ibraries were studying how to store an
enormous amount of data and make it available on the internet
through a reliable search engine. Library 2000 was a project
run between 1995 and 1998 by the MIT Laboratory for Computer
Science (MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to explore
the implications of large scale online storage, using the
digital library of the future as an example. It developed a
prototype using the technology and system configurations
expected to be economically feasible in 2000.

Another project was the Digital Library Initiative, supported
by grants from NSF (National Science Foundation), DARPA
(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and NASA (National
Aeronautics and Space Administration). As mentioned on its
website in 1998: "The Initiative's focus is to dramatically
advance the means to collect, store, and organize information
in digital forms, and make it available for searching,
retrieval, and processing via communication networks - all in
user-friendly ways."

The British Library was a pioneer in Europe. Brian Lang, chief
executive of the library, explained on its website in 1998: "We
do not envisage an exclusively digital library. We are aware
that some people feel that digital materials will predominate
in libraries of the future. Others anticipate that the impact
will be slight. In the context of the British Library, printed
books, manuscripts, maps, music, sound recordings and all the
other existing materials in the collection will always retain
their central importance, and we are committed to continuing to
provide, and to improve, access to these in our reading rooms.
The importance of digital materials will, however, increase. We
recognize that network infrastructure is at present most
strongly developed in the higher education sector, but there
are signs that similar facilities will also be available
elsewhere, particularly in the industrial and commercial
sector, and for public libraries. Our vision of network access
encompasses all these."

The Digital Library Programme was expected to begin in 1999.
"The development of the Digital Library will enable the British
Library to embrace the digital information age. Digital
technology will be used to preserve and extend the Library's
unparalleled collection. Access to the collection will become
boundless with users from all over the world, at any time,
having simple, fast access to digitized materials using
computer network