He cited statistics of the ever-increasing figures for book production in the United States. Copyright is not the problem. The digital age faith that copyright will be worked out and everything will be on-line is fallacious. Copyright problems cannot possibly be solved in cyberspace. Nancy Reger addresses a few of the 170 attendees at the institute.
Customers have higher expectations.
The final speaker before the lunch break was Bernie Sloan of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The need to maintain the human touch, newly define the role of a reference librarian, and provide adequate staff training in a digital library was highlighted during five simultaneous focus group discussions, summarized in a final wrap-up session on June 30. Even though the focus groups began by discussing diverse aspects of digital reference services, most eventually identified similar concerns and drew almost the same conclusions, Ms. Lipow inferred at the end of the session. Library staff need a certain level of competence in dealing with electronic resources today. The group also mentioned that the library community should increasingly share resources and technical know-how.