The Internet is Everything.

The other day I was blogging for work for Everyday Communications, an educational communications company, and came across a response from one of our twitter followers. This follower is not a teacher, student, or parent, so I was about to delete them from all of our contacts so as to stay relevant. Luckily I did not, because I later realized that they were bringing new followers just for the sake of being interested in Education and the school system in general. Not only did this woman mention us in her blog and twitter but she created many Follow Fridays for us. After racking my brain to figure out why this was occurring I realized there are people out there that just sit at home and look for topics that interest them and research them, interact with them. It leads me to wonder if this is the new library. Twenty years ago, would this same person be going to the library and looking up educational communications company's? Would they be referring us to their friends with Word of Mouth or through letters? Would my advertising and marketing for us cover enough reach with just a newspaper or magazine? Its media and culture questions like these that interest me. The fact that the internet has become such a vital way of communication is insane. Everything is online now, and with society's 'get it now' mentality, there's less people fiddling around in the library checking out books for their information. If they want academic journals they will go online through an accredited academic source via search engine. Really, the question is, will this escalate, and what will this mean for libraries in general?