Libraries and their OPACs lose out to the competition

The rising expectations of users for ease and speed of information discovery and access is driving them toward ever greater reliance on the Internet, where increasingly valuable commercial and/or free resources directed as satisfying research needs are appearing. Most of these are independent of and often competitive with the library. Information seekers tend to use minimal energy pathways to find the sources they need, a need such online materials satisfy well. In this environment, the classic online catalog, used mainly to find materials on paper, is perceived as having decreasing relevance and as being dull and inefficient. With this diminishment of interest in traditional library tools, interest in the library as an institution is fading. It is up to librarians to prove to our communities that libraries continue to be essential for assuring and protecting a number of important democratic values, including guaranteed open access to information and scholarly communication.