A diversified environment that includes the right balance of local intranet servers and Internet-based resources will offer better performance and will leave your library less vulnerable when inevitable technical problems occur. CD-ROM and DVD will continue to grow as the preferred medium for applications that have intensive sound, video, and animation, as well as for the distribution of software. For these kinds of applications, CD-ROM and DVD will continue to be the preferred media. In today s environment, it makes sense to consider the Web as the standard approach. The size of most applications has grown so large that distribution on diskettes is unthinkable, and downloading from the Internet could take days.
Libraries increasingly have to deal with CD-ROMs in their circulation operations.
I certainly expect that CD-ROMs and DVDs will gradually increase as a proportion of materials circulated in libraries. DVD will likely supplant CD-ROM over time, but the transition will take several more years. It is just now getting to the point where you should be thinking about DVD drives instead of CD-ROM drives as you buy new computers for your library. Most computer hardware manufacturers offer DVD as a fairly minimal added-cost option now. In a year or two, DVD drives should be standard.