But if it is to continue to grow and thrive as a new means of communication, something very much like traditional library services will be needed to organize, access and preserve networked information. Even then, the Net will not resemble a traditional library, because its contents are more widely dispersed than a standard collection. Consequently, the librarian's classification and selection skills must be complemented by the computer scientist's ability to automate the task of indexing and storing information. Only a synthesis of the differing perspectives brought by both professions will allow this new medium to remain viable. It is axiomatic that we are a nation of innovators.
Libraries support innovation.
The degree of challenge must be stimulating without being impenetrable, but the ability to respond to these conditions is determined by the resources available - and access to intellectual funds can be as important as access to cash. Libraries have long been seen as the intellectual deposit accounts in the nation's knowledge bank, but they are also the intellectual trading accounts, where different information resources are combined to find new knowledge products. Libraries do more than support the innovation process, they also contain many of the resources needed to turn innovation into competitive action - to scope the commercial feasibility of ideas, investigate the size and conditions of potential markets. Knowledge, and our understanding of what knowledge is, has come under new scrutiny in recent years. A new crop of knowledge management programmes are being created which have taken a critical view of the initiatives which were produced in the knowledge management explosion of the mid-1990s.