Following up on her 1996 text [1], Saunders has brought together an excellent collection of perspectives and insights to create this second volume. About half of the ten contributors are university faculty, and the remainder are from library service organizations and public schools. They have all been active in their respective fields and bring to this collection insights and recommendations based on reality rather than the cheerleading that colors much technological writing.

The contributed chapters include “Building a Digital Library,” by Maria S. Bonn; “Library-Generated Databases,” by Tore Brattli; “Intranets and Extranets at Work,” by  Judith  Field; “A Vision, through a Glass Darkly,” by  Marshall  Keys; “Understanding Networks and Telecommunications Infrastructure,” by George Machovec; “Managing Digital Content,” by Gail McMillan; “A Public Library in Transition,” by Donald Napoli; “Extending the Library to Remote Users,” by Vicky York; and “Transformational Impact of School Reform and the Web,” by Joyce Kasman Valenza.

Saunders introduces the book with a chapter entitled “Reflections on an Evolutionary Process.” She begins with a thoughtful review of where libraries and information services are, given the technological transformations affecting so many. She then offers helpful and positive advice: “Recognizing that high technology will only go higher…position the library as a place for people and the organizational center for access to information using appropriate technologies and resources. Identify the mission that everyone can support.…The very technologies that have enabled the virtual library have allowed us to provide new services that have been meaningful to users.…The challenges and the opportunity of the present are to choose our future, building on the success and wisdom of the past” (p. 12).

These chapters identify new services currently being developed and discuss the technology necessary to support them. Equally important, the authors discuss services that libraries were not quick enough to capitalize on and technology areas that may offer as many problems as they do opportunities. In particular, Keys’s closing chapter, “A Vision, through a Glass Darkly,” does an excellent job of summarizing the current situation and analyzing the short-term changes he sees coming, many of which will require librarians to change and adapt. Library and information service providers would do well to take a look at this volume.