MICHELSON summarized this section by noting two striking changes taking
place in scholarly communication among humanities scholars. First is the
extent to which electronic text in particular, and electronic resources
in general, are being infused into each of the five processes described
above. As mentioned earlier, there is a certain synergy at work here.
The use of electronic resources for one process tends to stimulate its
use for other processes, because the chief course of movement is toward a
comprehensive on-line working context for humanities scholars that
includes on-line availability of key bibliographies, scholarly feedback,
sources, analytical tools, and publications. MICHELSON noted further
that the movement toward a comprehensive on-line working context for
humanities scholars is not new. In fact, it has been underway for more
than forty years in the humanities, since Father Roberto Busa began
developing an electronic concordance of the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas
in 1949. What we are witnessing today, MICHELSON contended, is not the
beginning of this on-line transition but, for at least some humanities
scholars, the turning point in the transition from a print to an
electronic working context. Coinciding with the on-line transition, the
second striking change is the extent to which research and education
networks are becoming the new medium of scholarly communication. The
existing Internet and the pending National Education and Research Network
(NREN) represent the new meeting ground where scholars are going for
bibliographic information, scholarly dialogue and feedback, the most
current publications in their field, and high-level educational
offerings. Traditional scholarly practices are undergoing tremendous
transformations as a result of the emergence and growing prominence of
what is called network-mediated scholarship.
MICHELSON next turned to the second element of the framework she proposed
at the outset of her talk for evaluating the prospects for electronic
text, namely the key information technology trends affecting the conduct
of scholarly communication over the next decade: 1) end-user computing
and 2) connectivity.
End-user computing means that the person touching the keyboard, or
performing computations, is the same as the person who initiates or
consumes the computation. The emergence of personal computers, along
with a host of other forces, such as ubiquitous computing, advances in
interface design, and the on-line transition, is prompting the consumers
of computation to do their own computing, and is thus rendering obsolete
the traditional distinction between end users and ultimate users.
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