An Anonymous Patron writes “The Chronicle: 6/16/2006: Beyond Google: What Next for Publishing? While we have been busy attending conferences, workshops, and seminars on every possible aspect of scholarly communication, information technology, digital libraries, and e-publishing, students have been quietly revolutionizing the discovery and use of information. Their behavior, undertaken without consultation or attendance at formal academic events, urgently forces those of us in scholarly publishing to confront some fundamental questions about our organizations, jobs, and assumptions about our work.
Keep in mind that we are all mutually dependent, and that no group is in a position to dictate the discussions or the outcomes: Search engines need the content provided by publishers and libraries to provide a high-quality experience for users; libraries need stable, robust technology platforms, wide use of their collections, and growing communities of new users; scholars and students need more effective access to information and the skills to determine its quality and value. So it is alarming that those groups are so often in conflict that they end up in court rather than at a conference table.”
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