During the last election, people voted loudly and clearly to build and refurbish neighborhoods libraries in communities throughout the United States. Nearly every library now offers free public access to the Internet and over half train residents to utilize electronic information successfully. During this same period, demand for reference librarians has soared by 56 percent, reflecting public thirst for guidance in navigating a bewildering sea of resources. Indeed, libraries in the United States are enjoying a renaissance, even as commercial entities like super bookstores, blockbuster video outlets, and the Internet abound. In fact, users of these services often overlap.
Libraries are the only place where information is freely available for everyone in every community.
Libraries provide communities with precise, replicable discovery tools and materials on every subject from all perspectives in a full range of formats and languages. Users can readily identify and link to these resources from home, work, or their local libraries and then borrow or copy them. Libraries also archive and preserve older titles. Thanks to technology and worldwide collaboration, today s libraries have migrated from a state of scarcity to a state of abundance, transcending their geographic, legal and political boundaries, with librarians serving as knowledge navigators and learning facilitators. What began in the 1950's as the automation of materials processing led to the deployment of computerized databases for locating information in the 1970's.