This provides a spine for a community information system that includes grassroots community organizations as well as larger agencies. It can serve not only citizens looking for information, services, or volunteer opportunities. Libraries are also a logical place to convene citizens, not only to focus on technology, but to use it as a means to get the information they need to make effective decisions. In Hartford, Conn., for example, the library created a room where civic information is so well presented that city council committees began meeting there. On city maps, they could study the areas which citizens, police, youth, and bureaucrats identified as trouble spots and places where extraordinary citizen action was going on.
Libraries are logical places to focus and localize the information.
It can also be put on-line for use by citizens and media. Libraries of the future could become true public education and communication centers, linking up in some cases with public broadcasting and community media. Neighborhood databases, drawing from daily and weekly newspaper coverage as well as information submitted by community groups, could provide a wealth of useful history for new residents as well as a record of what decisions were made in the past, and why. One national organization doing pioneering work in this arena is Libraries for the Future .