The author has presented a rapid overview of the uses of the new information technologies in various aspects of library management and utilization in the United States of America. As early as the 1950's, as concerned librarians had come to realise that manual methods would no longer suffice to cope with the demands being made on libraries, they turned increasingly to automation. Libraries were innovators with regard to the development of large databases and the users of innovations with regard to the development of communications technologies. The latter, the new information and communications technologies (NICT's), are playing increasingly important roles with regard to the operation of libraries in the areas of acquisitions, cataloguing, circulation, reference, administration, inter-library links including shared cataloguing, resource sharing, and inter-library loan (now thought of as document delivery). The introduction of these same technologies has required that changes be made in the way librarians are trained, that older practising librarians have their training upgraded, and that library clients be trained in techniques of computer use and information retrieval. For the future, the uses made of the NICT's are bound to expand, leading to increased electronic publishing and distribution and to greater integration of indexes and catalogues. University libraries will increasingly become parts of campus-wide communications and information networks.
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