ABSTRACT
For centuries, the word "library" meant a collection of written materials surrounded by walls. In the 1980s those walls began to fall. From the great Alexandrian library in the early years of the first millennium through the medieval libraries and into the twentieth century, libraries essentially warehoused written material. Beginning with military defense networks and expanding to research centers, and finally to the worldwide Internet and Web, the trend has been to expand the outer limits of the library building—to break down the walls and make information not only in libraries but also in other types of institutions, even individually published documents, available on a worldwide electronic basis.
