Here they will have to use the vendors' own interface. International projects have for many years worked on integrating different library databases. A search protocol, Z39.50, has been developed making this possible. This gives the user the possibility to search many databases through a common interface. A main task in the coming years will be to operate commercially available systems and integrate these with the existing services.
Subject based gateway Internet is an important source of knowledge.
Today s search engines do not give satisfactory access to this information. The precision is too low, the hits too many, and the quality of the information very variable. Many libraries have developed their own gateways to Internet, and offer their users a selection of high quality links registered in a database. The libraries will catalogue the Internet resources. The advantage of such an arrangement will be greater stability, a common standard of classification and cataloguing, links to high quality resources and control of these links, etc.