Challenges of Electronic Resources: State of the Art and Unresolved Issues English version presented at the International Conference = Le sfide delle risorse elettroniche: stato dell’arte e problemi irrisolti Versione italiana presentata alla Conferenza internazionale

摘要

As the first year of the new millennium comes to an end, we are well into an era that has revolutionized the theory and practice of library and information science. Anyone who entered the profession before the early 1990s could not have been prepared for what has followed the birth and proliferation of what we currently call "electronic resources". The overwhelming and every expanding mass of material technologically available on the Internet has been especially daunting to the profession. According to studies conducted by staff at OCLC, by June 30, 2001, the public Web includes more than 3.1 million sites, a six percent increase over last year’s total. The Web as a whole grew by 18 percent, reaching a total of nearly 9 million sites. Even though the OCLC study reveals that the rate of expansion has begun to slow down, the sheer magnitude of material already on the Web and being posted there each and every day presents an unprecedented challenge to the profession in terms of traditional responsibility to organize, provide access to, and preserve information. As another measure, the Internet Archive now has more than 10 billion entries, dating from 1996 and growing at a rate of 10 terabytes per month, thereby eclipsing the amount of data contained in every library in the world, including the Library of Congress.