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The article reports that while more than 99 percent of public libraries in the U.S. offer Internet access, many have not kept up with increasing infrastructure demands, which may have implications for demand at academic libraries. An average of 10.7 public access workstations are owned by public library branches, the article notes. Bandwidth speed has slightly declined, with 62.1 percent of public library branches having connection speeds of greater than 769kbps. Nearly 80 percent of libraries also claim to have insufficient workstations some or all of the day.

The article reports on the participation of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Library and School of Information and Library Science in the Open Content Alliance (OCA). OCA is a group of international organizations that are constructing a permanent archive of digitized text and multimedia materials on the Web. The school is the first from a university to join the alliance, and the library is the first library to contribute manuscript materials. And collections included in the archive are freely available for access and reuse.

A Dun and Bradstreet survey of 1,319 two- and four-year institutions finds a 13% increase in spending on information technology in 2004. Internet access is offered in 100% of the college libraries, 40% of the dorms and residence halls, 41% of the student centers, 64% of the classrooms and 94% of the computer labs.