Sometimes, I regale my students with stories from the "early years" of the Internet. As it turns out, people currently in their late teens and early 20s are fascinated by the "retro-cool" of using arrow buttons on a keyboard to explore the entirely-textual World Wide Web as it existed before graphical user interfaces (notably Mosaic) were developed. My students especially crack up in laughter when I tell them how rapidly -- and embarrassingly -- we learned the importance of using correct URLs, such as when we mistakenly typed whitehouse.com rather than whitehouse.gov.
For me personally, the Internet "began" in Fall 1994 when I was working at the Information Desk at a college library. One afternoon, just after I arrived for my shift, I noticed that a student was using it and I asked her what it was. She told me to imagine all the world's knowledge in a huge book, and being able to jump to any page that interested me, rather than having to read the book from beginning to end. Even better, imagine there are infinite books, and being able to jump from the middle of one book to another! As I tried to make sense of this, it seemed that the Internet was simply a less-linear or less-structured way of reading. It appeared to allow you to follow intellectual pathways more at your own whim, rather than being shackled to tables of content or indexes. In the moment, I didn't imagine all the other things that the Internet would end up doing for us, or to us.
While researching the recent history of Pennsylvania's libraries, one thing I've learned is how privileged I was to have such early exposure to the Web. I wasn't on the bleeding edge of technology as Computer Science majors were, but, by working at and attending a college in the mid 1990s, I got a 2-3 year head start compared to many public library users. Also, in the academic environment, I was somewhat sheltered from the thorny questions that public library colleagues had to grapple with when serving more diverse populations.
Last week, while I was doing research at Scranton's Albright Memorial Library (SPL), I got a taste of the challenges that the dawn of the Internet posed to public librarians. In the Director's office, I stumbled over a 3-ring binder labeled "Reference Mid-1990s," which turned out to be an employee manual for SPL's Reference Desk. Inside were print copies of memos that Scott Thomas, who was Head of Reference at the time, wrote to his coworkers. Some of them summarized administrative meetings, while others conveyed policy changes. Some described new information resources available within the department, while others provided step-by-step workarounds for temperamental machines or difficult patrons. As it turned out, memos from 1996 to 1998 were filled with references to the Internet, because the Internet involved higher-level decision making, policy formulation, new tools, glitchy technology, and customer service challenges.
One of the manual's earliest references to the Internet appeared in an April 1996 memo about upgrades to SPL's Local Area Network (LAN), which allowed the library's staff and patrons to access various reference sources on CDs. Some, like the 1990s U.S. Census, American Business Disk, and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, were newly available from any terminal connected to the LAN, but other CDs could only be tapped on certain workstations, or had to be loaded into the CD tower upon request. Thomas's memo provided extensive instructions for clearing print queues -- apparently a frequent challenge that frontline staff encountered. Almost as an afterthought, he mentioned that the "Internet computer" would be upgraded in a few weeks, it would include the Netscape browser, and it would be connected to the LAN so that Netscape could be used from various computers. However, since SPL only had one telephone line available for public Internet purposes, only one person at a time would be able to go online. Thomas didn't say this, but I would infer that the costs of the technology, or the difficulty of installing it within an 1890s-era building, or uncertainty over how the public would respond to it, or new workloads the Internet might present to library staff, may have played into SPL's one-at-a-time approach.
A few months later (November 1996), another memo from Thomas conveyed "Basic Facts About the Internet at SPL," including some of the library's policies and procedures. By that point, it seems that the Web was simultaneously accessible through several machines, since customers could reserve time on one of three computers, or use others that were designated "first-come, first-serve." Interestingly, the Internet could be used by anyone aged 12 and older who had an SPL library card, but younger children had to be accompanied by a parent. Everyone's access was limited to 1 hour per day. Reading between the lines of the "Basic Facts," it seems that staff had already encountered some customers who demanded too much attention, because the memo noted that users had to be familiar with a computer keyboard, mouse, and Windows, and that staff assistance was limited to helping them open the Internet and showing them where to type URLs and search words. There may have been patron issues with excessive and "dud" printing, too, since patrons were allowed up to 5 free prints, then paid 10 cents for each page thereafter. Thinking back through my years in academic libraries, I don't remember having to show many college students how to use the hardware, but dealing with printer mishaps was one of the banes of my professional existence. I felt for SPL staff on that point!
The part of me that knows some of the rest of the story -- especially about the Children's Internet Protection Act -- smiled wistfully when I read that SPL used to allow kids 12 and older to use the Internet without adult guidance or filtering software. In public libraries, those days of unrestricted access didn't last long. Unsurprisingly, a couple of Thomas's later memos are subject-lined "pornography" and "more porn." As the courts weighed library customers' first amendment rights against parental concerns about developmentally-appropriate content, SPL and other public institutions revised their Internet use policies repeatedly. As of 2001, when CIPA started to take effect, Scranton still had a few workstations that provided unfiltered Internet access for adults, and that changed. For me and for others working in college/university environments, Internet filtering wasn't as prominently on our radars, partially because we served the over-18 crowd, and partially because our institutions did not participate in the federal e-rate program which provided discounted telecommunications pricing to K-12 schools and public libraries (and required institutional participants to adhere to CIPA). So, it was interesting for me to watch how CIPA unfolded at the ground level in another type of library.
Scott Thomas now serves as the Director of SPL, and when I visited, we swapped stories about various technologies and workaday procedures that we've seen come and go. He's wonderful to talk to because of his thoughtfulness, his gentle humor, and his deep experience. Those qualities were evident 30 years ago, when, just a few days before Christmas 1996, he sat down to reflect on the challenging months gone by and compose what was probably his last staff memo for that year. He started by thanking his colleagues for their "hard work, loyalty, resiliency, and public service ethic." While he mentioned blizzards, floods, budget cuts, and staffing/scheduling issues, he devoted more of his words to technology, especially the Internet. He predicted that, "with all its implications good and bad," the Web would soon be "fully absorbed" into SPL's "service menu." The heavy usage that they were experiencing was organic -- "zero publicity" -- and he foresaw that staff would have to more strictly enforce customer time limits to ensure everyone who wanted to surf the Internet had the opportunity.
A year later, in December 1997, the Internet loomed even larger as a driver of change in Thomas's department. He noted that "no 12 month period during [his] ten years [at SPL] could equal 1997 for the radical changes that [had] a direct impact" on their work. Within that short time, SPL went from a single computer with text-based Internet browsing to several public computers with Netscape, plus a training lab equipped to teach customers how to access and use the World Wide Web. Perhaps more importantly, Thomas found that the ever-present concern of marketing library reference services encompassed a new challenge. "The Internet has allowed us to attract new patrons," he wrote, "but we may have lost some old ones in the process." Library customers were starting to turn to SPL's computer workstations before they asked Scranton librarians for help, and some were not going any further if they believed they found satisfactory answers online. "Obviously, these people still had need of a library," Thomas argued, "but what about the people who feel they have no use for the library now that they have the Web in their home? What can we do for these people?" He surmised that SPL would continue to fulfill the crucial function of paying for, and providing access to, commercial databases that were impossible for individuals to afford.
I feel that Thomas was right about that. Even in 2026 -- after 30 solid years of wide Internet availability -- many information creators do not offer subscription or per-use plans that everyday people can afford (if they offer individual pricing at all). As I think about a different emerging technology that is currently entering the public sphere and causing seismic changes, I feel that libraries' financial brokerage between content creators and content users just might be the "AI-proof" element that enables us to survive.
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