The Digital Library and the home-based user

Abstract

The rapid digitisation of the information resource has led to a new set of possibilities for the digital storage and dissemination of information. The user of such information is no longer tied to the need to physically access the information resource or to access the information in the form that is pre-determined by the storer or author of the information. The use of network information systems to access libraries of information is set to revolutionise the way in which users access the resource and also as a by-product the way in which authors of information produce their work. Finally to cope with this new paradigm an alteration in the way that information is cplassified is also inevitable as the current systems based on physical objects have little relevance to the new information space of networked information systems.