Computers all over the world are linked by high speed
telecommunications lines. On the other side of their
screens are people of all races and nationalities who
are able to exchange ideas quickly through this network.
This "brain to brain" interface brings both delight and despair, as
evidenced by the following True Tales from the Internet:
-- Children all over the world participate in class collaborations,
sharing holiday customs, local food prices, proverbs, acid rain
measurements, and surveys such as a recent one from a fifth
grade class in Argentina who wanted to know (among other things)
"Can you wear jeans to school?".
-- During the Soviet coup in the summer of 1991, hundreds read
eyewitness accounts of developments posted to the net by computer
users in Moscow and other Soviet cities with network connectivity.
A literal hush fell over this side of the network after a plea came
across from the Soviet side. We appreciate your messages of
encouragement and offers of help, it said, but please save the
bandwidth for our outgoing reports!
- Proliferation of discussion groups on the Internet means one can
find a niche to discuss everything from cats to Camelot, from
library administration to lovers of mysteries, from Monty Python
to Medieval History.
-- Predictably, Elvis has been sighted on the Internet.
Besides electronic mail, full text resources may be downloaded
from many Internet host computers. Some of these are religious
materials, such as the Bible, and the Koran, others are the complete
works of Shakespeare, Peter Pan, and Far From the Madding Crowd.
Searchable resources include lyrics from popular songs, chord
tablature for guitar, recipes, news articles, government information,
Supreme Court Opinions, census data, current and historical weather
information, dictionaries, thesauri, the CIA World Fact Book,
and much more.
Hundreds of library OPACS may be searched, and those with
accounts set up at CARL may use UnCover to find articles of
interest, which then may be faxed on demand.
The richness of the Internet changes on a daily basis as more data
resources, computer resources, and human resources join those
already active on the net.
But, back to that little girl.
How will she get access?
She'll need a plain old telephone line, a modem, a computer, and
some communications software. Will her family be able to afford it?
If not, will she be able to dial in from her school? Her Post Office?
The local feed store? A kiosk at K-Mart?
At the American Library Association's 1992 convention in San
Francisco, Gloria Steinem said "the public library is the last refuge
of those without modems." I'm sure she meant that the library will
act as information provider for those unable to get their
information using a home computer's telecommunications
connections. But it could be taken another way. Couldn't the public
library act as electronic information access centers, providing public
modems and telecommunications alongside the books and videos?