The crucial factor in the success of the nonvirtual library are the people who work there and serve the user. Resources, collections, facts with no human guidance or presence. On many library Web sites, the user is hard-pressed to identify the staff, whose names, if they're there, are five levels down. The human factor is still important. Co-opt existing technologies that haven't been used in libraries, and take advantage of cooperative efforts in information access.
Libraries can afford less and less wasteful inefficiency and duplication of effort.
That widespread distribution tool, the Web, is making library resources available to more people than ever before and blurring the lines between audiences. The World Wide Web allows more access by more people to more connected information than ever before in history, but documents and identities are also more malleable than ever before. Libraries are going to have an increasing interest in verifying that you are who you say you are, you do have the right to access this resource, and the resources you are receiving are authentic. Often just as important to libraries as emerging technologies are submerging technologies. For example, you need to be planning now to migrate away from CD-ROM and toward the Web as a delivery mechanism for index, abstract, and full text databases.