With more reliance on electronic publishing, authors will know more about the technical aspects of their business. They will consider the long term, dealing with utility and reuse as well as providing more support for readers. The thinking and functions of librarians will spread into our systems and services, and into each person who works with electronic information. On the broader scale, these changes may lead to flattening of the information profession, with more flexible structure and less rigid roles. As electronic publishing leads to greater social change in the small, and as publishing, libraries, multimedia, and communication become more integrated, there will be more upheaval in the scholarly publishing world.
Technology often moves faster than society is prepared to deal with the changes.
In 1993 a historical turning point occurred as both the Internet and multimedia entered the mainstream of American life. The impending changes in scholarly publications are caused by the confluence of two trends. The digitalization of the scholarly word appears inevitable, but the timing is uncertain. Modifying a culture is far more difficult than innovating with technology. At any rate, the advent of electronic publishing offers a marvelous opportunity to reexamine some of the latent assumptions of the present research system.