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Information Technology in Libraries
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Libraries have long played an essential role in containing, preserving, and sharing information. Countless civilizations have, over thousands of years, produced and relied on various types of information, from creation stories to herd counts to tax rolls. These facts, philosophies, and communications were recorded because individuals in these societies saw some purpose in sharing this lore and information with others in the present and in preserving it for the future generations. This explosion of information we have seen over the last two decades is merely the latest phase in a long-running battle: how can societies maintain their collections of facts, history, images, data, and fiction as the amount of these items increase rapidly? Over thousands of years, libraries have been adopted as a mechanism for accomplishing these purposes; were it not for libraries, we would have little or no knowledge of past generations or civilizations.
At each step along the way, libraries would have failed in their efforts without information technology. We tend to imagine technology as only involving computers and electronic devices, but technology encompasses both products and processes that people create. Handling information requires a diverse collection of practical tools and processes. Looking at technology in the library world, processes would include the methods for rebinding books or classifying the items in a collection, and DVD recorders or full-text periodical databases are examples of products. Information technology as a whole, then, includes any items or methods for containing, transmitting, and storing information.
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