From the very beginning,libraries were designed to meet the needs of
limited and specific clienteles, for example, members of an institution or a
corporate body. In the last three decades, we have witnessed the emergence of
regional and national library consortia for resource sharing and information
services. Such organizations were formed to facilitate broader assess to the
information resources for institutional clients. In recent years, the emergence
of the information highway and Internet has taken libraries one step further to
the international level with unprecedented access to information resources and
services across national boundaries. The emerging global information services
are made possible by new information technology and by the ever-growing
Internet. For example, a scholar in the United States today can retrieve
materials from the collections inside China electronically. A farmer in Idaho
market throungh Internet, with the help of staff at an information center in
Tokyo. Such globalized information services have made traditional barriers to
the access of information such as physical location, time and space increasingly
irrelevant. A global digital library is emerging out of such technological
capabilities and networked environment.