In this transitional time I think one of the challenges to my successors once or twice removed on the Publications Committee is going to be to keep standards and scholarly taste intact. Among the challenges being discussed, for book publishing in general as well as for university presses, are the new electronic media. They will offer new opportunities to disseminate our products, and among them perhaps the scholarly monographs which sell fewer and fewer copies, and yet assure the continued tradition of scholarship that pushes the frontiers of knowledge. However these new media will not shorten or lighten the work of editing and producing truly lasting, serious books or electronic book-equivalents. And new expertise will be needed in publishing to make full use of the opportunities as they emerge.
University presses are likely to fill other increasingly important roles in the future.
We will be serving an important mission by publishing books of excellence which would have been published commercially only a few years ago. Yale Press is preeminent in many areas. The books we publish are always handsome and often genuinely beautiful. There is scarcely a week that our books are not in the news. This is very good indeed.