ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John Carlo Bertot and Charles R. McClure and have worked together successfully on a number of research projects--most recently the 1997 Public Libraries and the Internet study (the Executive Summary of this report appears on the ALA homepage <www.ala.org/oitp/>) and the Evaluation of the Online at PA Libraries Project. John Carlo Bertot is assistant professor at the Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and is faculty associate at the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research. He has published extensively on statewide and public library networking activities, and on topics related to federal, state, and county information policies and the use of information technology to deliver information resources and services.

At present, Bertot and McClure are the principal investigators for an evaluation study of the DelAWARE project, Delaware's online information resource. They are also the principal investigators for a project that is assessing the impact of networking on public libraries in Victoria, Australia.

Charles R. McClure is a distinguished professor of information studies at Syracuse University, School of Information Studies--one of only eight at the university to receive that title. He has published extensively on topics related to planning and evaluation of information and networked services, information policy, and libraries and the Internet. As co-principal investigator he just completed a one year study with Bertot funded by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries that resulted in the report Evaluation of the Online at PA Libraries Project: Public Access to the Internet Through Public Libraries; he is also Co-PI with Bertot on a study assessing Maryland's statewide network, Sailor, completed in September 1996.

In 1995, McClure and Bertot completed a study funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that examined federal policies related to enhancing the role of public libraries in the networked environment. Also in 1995, as part of the NSF study with additional funding from the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS), McClure and Bertot produced Internet Costs and Cost Models for Public Libraries. McClure, with Bertot and Zweizig, completed a national survey of public libraries and their use of the Internet. This study and its final report, Public Libraries and the Internet: Survey Findings and Key Issues, was published in September 1996.

McClure has a proven track record of managing and successfully completing research projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Government Printing Office, and the NCLIS. His research has been recognized by awards from the American Society for Information Science, the American Library Association, and the Association for Library and Information Science educators. He was the founding editor of Internet Research and is a frequent speaker at professional associations and meetings.

Patricia Diamond Fletcher is assistant professor at the Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and is faculty associate at the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research. Her research is in the area of public sector information management. Fletcher is co-author of Innovation and Information Management in City Government, and author of Managing Information Technology: Transforming County Governments in the 1990s. Her current research is at the federal level of government, conducting a longitudinal study of information management policy implementation in conjunction with the Chief Information Officer's Council. Fletcher has served as a consultant toBell Atlantic, EDS, Conseiul SGE (Italy), Baltimore County, and other organizations. Fletcher is currently working on a book on Information Presentation.