Today’s information consumer tapping into international library services: making it a reality

Abstract

Today’s information consumer operates in an increasingly international environment that facilitates easy access via generic search engines with simple, intuitive interfaces and offers interactive ordering and payment and online or offline delivery. Internet resources are evolving from being not only sources of information but to being sources for collecting information via interactive user collaboration. This paper examines the elements that need to be gathered together to modernize library services so that they will scale to operate at local, regional, national and international levels with a focus on discovery, collaboration and delivery. Progress on international discovery is being made but libraries world wide need to make major policy changes in order to create operative delivery services and a collaborative environment that will attract the evolving generation of users and place the modern library in the middle of the information web.