Publishing has been defined as a way to make information widely available to the public. Our formerly mechanical world required many preliminary actions, such a typesetting and…
Abstract
Publishing has been defined as a way to make information widely available to the public. Our formerly mechanical world required many preliminary actions, such a typesetting and proofing, which became associated with the meaning of publishing. Electronic publishing makes is possible to make anything available to the world instantly with no preliminary preparation. Under these circumstances, materials can be divided between text posted to the Internet and works published with preliminary preparation. The local loop of the telephone line defines the speed of the Internet for most people. The local loop has lacked the speed to make flipping through pages in books or full motion video available over the Internet. Storage systems for electronic documents have defined large‐scale document storage and video storage as too slow, too unreliable, and too expensive to be consistent with the free paradigm of the Internet. The demands for processing power by electronic gaming are opening the way to publish interactive simulations as a means of expression. Increases in speed, capacity, and processing power will add new document types to the meaning of electronic publishing.
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The impact of electronic publishing (e‐publishing) on library collections, services and administration is complex. There are no simple solutions to the problems of managing the…
Abstract
The impact of electronic publishing (e‐publishing) on library collections, services and administration is complex. There are no simple solutions to the problems of managing the collection, archiving and access to e‐publications as well as including them in library services. There are, however, many good usable solutions that libraries can learn from each other. No one needs to recreate the wheel to cope with e‐publications. Many librarians feel that the technology to solve the problems and take advantage of e‐publishing is either currently available or clearly under development. How the advent and increasing presence of e‐publications will impact the people who will read them may ultimately be of more importance than what we will do with the machines, the storage media or the delivery mechanism. Therefore, emphasis in this special theme issue is more on the human‐interaction aspects of e‐publishing rather than on the technology or delivery mechanisms.