Libraries were once the guardians of knowledge, and the point at which those seeking existing knowledge would engage with it.

With the rise of Google, Amazon, Wikipedia and more, there is an oft-stated fear that many users, much of the time,

will bypass processes and institutions that they perceive to be slow, unresponsive, unappealing and irrelevant in favour

of a more direct approach to services offered by others that just might be 'good enough' for what they need to do.

Traditional Library Problems

As posted by Michael Stephens (2006), some of the barriers in old age libraries are:

• Technoloy is immature
• Too many policies
• Irrelevant oragnizational chart
• The Catalog isn't like Amazon or Google (which users USE!)
• Librarians do not market themselves or their services well
• Many libraries don't have enough computers to meet user demand
• Library staff need more training (and need to learn how to learn)
• Libraries need more innovative programming