New technologies hold the promise of distributed, collaborative collection management among university libraries on a scale that has not been possible before. For scholars, electronic information technologies can greatly expand the total range of accessible resources. Although the project recommendations have been endorsed, implementation efforts are just beginning. Length and clarity vary dramatically, with policies ranging from half a page to 30 pages. Greater length does not ensure greater clarity.
Policies offer little help with complex decisions about rights transfer or licensing.
Works are usually assigned totally to commercial publishers whose goals can be very different from those of the institution. Only a handful mention intellectual property officers or university committees as resources for problems or disputes. Neither universities nor their faculty seem to exercise much care in copyright management, while publishers manage copyrights carefully and exploit them fully. The Classical methods of print publication are predicted to drop from 90 percent in 1995 to 50 percent in 2015, while the Emergent electronic and networked modes will increase from 1 percent to 20 percent over the same period. Remaining scientific communications will be carried through different mixes of paper and electronic communications constituting a three-tiered Modernized model.