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The article presents an analysis on the digitization and characteristics of in-copyright print books which are published after 1923 in the U.S. Using WorldCat databases, it is revealed that the total print book collection is managed by a wide range of institution types within the group of libraries that keep this resource. It also explains that the 12.6 million print books discovered were considered as an aggregate collection which is authored by up to 3.7 unique individuals.

The British Library's Initiatives for Access programme aimed to ‘help the Library to come to terms with [digital] technology’. Libraries are institutions that have developed in a print world. They have become important public places, their use has become part of the normal behaviour of readers, and they have evolved a set of practices around the management of print collections. As we move towards a digital age, there are concerns as to how these practices and values should be re-created. It is not yet clear how congenial digital information spaces will be established. In the digital world the emphasis shifts from what can be done in physically constrained places to flows between information repositories and users. Repositories, flow and control will need to be managed and brought together into hospitable ‘information landscapes’. This should be done within a common frame of reference, with agreed standards for (e.g.) resource identification, structures to control differently encoded materials, and appropriate metadata. Users must be presented with services organized around their information uses and behaviour. We are just beginning to imagine what such an information landscape might look like; the World Wide Web offers only a shallow premonition. The challenge to the British Library over the coming years is not only to serve as a central learning place but to organize a social and learning space.

Examines the nature of community networks and how they developed, in order to provide public librarians and decision makers with a view of emerging trends and of points of contact and comparison within the area of community information services. The research took the form of an extensive literature review, focusing on the period between 1992 and 1997, backed up by a number of community network Web sites randomly selected from the Communities Online Forum. At a later stage, a number of librarians were interviewed concerning their perception of the use of networks in public libraries’ community information services. These interviews supported the literature survey in a number of ways and unearthed some relevant literature in obscure sources that might otherwise have been overlooked. Some evidence from the interviews caused a reappraisal of the literature. The survey covered: the concept of community networks; development of community networks in the UK and USA; UK community networks using non Internet technologies; UK community networks on the World Wide Web and on intranets; the role of community networks in communication and education; and the recurrent suggestion that community networks might foster people’s social participation through electronic mail, discussion forums, online voting systems and through greater access to legislation and other government information. Concludes that the emerging network services bring together previously distinct participants and services and may lead to a new division of labour in libraries in such activities as document delivery. As public libraries build the ‘people’s network’ it will be important to learn from and build on community networking experiences.

In his chapter on libraries and librarians in A history of reading, Alberto Manguel calls librarians ‘ordainers of the universe’, an epithet used, he tells us, by the Sumerians. He discusses the efforts of Callimachus to ordain the order of books at The Library of Alexandria and notes that ‘With Callimachus, the library became an organised reading‐space’. (1) These phrases are useful handles on which to hang a view of what it is libraries do. Libraries may no longer aim to collect and classify all documented knowledge,, but their selection and acquisition policies have ‘ordained’ the view of knowledge and learning their readers have had, as well as which materials have become a part of the intellectual record libraries jointly create with archives, museums and others. The library has further organised these materials in ways that are useful to their users; it is not merely an unordered aggregation. In this paper I want to explore some aspects of this organisation in a new environment. What ‘organised reading‐spaces’ will libraries create in a network society?

The Internet is a worldwide network of electronic networks which is growing rapidly. Access to resources is facilitated by a number of ‘systems’, including Gopher and World Wide Web. Improvements in the organisation of and access to Internet resources are certain to be developed, and librarians may have a rok to play. Meanwhile libraries are involved in introducing users to different kinds of information resources including those available on the Internet. Art librarians should be aware in particular of five sites which are useful starting points foi looking at art resources in the Internet: ArtSource, Art Navigator, ArtWorlc Online, World Arts Resources, and Fine Art Forum Online.

The article presents a framework for assessing the future of U.S. academic libraries based on the concept of transaction costs, which determine what information-related services a library could offer internally or to contract with outside sources. It explains how network technologies are reducing the costs of establishing and managing interactions with external parties, gradually changing the composition of the internalized and externalized services university libraries provide and thereby reconfiguring the boundaries of these institutions.

The article reports on the efforts undertaken by Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in the recombination, mashups and remixing of research Web services. The general approach is to identify functionality that can be embedded in larger applications or to identify new functionality which can be reused more easily by other applications. Web service is used for a set of emerging approaches that allow applications to communicate using Web-based protocols.

The article presents information about the Service Framework Group formed by the Digital Library Federation for aligning the functions of libraries with emerging information environments. This framework will help the research institutions in planning the services that are to be provided in order to meet the emerging information needs. It is a tool for documenting a shared view of library services in changing environments. It helps in focusing attention and organizing discussion.

The article discusses the management of a long tail of research, learning and cultural materials by libraries in the U.S. Long tail is described in terms of aggregation of supply and demand. The aggregation of supply is more on the improvement discovery and reduction of transaction costs while aggregation of demand is more on mobilizing a community of users to increase the chances of better services between resource and user. Services operating at the network level will offer management of collections.

The article reports that Google Inc.'s December 2004 announcement of its intention to collaborate with five major research libraries to digitize and surface their print book collections in the Google searching universe has stirred conflicting opinion. The project has been vigorously debated on discussion lists and blogs, with the participating libraries commonly referred to as "the Google 5." The Google Print Library Project (GPLP) has galvanized a long overdue, multi-faceted discussion about library print book collections. The print book is core to library identity and practice, but in an era of zero-sum budgeting, it is almost inevitable that print book budgets will decline as budgets for serials, digital resources, and other materials expand.

The article opines that research and learning are increasingly supported by digital information environments. The as yet unfulfilled promise is a rich fabric of scholarly resources, learning materials, and cultural artifacts, seamlessly integrated and readily accessible, organized in ways that facilitate traditional uses and encourage new uses as yet undefined. Fulfilling this promise requires the cultivation of stakeholder communities that, through their working and learning experiences, meaningfully engage with digital information environments

The article announces the changes of the journal "RLG DigiNews" with regards to its publications with new featured articles. According to the author, the publication has been rethinking its program which is aimed to support its new agenda of providing better information on digital preservation and supports the re-invention of cultural institutions. The said changes are expected to be integrated by January 2008.