In using conventional print, CD-ROM and online resources, librarians are still middlepersons between publishers and users. By exploiting Internet and World Wide Web online technology and developing local databases, libraries can tap new information sources and make them available to local audiences and others dispersed around the world in an online knowledge exchange. The Library at Kapiolani College of the University of Hawaii has produced several Web-based, client/server, full-text and image databases containing unique bodies of information that are pertinent to the mission of the Library and the College, and valuable to students, faculty and other users worldwide. This paper presents some of Kapiolani College's local online databases as potential models for the type of resource that libraries of the future can develop. These databases have greater flexibility of content than print resources and much wider accessibility; overall, they are proving to be more economical. Local online databases like these will help libraries retain their crucial role in collecting and distributing current research in this era of electronic connectivity when the future of libraries is in question. (AEF)