Collaboration among collecting agencies to share costs of development and avoid duplication will help to make effective use of available resources. As already mentioned, many of the technical solutions that libraries require to achieve long term access to online publications are still under development. We are still in experimental mode. Gathering software is primitive and intolerant. Alternative means are being explored.
Publishers continue to use new formats and software.
Gathering software must be continually reprogrammed to keep up. We need effective, tolerant, intelligent, gathering software, a sophisticated archive management facility, interfaces between the archive management facility and the catalogue to reduce the amount of duplicated metadata input, rights management software, and authentication software Collaboration with other libraries doing similar work and partnerships with research institutions and suppliers would facilitate technical developments. Legal issues The legal issues relating to Internet publications are intricate and sensitive. Technically, the capacity for libraries to make information available to their users regardless of location is now almost unlimited. Ironically, however, our right to do so may now be even more limited than has been the case in print.