The second primary highlight of our study will be computer mediated document delivery by the use of various types of accessible electronic texts, including digital audio. Most historians of modern library systems are quick to point to statements made in 1961 by the mathematician John Kemeny, who predicted that the library of the year 2000 would consist primarily of terminal connections to distant computer sites holding text materials in central locations across the world. Even though it was not immediately recognized at the time, the OPAC was a god-send for disabilities access, especially for blind and visually impaired users. Line-input OPACs together with adaptive technology devices such as screen readers and refreshable braille displays made library catalogs fully accessible to many persons with disabilities for the very first time. Through facilities such as Telnet, and now the World Wide Web, anyone with an Internet connection can now use the OPACs of libraries throughout the globe, assuming of course that the catalog is connected to the Internet.
Libraries designed specifically for persons with disabilities are no exception.
The cassette tapes are then mailed to users. In effect, this database is a hybrid system which combines both the functions of bibliographic access and document delivery functions into one service. The practice of merged library databases, where one electronic catalog lists the holdings of several libraries, has been common for several years, especially among academic libraries. The sharing of automated data ultimately helps library users to identify where particular information materials may be found without having to contact each library individually. In times of shrinking government funding and increasing costs of monographs and journals, ILL programs have become an essential part of libraries' document delivery operations.