In the past ten years, the concept of the 'digital library' (or the 'electronic library') has been increasingly used, and now crops up relentlessly in the professional literature. This is not surprising, as the combination of lowcost computing and high-speed networking now affects all areas of life in the developed world. 'Digital banking', 'online shopping' and 'digital television' are transforming the ways in which we transact our daily business and consume entertainment. We also book holidays online, gamble on the Internet and conduct hundreds of other activities online. Increasing numbers of people work from home, using telecommunications to recreate their office environments in virtual space. As content goes online, and the means of access to it becomes as available and familiar as clicking on the television set, so it is a natural expectation that libraries too will join the interconnected web world. Librarians are, however, well aware that there are also dangers surrounding the concept. It is often stated that the World Wide Web, or the Internet itself, is one huge electronic library. This is only true in the most general sense that it requires navigation aids in order to discover particular content. In fact, the Internet is no more a library than is a city or a country. Of course the Web contains masses of documents of all types, and in that sense it is like a library-but all libraries-even 'universal libraries' such as the Library of Congress-are based on selections. The Library of Congress's website admits that it does not collect everything, and nor would it want to: 'The Library's collections are based on the Jeffersonian ideal that all subjects will be of interest and value to Congress and, by extension, to the scholar and researcher'. On the basis that it reflects the culture of a nation, universal libraries sometimes collect material which it is hard to imagine being of interest to scholars and researchers. The National Library of Australia, for example, reported in 2002 that it was now harvesting pornography published on the Australian web domain, for the use of researchers (BBC, 2002). It had not at that stage developed a policy on how to allow access to the material, however. It was also careful to confirm that it would be collecting only legal pornography. The Internet, as is wellknown, contains both legal and illegal material. Ross Atkinson emphasises the key library activity of selection: The network is not a digital library. We cannot sit back and imagine that what is on the network is in the digital library … A