How has IT changed what librarians and archivists do?

In libraries, traditional barriers to physical access, e.g., failure to acquire, competing demand, etc., have been reduced; in archives, digitized collections and finding aids available across distributed networks make it much easier to discover, locate, and gain access to relevant materials; resulting in an increased emphasis on intellectual access to collections and the materials therein.

Services to users are now commonly delivered via distributed networks, asynchronously and/or in real-time.