Changing Roles in Information Dissemination and Education

Abstract

The World Wide Web is changing the face of today’s academic libraries, that is, the way in which we use them and how we give value to them. In this article, the author explains what the Web means to the academic library and why it has become worthy of consideration. He shows that the Web will have a great impact on the library, whether the library wants it to or not, and that this impact will in large part be dictated to the library by forces both technologically and socially based and, therefore, beyond the library’s overall control. Some consequences that the author sees of attempting to ignore Web technology or providing inadequate resources to it are discussed as well. Finally, he presents some of his observations on how the Web is changing the balance between the library as provider of information and teaching faculty as providers of education.