4 Resource Sharing Libraries have a long tradition of resource sharing. This function involves, for example, reciprocal borrowing privileges, coordinated collection development, preservation programs, shared cataloguing, and union lists of serials. Resource sharing has been carried out through many associations, consortia, cooperative projects, and other formal and informal partnerships and agreements. In the United States, libraries have begun to create resource-sharing strategies for digital information. In Canada, no such cooperative arrangements for digital information yet exist.
Libraries organize information.
Libraries organize knowledge through the processes of subject analysis and cataloguing, thus creating information about information, or metadata . Now, this process is complicated by the fact that digital documents can exist in several formats, in several versions, in locations that may not be fixed. A document or resource may exist at one network location one day, and disappear the next. A major challenge will be to develop methods to consistently and conclusively identify and retrieve information regardless of format or location. If libraries do collect digital information, it is far from clear that they could offer access to it.