It was the WWW, which changed the picture in a way nobody had imagined. The integration of graphic elements and user-friendly interfaces made the Internet attractive and accessable for many people. Today, nearly everybody and everything is available on the web. An email address is a must for every professional and many people have private homepages. In Germany, all important institutions have a website and a great many companies too.
Libraries are no exception.
It is no longer possible to give an exact number of existing websites. IBM and Altavista estimate some 500,000,000 pages. The WWW provides access to a huge and constantly growing amount of information. It was not designed, however, as an information source, but as a tool for communication. The quality of the content is therefore as good or bad as the match between the sender s input and the receiver s needs.