touts Electric Library, The Boston Globe, Feb. 14, 1997, p. E2. For 16 cents a day, parents can help their children get straight As in school, a perky pitchwoman says in an infomercial now airing locally for a student online data service called the Electric Library. In the 30-minute infomercial for Electric Library, the supporting cast includes educators from Massachusetts schools in Boston, Cambridge, Newton and Wellesley. Along with books, the Electric Library database includes hundreds of magazines and newspapers. Once known as Homework Helper, Electric Library has won awards and the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers.

Technology

Balas, Janet , Selecting Internet Resources for the Library, Computers in Libraries, January 1997, pp. 44-46. As information technologies mature, librarians are struggling to apply their skills in materials selection to the vast world of the Internet. Balas discusses the impact of technology on library collections.

Lyman, Peter , What Is a Digital Library? Technology, Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, Daedalus, fall 1996, pp. 1-33. Lyman examines how the past and future will come together in the concept of the digital library. Digital libraries can balance the needs of the market and the polity, intellectual property and the public interest.

Lynch, Mary Jo , How Wired Are We? New Data on Library Technology, College & Research Libraries News, February 1996, pp. 97- 100. Key findings of a survey of 1,000 higher education institutions concerning the instructional uses of communications technology are presented.

World Wide Web

Balas, Janet , Library Systems Information on the World Wide Web, Computers in Libraries, February 1997, pp. 34-36. Balas discusses the move of library automation products and systems to the Internet. The Web sites of several library automation vendors are examined to learn how familiar library systems and products are evolving onto the Internet.

Saunders-McMaster, Laverna , The 'Coolest' Job in the Library, Computers in Libraries, February 1997, p. 37. The emerging role of Webmaster for librarians is examined. Librarians who have accepted the challenge of managing a Web site have seen their jobs explode with new tasks.

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Contacts

American Library Association
Office for Information Technology Policy, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004
202-628-8421
545-2433.
(headquarters in Chicago, 800) E-mail: oitp@alawash.org. This new section of the association's Washington office promotes the development and utilization of electronic access to information as a means to ensure the public's right to a free and open information society.

Commission on Preservation and Access
1400 16th St. N.W., Suite 715, Washington, D.C. 20036
202-939-3400.
Founded in 1986, this nonprofit group supports collaboration among libraries and allied organizations to ensure the preservation of the published and documentary record in all formats and to provide enhanced access to scholarly information. (The commission will merge July 1 with the Council on Library Resources and become the Council on Library and Information Resources.)

OCLC (Online Computer Library Center Inc.)
6565 Frantz Rd., Dublin, Ohio, 43017
(614) 761-5002 home page,
http://www.oclc.org/
Founded in 1967, this nonprofit consortium of more than 23,000 libraries worldwide produces the world's largest online catalog and promotes computerization of libraries to share costs and materials.

National Endowment for the Humanities
Nancy Hanks Center, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20506
(202) 682-5400.
Founded in 1965, this federal agency provides grants for research, scholarship, educational and public programs, including preservation of books, newspapers and historical documents.

National Commission on Libraries and Information Science
1110 Vermont Ave. N.W., Suite 820, Washington, D.C. 20005. This permanent, independent federal agency advises the president and Congress on national and international issues affecting library and information policy.
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Footnotes

[1] See Hard Times for Libraries The CQ Researcher, June 26, 1992, pp. 549-572.

[2] John Carlo Bertot, Charles R. McClure and Douglas L. Zweizig, The 1996 National Survey of Public Libraries and the Internet: Progress and Issues, National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Final Report, July 1996.

[3] Ron Chepesiuk, Where the Information Superhighway Meets the Back Roads, American Libraries, November 1996, p. 42. See also, Ron Chepesiuk,The Future is Here: America's Libraries Go Digital, American Libraries, January 1997, p. 47.

[4] See Computers in Schools, The CQ Researcher, Oct. 20, 1995, pp. 921-944.

[5] Stephen L. Talbott, The Future Does Not Compute (1995), p. 195.

[6] See Clashing Over Copyright The CQ Researcher, Nov. 8, 1996, pp. 985-1008. See also Regulating the Internet, The CQ Researcher, June 30, 1995, pp. 561-584.

[7] Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman, Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality (1995), p. 1.

[8] Online, January/February 1997, p. 30.

[9] See The End of the Book? D.T. Maxx, The Atlantic Monthly, September 1994, p. 61.

[10] Ron Chepesiuk, Librarians as Cyberspace Guerrillas, American Libraries, September 1996, p. 49.

[11] James H. Billington, Libraries, the Library of Congress, and the Information Age, Daedalus, September 1996, p. 35.

[12] Andrea Neighbours, From the Stacks to the Internet, Librarians Still Keep Up the Search, The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 19, 1996, p. 13.

[13] Cheryl A. McCarthy, Sylvia C. Krausse and Arthur A. Little, Expectations and Effectiveness Using CD-ROMS: What Do Patrons Want and How Satisfied Are They? College & Research Libraries, March 1997, Vol. 58, No. 2, p. 128.

[14] Dr. Julie Todaro, The New Tools of the Trade, School Library Journal, November 1996, p. 24.

[15] Michael Lesk, Going Digital, Scientific American, March 1997, p. 58.

[16] Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (1994), p. 123.

[17] Lewis M. Branscomb, Confessions of a Technophile (1995), p. 140.

[18] Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil (1995), p. 175.

[19] Norman Oder, Online References Emerge, Library Journal, Nov. 15, 1996, p. S74.

[20] Clifford Lynch, Searching the Internet, Scientific American, March 1997, p. 52.

[21] Amy E. Schwartz, The Information Laundromat, The Washington Post, March 22, 1997.

[22] Paul Dickson, The Library in America: A Celebration in Words and Pictures (1986), p. x.

[23] Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (1996), p. 237.

[24] Commission on Preservation and Access, Preservation in the Digital World, March 1996, p. 10.

[25] Alice Jane Holland Johnson, Information Brokers: Case Studies of Successful Ventures (1994), p. 3.

[26] Stoll, op. cit., p. 177.

[27] Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (1996), p. 85.

[28] Nicholson Baker, Discards, The New Yorker, April 4, 1994, p. 64.

[29] Michael Malinconico, and Paul J. Fasana, The Future of the Catalog: The Library's Choices (1979), pp. v, 43.

[30] Johnson, op. cit., p. 5.

[31] David Nicholson, Exploring On-Line Libraries, The Washington Post Book World, April 6, 1997, p. 15.

[32] Los Angeles Times, Feb. 2, 1997.

[33] Nicholson Baker, The Author vs. the Library, The New Yorker, Oct. 14, 1996, p. 50.

[34] San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 9, 1997.

[35] Evan St. Lifer, Public Library Budgets Brace for Internet Costs, Library Journal, January 1997, p. 44.

[36] Bette-Lee Fox with Erin Cassin, Beating the High Cost of Libraries, Library Journal, December 1996, p. 43.

[37] See Arts Funding, The CQ Researcher, Oct. 21, 1994, pp. 913- 936.

[38] See joint written statement from the Association of Research Libraries, Commission on Preservation and Access and the National Humanities Alliance to the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, March 7, 1997.

[39] The Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1997.

[40] The other speakers at the April 16 panel were David Clark, senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, George Strawn, division director for networking and communications research, National Science Foundation, and Sid Karin, director of the Center for Advanced Computational Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.

[41] Brewster Kahle, Preserving the Internet, Scientific American, March 1997, p. 82.

[42] Information Technology Revolution: Boon or Bane? The Futurist, January/February 1997, p. 10.

[43] Margot Williams, Interfacing Reality: The Net Isn't Living Up to Its Promise, The Washington Post, March 10, 1997.

[44] Editorial, Library Journal, January 1997, p. 6.

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