onal library paradigm difficult (Young, 103). Young argues that with the constant introduction of new interactive electronic information services designed to be used easily and intuitively by customers, librarians and the rest of the world ask questions about the traditional library mission of facilitating information access and delivery of individual works to individual readers. Who needs a library (or a librarian) if one can access vast information resources with a computer, a modem, and a telephone line (Young, 103).
The answer to such questions lies in a text as old as Plato's Republic. In The Republic, Plato offers the allegory of the cave to demonstrate the dissemination and understanding of knowledge in society. He argues that without the appropriate knowledge and guidance, we approach information about our world as would prisoners chained to the floor of a cave (Kelley, 1). Chained in the cave, we can only look in one direction, where we see shadows on the wall that seem to talk and move around. We observe, discuss, and remember what t
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