Internet access enables libraries to leverage their resources so as to acquire more of the scholarly record, and to own materials collectively and share them between libraries and their end users. In the years ahead, libraries will communicate and provide access to information in a variety of formats – digital, voice, graphic – and employ multimedia technologies via a ubiquitous and seamless web of interrelated networks. Public access programs and policies proposed and implemented today will be central to this emerging information infrastructure.
Predictor: National Research Council
Prediction, in context:In 1994, the NRENaissance Committee, appointed by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council, produced a special report titled “Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond.” Among the committee members were Internet pioneers Leonard Kleinrock, David Clark, David Farber, Lawrence Landweber and Robert Kahn. The committee’s goal was to “study issues raised by the shift to a larger, more truly national networking capability.” Among its statements about the blossoming of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) is this:”Libraries are changing with the evolution of information infrastructure. Recent Association of Research Libraries’ statistics indicate that research libraries are moving from the ‘just-in-case’ model of on-site resources to the ‘just-in-time’ model of resource-sharing. As physical-acquisitions costs for scholarly information in print form mount for libraries, interest in ‘no-fee’ (or low-cost) information through the Internet grows as well. Printed-service subscriptions and monograph acquisitions are declining. Internet access enables libraries to leverage their resources so as to acquire more of the scholarly record, and to own materials collectively and share them between libraries and their end users. In the years ahead, libraries will communicate and provide access to information in a variety of formats – digital, voice, graphic – and employ multimedia technologies via a ubiquitous and seamless web of interrelated networks. Public access programs and policies proposed and implemented today will be central to this emerging information infrastructure.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Libraries/Databases
Name of publication: Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond
Title, headline, chapter name: Libraries and the Broadening of Public-Interest Networking
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://stills.nap.edu/html/rtif/
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney