Gregory Crane has led this program into an exploration of what lies ahead in digital publishing and through his knowledge, enthusiasm, and purposeful direction, the possibilities appear real. It is my belief that in many universities, digital publishing endeavors will become a reality under the leadership, collaboration, and recognition of senior faculty and university administrators. I will describe a more usual situation in regard to faculty and student current choices of a distribution medium, print or digital as well as the successful collaboration at Notre Dame between faculty, librarians and computing experts in exploring the digital world.
Print remains a popular choice for distributing the results of scholarship.
For those graduate students who are completing a dissertation, print remains the only choice at Notre Dame. Discussions held by the Graduate Studies Council last year focused intensively on the experiences at Virginia Tech and other universities. Although it is clear that these two requirements can be addressed separately and different solutions adopted for each question, the potential hindrance to future publication by students of their dissertations in journals or monographs was considered sufficient cause to move slowly into this brave new world. There was equally clear recognition of the positive impacts of moving ahead with digital publication in that it would provide significantly greater opportunities for integration of communication means, e.g., text, sound, graphics, video, as well as develop strong computer skills among students and faculty. Both of these would be strong catalysts for changing the culture of research and provide training along the lines of what Greg is proposing as well.