He might be right and many library budgets are under stress because of extraordinarily high prices. The future may be cloudy, but it becomes clear that libraries has to redefine their traditional role and certain commercial publishers accustomed to large revenues on their academic publishing activities will probably have to learn to compete in more realistic marketplaces. But in the end libraries probably will have to step up to the task. National libraries with legal requirements for deposit are generally thought to be the way things would eventually work out However future and costs of permanent electronic archiving strategies are not yet clear. Questions to be examined will include how to create permanent archives given the continually changing technology.
Policies have to be developed and responsibilities to be assigned.
This creates a new and more competitive market context, because research libraries are not any longer the one and only player. Market entry barriers are low now opening for new market driven players, for example BioMedNet , MathSciNet , and EI Information Village . The key success factor for electronic services will be user-community responsiveness, targeting, quality content production, organization and retrieval. The library and information science communities should learn from these market-driven experiences and take a more proactive role.