Scholarly communications: New realities, old values

As modes of scholarly communication change around us, will our old values endure? Deanna Marcum, dean of the School of Library and Information Science at the Catholic University of America, was asked to prepare a keynote essay to which other contributors were invited to both respond and elaborate. All participants reaffirm the importance of equal access to information. Hoekema worries that by diverting resources to keep the system of scholarly publication alive, the financial demands of new electronic services will serve in the end to impoverish many. Holoviak describes a risk that is of particular concern to those involved with scholarly societies, that of disenfranchising scholars not on the basis of their intellectual or economic means but on the basis of technological compatibility. Lyman urges libraries to redefine their mission. He argues that we cannot protect a system that is bankrupting us, and he calls for academic libraries to become the partner of students in learning and of the faculty in the search for knowledge.