Libraries operate as part of the technological infrastructure that supports the National Research and Education Network (NREN), acting as an electronic safety net for the American public to guarantee basic access to electronic information. Public libraries are in particular capable to take on this role, as they already serve such a role in a print-based society. They not only provide electronic information and network connectivity but also provide training and education to the public on how to access and use network information.
One of the most profound consequences of the NREN for librarians, library users, and the general education and research community is the “virtual library”. Consortia of public libraries use the NREN to connect their online catalogs. This cooperation enables the “universal borrowing card” subsequently allowing library users to move between public libraries as just one.
Extensive lobbying by the American Library Association (ALA) helped to add language referring to libraries to the NREN bill.
History of NREN
The National Research and Education Program often referred to by the terms “National Information Highway”, “National Information Infrastructure”, Information Superhighway”, “High-Performance and high-speed network”, and “Gigabit test bed”, is a program to support improvements and enhancements to the existing Internet. The National Research and Education Network have been under discussion since 1987 and was proposed in 1969 as an experiment under the sponsorship of the United States Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an agency of the Department of Defense. The NREN was officially established with the passage of the High Performance Computing Act signed into law by President Bush on December 9, 1991.