Over the last 12 months libraries have been making the Internet publicly accessible to their users. Libraries have often justified the need for these workstations as a way of accessing web sites containing fairly static data, documents which had been published online, such as Hansard, and other reference type materials. As vendors of bibliographic databases discover the benefits of making their databases accessible via the web rather than on CD-ROM, the public Internet workstations are seen as increasingly vital for accessing basic reference tools. Most libraries continue to provide their Internet workstations as a substitute for printed tools, albeit with the added advantages of increased searching and output capabilities, and for enhancing the collection by providing access to a much broader variety of content than previously possible in print. By and large, libraries would prefer that the users' "interaction" with these tools be limited to search and retrieval.

Policies, practices and attitudes within libraries tend to restrict, discourage or prohibit the use of the communications capacities of the Internet. For example, some Acceptable Use Policies for Internet workstations ban the use of email. Communication resources are often considered to be "time wasters" by staff and (judging by comments which come from our suggestion box) some users.

Potentially, this is a dangerous direction for libraries to be heading, both professionally and ethically. It is based on a limited perception of the impact which the new medium of the internet has had upon libraries’ core business and place in the Information Cycle.

One very simple way of representing information creation looks like this:

The sort of medieval library described in the novel The Name of the Rose encapsulates the entire cycle described above - the monks are the creators, the "publishers", the organizers and consumers of the world's knowledge. There is not much creativity, not much distribution, but at least the whole thing is kept inhouse. Maybe this is one reason why the novel appeals so much to librarians.

The advent of printing, the growth of the literacy and the reading public, lead to a radical shift in the library's perceived involvement in the process. The library collects, organises and archives but with some very minor exceptions, most of the other elements of the cycle are considered outside the library's zone of interest. Marx writing Das Kapital in the reading room of the British Museum probably did not figure largely in the consciousness of the managers of his day.

Outside the irregular exercise of writing the library's mission statement, the main focus of attention for today's library managers tends to be on the area below the dotted line, despite the fact that libraries continue to be places where people create and - since the advent of the photocopier - publish on a large but unknown scale.

Our thinking tends to be focussed on providing access to the storehouse, to the Collection. From this perspective, the user is seen as something like an empty jug, or sponge, who must be filled up with the information delivered by the library.

The more static model of collecting and providing information in a "read only" fashion makes a good deal of sense given the dynamics of print publication. The printed work is a tangible object which is easily stored, organized, and produced when relevant information is required. The sense of matching a query with an answer, like playing "snap", has carried through to many libraries' approaches to providing Internet access. Certainly the Internet provides a great deal of extremely valuable read only, static information, and is increasingly becoming a central platform for the publishing, distribution, organizing and archiving aspects of the information chain described above.

But any librarian would agree that the Internet goes far beyond this role. On the Internet, the distinctions between publisher and absorber of information, between reading and actively interacting with information and information producers, are well and truly blurred. Once, a user might come to the library and track down the contact details of an organisation in a directory. The user might note that down, and possible write a letter (perhaps sitting in the library!) stamp and address an envelope, and possibly post it in the mail box down the road. Now the user can often track down the organisation online, view their web page, and contact them using an email link. Identifying and communicating can now take place in the one medium. Users no longer have to leave one place to go to another - unless we make them.

Whatever its capacity as a publication and distribution medium, the Internet demonstrates its most unique strengths as a communication medium. The "killer app" of the internet is email. A recent survey conducted by the Association of Information Technology Professionals which covered all major business classifications in the US concluded that 85 percent of those companies using the Internet were using it primarily for inter-company electronic mail. Many of us have enthusiastically embraced the communication capacity of the net, which is well demonstrated by the plethora of library related discussion groups. Of personal friends and relations, most that are getting internet access in their homes are doing so because they want email access.

As an information source, most of us would be very aware of the value of discussion lists to our profession. Discussion lists tap into that most intelligent of retrieval engines, the collective memory and experience of a group of people who are interested in the same topic. They are interactive, have very high currency, and they are in the language of the user group. They follow that most basic paradigm for information exchange, the conversation.

All the commercially motivated hype about the interactivity of multimedia cannot disguise the essentially limited nature of many of those interactions, which are programmed in beforehand. Compared to the boundlessness of email discussion, of the chat lines, the average multimedia product is static and linear. The cursory examination of the sorts of activity currently underway on two lists with which the authors are familiar illustrates the richness of this environment.

Liblicense also has a role as a cross-sectoral developer of law, basically because its membership extends to publishers and lawyers as well as librarians. Occasionally publishers have mailed the list to ask about the potential impact of a product license condition for libraries. This list and web site has the ability to change electronic licensing law on a daily basis! The outcome of the information exchange between the different sectors represented on the list is knowledge creation, and can be used to foster better communication between the producers and users of information resources.

Preemie-l is a discussion group for parents with children born six weeks or more before due date (and also their family and friends), hosted by VICNET. The list has been running for two years, and has many hundreds of members world wide.

The Preemie-l discussion list is probably the best resource in the world for parents with premature babies who are trying to cope with a scary and traumatic situation. This discussion list not only meets their information needs, but also functions as a self help, mutual support group as well. Its value to the group is profound. It is not only creating knowledge and drawing on a pool of knowledge, but enabling people in a tangible way to work through issues. Preemie-l is primarily a discussion list, but has other manifestations. In addition to its role as a forum and mailing list, the group produces a newsletter and other irregular publications. Of all of these manifestations, the printed form, the newsletter, is probably the most restricted in terms of the range of informational content. The newsletter is also the only manifestation of the list that is currently deemed worthy of addition to the Collection in the thinking of at least some of our colleagues. Passively absorbing the messages posted by others via the online archive is the only form of participation in the list which some library "acceptable use" policies will sanction.

Ironically, although email has been a great driver of the acceptance, adaption and spread of knowledge about new library tools and resources, it seems to become problematic when placed in the hands of our users. Colleagues argue that we should block the communication capabilities of public terminals. "We don't provide free fax or free telephones, so why should we provide free email?" At the State Library of Victoria, where eight public access terminals are available, we have had much heated correspondence from users in our Suggestion Box about the Internet workstations - ranging from "there aren't enough Internet workstations. I need to have access to email so I can let my family know I'm OK" (you guessed it - from backpackers!) to "stop people from emailing - I want to do some serious study!".

Both in preparation for this paper and because of the comments we were receiving from staff and from the suggestion box, we engaged in some furtive observation of our users activities on the State Library’s public access workstations. We used a product called "Real Time Monitor 2.1" by On Guard Software. This software displays the workstation IP address and the URL of the site most recently accessed by that workstation in a real time stream. The observer can click on a site to see what the user is accessing. It allows the observer to block access to any site (which raises some interesting ethical and professional issues in its own right).

Over several observation periods, below is what seems to us a fairly typical 30 minutes for our eight workstations:

Chat

Movie clips

Firefly (chat)

Hotmail

Chat

Hotmail

Chat

Rockband

World Cup 98

Star Wars

Yahoo

Geocities

Sci Fi Site

Jobs at Monash Uni

Monash Faculties

LYCOS search engine

ORIS Hardware Site

Japanese Camera Site

Hotmail

Swedish language site – Stocks and Shares

Mail – Excite

Chat

VICNET search

Sci/MUD Games

Hotmail

RMIT Website

Monash Uni

Hotmail

Lycos

News Site from Beirut

Our observations suggest that more than half of the available time at any workstation will be spent utilising some communication facility.

More formal, independent research also indicates that there is substantial potential demand for provision of email facilities through public libraries and other host organisations – to the extent that users are prepared to pay for the service.

We have put forward arguments to demonstrate that there is good reason to provide access to communication facilities, and that there is significant demand for such services in libraries. There are, of course, serious issues to be addressed in providing these services.

• As indicated above, our users are not unanimous in their approval of the use of online technologies, for communication purposes. Competition for a scarce resource encourages value judgements about "appropriate use".

• As a profession we are divided in our opinion of the worth and role of communication facilities in libraries.

• Use of online communication facilities places high demands upon expensive and scarce resources.

• Perceptions of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" still shape our funding bodies’ thinking. How can we persuade our funding bodies to put in more workstations to improve users’ access to what may be perceived as frivolous, subversive or depraved communication forums.

• There are a wide range of communication uses. Assuming that some are deemed to be less worthy than others, there are real problems in discriminating between them.

To date, the Australian library profession does not seem to have developed the language to discuss these fundamental issues.

The ALA has articulated their position very clearly, in the document Access to Electronic Information, Services, and Networks: an Interpretation of the LIBRARY BILL OF RIGHTS. That document is informed by a vision of the unique potential of the "electronic communications revolution"

but also by a firm ethical base and a sense of the rights of the user

The language of the ALA statement still casts the user into that passive "access to information" role. The ALIA web site's collection of policy statements doesn't seem to have any directives that specifically concern themselves with electronic media. The most relevant document is, rather ominously, entitled Statement on freedom to read.

However useful that is as a guide to collection development, it certainly seizes the high ground. For a good deal of the collections of public libraries, and for libraries in other sectors, criteria like "historical importance, intellectual integrity" are not pre-eminent considerations. The statement offers little guidance on how libraries should respond to the user who may go to the library to see a movie or view a slide or listen to music, let alone send an email to a discussion group.

There is a need in Australia for a clear statement by our professional bodies on issues such as censorship, and the provision of internet based resources in libraries in Australia. Without some statement of principle, which should be the outcome of the sort of debate which this paper would like to stimulate, there is a danger that individual librarians will take the line of least resistance when confronted with those suggestion box complaints about email or chat or people viewing sites that other people don't like.

These are complex and difficult issues, for which there are no straightforward answers.

We would argue that it is not the role of libraries to decide how people should get their information or use their time. Libraries are a medium for breaking down the barriers to people's access, based on the highest ideals of well informed society and community development (community being defined here in the general sense of a geographical community, or the theoretical sense of a "community" of users affiliated with an organization). Entertainment is not forbidden. An image of a library a-buzz with people enjoying themselves, developing their knowledge about the world in an interactive manner is an attractive one. The Internet PC in the corner, with warning signs all over it, is less likely to encourage the nervous wouldbe user than the sight of people using the technology and enjoying it.

We need models which do not impose value judgements or censorship. We need much better booking systems, and, possibly, ways of authenticating and identifying users to discourage the noxious extremes of online behaviour.

What we must resist is the temptation to say of the communication capacities of our internet terminals "This is not part of our business, lets prohibit it or disable our terminals so no-one can use them for this or that purpose".

As a profession, we need to be extraordinarily careful about how we provide this dynamic new information resource. There are great opportunities for us to develop new roles, and attract new users. We need to encourage the assimilation of online communications into service provision, not fight it. We cannot ignore that the net is a communications medium as much as a distribution medium, and that it provides rich and relevant resources for our users' information needs. If we don't make the most of this opportunity, we and our users will be the poorer.