Its growing use provides the public with broader access to valuable information in a more timely, efficient and effective manner. A major concern, however, is that the rapid transition to a nearly all electronic FDLP will be viewed by policy makers not in terms of increased public access but as a way to reduce costs to the federal government. There is in fact no cost data to prove this assumption, at least in the short term. We reiterate our belief that federal information policy decisions should not be based on reducing costs to the federal government. The library profession has been thinking in new ways about the best possible practices for libraries to assure cost effective, equitable access to the tremendous information resources of the federal government.
Librarians understand that the information environment is wonderfully complex.
Working on the front lines, librarians know and appreciate that special moment when the rubber hits the information highway. When the individual seeks, finds and puts to use the information essential to solving a problem, averting a mistake, creating a new product, understanding a market or turning a profit. Because we see the information process from this end user perspective, librarians rejoice at the expanded options and efficient access that characterize today's federal information strategies. At the same time, we have up close understanding of the complexities and of the multiple uses to which federal information resources are put. We know that intelligent navigating happens at its own pace.