Utah: The quest for service and resource equity

Utah is well known for its wide open horizons, natural beauty, and conservative traditions and lifestyles. In the winter, tourists flock to majestic mountains to ski deep powder. The rest of the year, they come to explore many unique and vast national parks. Those who stay long enough to take a closer look, however, will see that Utah is also a state undergoing sweeping changes. High‐tech businesses have replaced mining and ranching as engines of the Utah economy, which is booming. Rapid population growth is creating a sprawling urban front along the Wasatch Mountains that provides a sharp contrast to life in isolated small towns in the rest of the region. It has become increasingly clear to Utah's leaders that networking learning and information resources to provide equity between rural and urban areas and to encourage the creation of a highly skilled workforce is a key to the state's progress. Significant initiatives are being taken to help government, libraries, and educational institutions at all levels become more efficient, effective, and responsive through the use of computer and telecommunications technology. The following three reports describe some of those projects.