THE DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT of various, costeffective information technologies now make it possible for librarians, educators and civic planners to think about a not-too-distant future in which virtual libraries furnish the basis for the provision of high-quality services into every sector of the community, whether the community is urban, suburban, or rural. The virtual library is, in essence, about connectedness. It is one of the more important ideas at work today in the broad area of computing and the information sciences because it addresses not only the desire to use technologies for good, but also because today there are affordable, so-called "off the shelf" technologies that can be used in networked environments to dimish the importance of time and space where access to library resources is concerned, and also elevate the general level and quality of library and information services. Until recently, colleges and universities have been in the forefront in the development of "virtual libraries," but it may well be that in the future the greatest benefits will accrue to the users of public libraries, a group that has been largely excluded until recently from most networking initiatives. For example, providing services through some form of distributed computing has the potential to ensure that the users of the public library branch in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood have access to the same resources and services as the patrons of the branch library serving the city’s most services as those patrons of the branch library serving the city’s most affluent neighborhood. It may also ensure that students in an inner-city school will have access to most, if not all of the resources available to the students who attend public schools in the suburbs. Implementations of the virtual library concept also offer the potential to raise the level of public library service in rural areas. This paper examines important expressions of the idea of the virtual library, including the first generation of applications, in an effort to understand how it may affect the nature and quality of public library services, especially branch services, in the near future.