December 9, 2005

Information Anarchy or Information Utopia?

By JAMES G. NEAL

Marshall McLuhan once noted that our age of anxiety is largely the result of trying to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools. Those of us who work in academic libraries are certainly anxious, and that anxiety will probably only grow over the next decade.

We are anxious about our role in scholarly communication. We've watched the corporate economy take over what was essentially a guild economy. But faculty members at our colleges and universities continue to transfer ownership of their