The Internet was actually started over twenty years ago as a project of the Department of Defense to facilitate number-crunching by scientists. Traffic on the Net will continue to grow as more people get connected and discover new ways to use it in their daily activities. Librarians have been using the Internet almost as long as scientists have, and in many of the same ways that other professionals in academe are using it. Then they discovered that remote login would allow them to search each other's online catalogues. Other uses soon followed.
Librarians are heavy users of electronic mail for collaboration on projects and personal networking.
This is especially important because, in many libraries there may be only one staff member trained in a particular specialty, e.g., music cataloguing or Slavic language bibliography. Listservs, which are mailing list managers, allow librarians to ask questions of, and share answers with, a large group of colleagues from all over the world. The Internet is also a source of professional literature and current awareness for librarians through the use of online tables of contents and various current awareness mailings. Some of these mailings are specific to librarianship, while others deal with electronic communication in general, such as Edupage from Educom. In some cases librarians are able to find professional literature on the Internet in full text form.