It is not now only Tony Blair’s view but the view of all rational people. E-commerce is developing at an extremely rapid pace and is incredibly complex. The literature and trade press tend not to delineate clearly among “electronic business”, “e-commerce”, “e-market” and related terms. There is increasing interest in the use of the internet in general and the WWW in particular as the mechanism for promoting electronic commerce.

The idea of ‘commerce’ is not new to the libraries. For library and information professionals to be able to make good use of e-commerce, they need to be able to integrate the ordering of goods and services over the internet into their existing procedures.

2. WHAT IS E-COMMERCE?
 E-commerce is no longer a luxury, but a reality. It offers enormous opportunities in every phase of business. It allows low cost trading worldwide and offers enterprises a charge to enter the global market at right time. The term e-commerce describes the use of electronic means to pursue business objectives. This can include the use of information technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT). By looking these attributes Richard Hill DEFINES e-commerce as “commercial activities conducted through an exchange of information generated, stored or communicated by electronic, optical or analogous means including EDI, e-mail and so forth.”

 There are two types of e-commerce –
2.1 Indirect e-commerce – It is used to refer to using the web to make money without collection actual payment on your web site. For example on-line promotion that lead to people visiting your library is considered as indirect e-commerce.

2.2 Direct e-commerce – It is used to refer to actual financial transactions that take place on your web site, i.e. online credit card payment.

3. EFFECT OF IT ON E-COMMERCE
 The base of e-commerce is IT. Without It the concept of e-commerce is meaningless. One of the main purpose of e-commerce is to reduction of  (a) transaction cost and (b) co-ordination cost. There are broadly four effects of IT can be identified that may leads to reduced transaction and co-ordination costs.

3.1 The communication effect
It says that the advancement of IT helps to communication more and more information in the same time, which reduce the transaction costs.

3.2 The electronic integration effect
This supports the tighter electronic linkage between buyers and sellers. 

3.3 The electronic brokerage effect
This allows an electronic market place where buyers and sellers come together to compare offering.

3.4 The electronic strategic network effect
It says that IT enables the design and deliberate strategic deployment of linkages and networks among co-operating firms intended to achieve joint strategic goal to gain competitive advantage.

The effect of IT on e-commerce we can think in different ways like:
3.5 Selling everywhere
Like a central nervous system, the information highway courses around the globe making all manner of commerce instantly possible. By using the internet to link directly to suppliers factories, distributors and customers, the producers are electrifying their time consuming and tedious task. Bryan Stole (Chief Executive Officer of Agile Software Corp. San Jose, Carlit) said “if companies can learn to get the stop out of the system—and internet is absolutely crucial for this – prices will come down.”

3.6 Savings and speed 
Indeed there is blinding speed behind the e-commerce. Companies are realizing how potential the net can be. The business week estimated that by the year 2002 the US business transaction exploded to $327 billion compared to only $17 billion during 1997 in goods and services through net. That is why Jeff Bezos, the Chief Executive of Web Book Seller Amazon.Com says “ this is the Kitty Hawk Era of electronic commerce.”

4. PURPOSE OF E-COMMERCE STRATEGY OF A LIBRARY
Before determining the purpose of your e-commerce strategy it is essential:
1. You should examine the goal of your institution in general, i.e. your offline goal.
2. Determine your e-commerce goal.
3. Check whether they do match or overlap.
4. Does it make sense to go outline now?
5. Who are your clients?
6. Who will pay and how for the library services?

5. A CASE STUDY OF STATE LIBRARY, NSW, AUSTRALIA
Before going to e-commerce they clearly set out their goal in their web site which may be applicable online as well as offline stating that “ our mission is to inspire, educate, inform and entertain”. I am giving some of their common offline and online goal available on their web site which may one can apply to set his/her own library’s goal.
1. Build a database and provide database access.
2. Consolidate your service.
3. Increase revenue.
4. Find alternative revenue streams.
5. Increase efficiency.
6. Increase market to which information can distributed.
7. Market your product (special documentation services).
8. Provide a better quality of service.
9. Provide equal and fast access to information.
10. Provide value added service.
11. Serve customers better.

6. MODE OF PAYMENT
There are lots of debate whether the library services are free or fee based. Lion’s share still not ready to charge their users. They are not ready to charge on the ethical ground. But actually they might be afraid to loose their users. But how Microsoft, Informatics, Infoses, Infotech, are earning money basically by selling the information? I am sure your user will pay for your service and information if it is right content, right format, right price and at right time.

In net environment these above qualities you should have to provide and for that some popular method for collecting payments are:
6.1 Credit Card
Where the relevant information is keyed into a secure areas in the web site so that others cannot have access to that information.
 

6.2 Cyber-Cash
Where one purchases a certain amount of cyber cash in advance which after words they can be used for various goods and services on the net.

6.3 Offline payment
Where you will obtain a payment form, print it out from a web site then tax the relevant information to the vendor.

7. E-COMMERCE IN LIBRARIES
This is the task of technical service division of a library because main objective is EDI. First you join an associate or affiliate program such as that offered by Amazon.com where the product or services of the company are promoted on the library’s web site in exchange for a commission on any sales generated. This commission is generally around 5%. Deal Pilot offers on the fly ISBN lookup from a wide variety online book sellers. Their partnership program pays a commission for each click. Through regardless of whether the visitor places an order or not.

A large number of libraries are already embarking upon e-commerce ventures. For example Australian National University, Phillips Graduate Institute etc. have joined Amazon.com Associated Program. NSW State Library has developed a partnership with the St. George Bank to deliver information resources to students and teachers or HSC Courses.

8. STANDARDS
Make sure is in the business of certifying web marchants against the quality standards for e-commerce. When you will maintain e-commerce you should maintain following standards:
1. Trading Status- Sellers are legally registered and credit worthy.
2. Provision Information- Sellers accurately describe and price their goods and services; and all conditions of sale are clearly communicated.
3. Transaction Management- Orders you give and delivered and billed as promised by sellers.
4. Privacy Users’ Information- Your customer’s information is only used in ways that he agrees.
5. Security- Your credit card and other personal information can not be fraudulently used.
6. Social Responsibility- Suppliers are socially responsible with regard to advertising, violence, cruelty, racial hatred and child pornography.

9. ISSUES
9.1 There is very practical issue concerning the ease with which people can order goods and services over the web. For example in a large organization, any people of that organization may order through their web site using organization’s credit card. Then if so what will be the remedy?

9.2 There is another issue arises on information delivery. Until recently, the latest e-commerce development is this area have not been considered particularly relevant to libraries, largely because of public service ethos which endeavors to offer free information service.

9.3 Libraries are now finding that users prefer digital materials over print and they increasingly expect immediately gratification by viewing printing or downloading the desired information. Also more and publishers are converting print journals to PDF or SGML formats, users want to move seamlessly from the index to the full text for article. The question is how to respond to this avalanche of data from disparate source in a timely and effective manner.

9.4 Now the telecommunication companies are vigorously engaged in the race to supply individual homes with high speed connections. All of this is putting the library into direct competition with commercial services, forcing us to think carefully about how we address the needs of our patrons. 

9.5 EDI is normally used only by companies that have a stable ongoing relationship. The use of EDI is typically specified in , and given legitimacy by a written contract. This contract resolves a number of issues like:
Ø Validity of electronic transmissions as a way of exchanging business data
Ø Time and place of contract formation
Ø Applicable law
Ø Dispute resolution
Ø Terms and conditions
Ø Guidelines for preserving electronic records as evidence

9.6 There are another issues on the www environment which may be very crucial in this context:
Ø How to established trustworthiness
Ø How and when payment will be made
Ø Impact of advertising and unfair competition laws
Ø Impact of consumer protection laws

10. E-COMMERCE IN INDIA
In India e-commerce is just fledgling but its advantages and convenience are soon to be realized. According to a survey by NASSCOM , the e-commerce in Indian is likely to cross Rs. 300 crores during the current financial year. However there are certain fundamental challenges which will have to be overcome, for e-commerce to reach to the common man in the country. The primary challenges are the lack of internet infrastructure.  If we compare the population of 1 billion, spread over 5000 towns and cities and six lakhs villages, which is growing by 22 million every year. India's newly proposed Internet policy aims to bring 1.5 million subscribers online within two years by allowing an unlimited number of ISPs to offer access (Financial Express, August 2; Business Age, August 1; Business Standard, India, July 30, 1999) is good effort though it is late. 

Another challenge that the Indian market presents for the development of e-commerce is the use of credit card which is less than 2% of the entire population, the payment practice of keying in the credit card number will not work. 

The increasing rate of hackers and absence of cyber laws, the illiteracy and various regional languages are also the major challenges to e-commerce.

11. CONCLUSION
E-commerce is new to everyone. Although the word commerce is generally heard in relation to the for profit sector, the non-profit sector is also interested in learning ways to profit from e-commerce. We as librarians may have to consider the use of e-commerce, not because we want to offer seamless access to resources, and help our patrons navigate through this huge maze. It may be the only way to ensure continued information literacy. For example we, may have to think about subsidizing an article-on-demand service hosted at a third party web site for faculty, while offering credit-card access to other members of the university community.