The companies have to be aggressive or they will fail. Some are going to be very big within ten years. At the beginning of the Digital Libraries Initiative, a common question was what balance would emerge among libraries, publishers, and computing professionals. Perhaps this was the wrong question. At the first meeting of federal webmasters two years ago, over a thousand people showed up - a thousand web professionals where none had existed two years earlier.
Webmasters are part librarian, part publisher, part designer, and part computing professional.
Users are publishing their own materials and managing their own libraries. Conventional wisdom states that this is a short term phenomenon, that the future lies with professionals. Yet we all dial our own telephone calls and drive our own cars. Today, we all need professional help to set up our computers, connect to networks, and use libraries, but we do not need help to install a stereo or use a television. We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare.