Libraries as Communicators of Information

In the United States there are over 85,000 publicly available libraries in communities, public schools, and colleges or universities (Information Hotline, 1978). These institutions represent a major storehouse of human knowledge. Their value, however, rests not in their facility to store information (which was a primary role in medieval times) but to disseminate it in large quantities to a knowledge-seeking public (see, for example, Branscomb, 1979). New library media today can provide the mechanism for this large-scale dissemination, and this chapter will discuss research on how humans interact with the new technology in libraries. But the technology also offers a great deal more. Modern technology offers libraries the promise of becoming the communications links between institutions, communities, and even countries as new computerized library systems are linked together. That also is the topic of this chapter.