Libraries In the digital age

Abstract

In the last few years, profound technological advances have affected the notion of what is a library. The different meanings attached to this term have introduced misinterpretations of, and discontinuities in, traditional library missions and functions. The far-reaching social and cultural effects of the Internet have caused something of an identity crisis in libraries. Yet, changes in the meaning of the term library are not new. The notion of what is a library has always been shaped and reshaped by contextual factors. What has remained, and which gives continuity to libraries, are their goals of collection, organisation, access, and preservation. The changes libraries are experiencing should be aprroached in a progressive way, one that assumes the changes should be both programmatic and structural. Library should adopt the concecpt of integration to fully cope with new cultural and technological realities.