This book, first published in 1993, examines how the newest technological developments in information storage and processing impact print-oriented libraries. Find answers to questions on how libraries can utilize the awesome speed, remarkable storage capacity, and universal access of the new technology. Authoritative contributors provide insight, inspirations, and practical experience to the three major areas of changing technologies, changing information worldwide, and strategies and responses of libraries to these rapid changes.

A Changing World looks at the future of the electronic network medium and how it will provide opportunities for accessing and using information that so far have been unimagined by the print-dominated information industry. Enlightening chapters explore the feasibility of electronic serials as a realistic replacement for print journals, the future of automated serials control systems, and the effects of information technologies on libraries as systems and librarianship as a profession. Discover timely indications for ten-year trends of the globalization of research, scholarly information, and patents. Specific international influences on information are examined including the implications of the European Community internal market for scholarly publishing and distribution, the influence of rapid changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union on scholarly publishing, and scholarly information and serials in politically turbulent Latin American countries.