I strongly suspect, however, that the results of last year's conference would have been minimal. Minimal not because we do not support cooperation but rather because we face tremendous obstacles in terms of time, space, culture, and politics. Today we are in a situation that is quite different from that of a year ago. This is, obviously, a condition of the explosive growth of the Internet and a factor of the increasingly sophisticated software tools that allow effective use of the Internet. In particular, the astonishing growth of the World Wide Web suggests that unless we explore and utilize this technology, we will miss an extraordinary opportunity.
University libraries carry an important responsibility in assisting global networking projects.
Universities have a special interest in the Internet as evidenced in the fact that Mosaic was born in an academic setting and in the fact that universities still provide the backbone of information that resides on the Internet. First, university libraries can provide support to the international research community by conducting research into the mechanics of Internet access and the structure of information. Research is usually not associated with libraries, but I can see little choice if we want to remain professionally viable. In the new order of things we may just have to meet our problems head-on. For example, we face a chronic problem with the transmission of East Asian vernacular text over the Internet.