A library is traditionally a place where information seekers come to find answers for their questions. Librarians have gathered information (primarily books and other printed material) and arranged it such that access to their treasures was simplified. And should the library no longer have the information needed, the librarians have over the years acquired resources to help one locate another location where help could be obtained. We prided ourselves on being information specialists, the place one came when one needed information. Underlying this picture are elements which in many ways no longer have quite the importance that they used to have. These elements are of a physical nature: the physical place, be it a community or a building, physical books, physical librarians, physical patrons. These physical objects have at the same time always imposed restrictions on us, our services, our patrons. They take up space (which has always been insufficient for our needs), cost money (which we never have enough of), get sick, have to travel to reach us, etc. Suddenly, however, the "virtual" world has become a reality, and with it we are presented with a world which appears to have none of the physical restrictions which our familiar world has.

Do you remember that years ago there were predictions of a paperless office with the introduction of computers? Since then, however, the amount of paper has increased, not decreased. Today we have predictions that the library will become obsolete withthe total networking of all information. Librarians who believe this will probably do their best to fight a losing battle. We are living in an information society, a society in which knowledge of finding information is of prime importance. In the past wehave said that we are information / resource specialists. These are the skills which will be in even greater demand in the future. The need for our services, for our skills will increase, not decrease. With one stipulation: if we don't prepare ourselves for the new demands which are placed on us, others will most certainly create these services (and probably earn a lot of money in the process). Traditionally we have avoided too much technology and hence when the inevitable acceptance of the new technology was in place we adapted it to our services. We seldom took an active part in the process. It is now up to us to make a major move in making our expertise a viable, visible commodity among the offerings of the institutions actively seeking customers for their servicess.

It would be wrong to assume that an individual library, much less an individual public library, can effectively compete against the big names fighting for a place in this market. Recently there has been a trend to create local consortia to offer effectively databases to a large public, so that the individual libraries do not have their budgets unnecessarily depleted. What we now need is to create much larger consortia offering our combined expertise in finding information, in providing answers to theincreased demands which are being placed on us. It will be up to us to find ways in which we can effectively offer and market these new possibilities so that we can position ourselves to have a visibility and accesptance within the virtual community similar to that which we have traditionally had within our local communities.