Step by Step Toward the Global Internet Library

The growth of the global Internet, and of the World Wide Web in particular, has proposed a new cultural space, a channel for cultural communications where netizens exchange in new ways ideas and opinions that travel far in new directions. Memory is the basis for information organization and circulation; consequently memory organizers, such as libraries and museums, are metamorphosing their configuration, their structure, the services offered, while we are altering the idea we had of their meaning. The global Internet has changed the ways researchers carry on their information-intensive activities and seek emerging content in the document repositories. The evolution is still going on: the potentials will be converted into salient features, driven by approaches, springing from new and still fuzzy ideas and trends that take into account the global configuration of the Internet with the interrelationships among the different protagonists. This article is a visionary's fresco of the scenario where this evolution is taking place. With a description of current mechanisms for information managing in the Web, a comparative analysis of the hot points where R&D is more active, and some specific proposals, the visionary argues for making the idealistic scenario an operational one. Topics discussed include indexing, cataloguing, document requests and the use of software agents.