Association of Research Libraries (ARL®)

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

—Joel 2.28

The Visions and Opportunities Symposium series is specifically aimed for the not-for-profit scholarly and research publishing community, and its objective is to promote information sharing and discussion among people interested in developing the potentials of electronic publishing and particularly of networked distribution.

Symposium I (April 1992) and Symposium ll (December 1992) offered participants the opportunity to prophesy, dream dreams, and see visions of new and extraordinary opportunities in creating and using scholarly publications. Symposium I featured presentations by the earliest pioneers of electronic scholarly journals by creators of Bryn Mawr Classical Review, PACS-Review, Postmodern Culture, and Psycoloquy, along with descriptions of large, not-for-profit experiments by the American Mathematical Society, the American Chemical Society, and OCLC. In a time when a generation is measured in months, not years, the second Symposium told about a "newer" generation of electronic projects. All the projects demonstrate that we have already learned much and are adept, creative, and aggressive in building on prior experiences and in testing what electronic technologies have to offer to not-for-profit publishers, to librarians, and to scholars and researchers. The papers presented and reproduced here teach what we can do, how to do it better, and all the things we have yet to learn.

Several university press publishers described the April Symposium as a Woodstock experience; one felt like a deer caught in the headlights. The tone for the December Symposium, however, was set by Al Thaler of the National Science Foundation, who said: you have to leap into this new technology, if you plan to live for another five years. Through their collaboration in setting up the Symposia, the four responsible organizations clearly showed that they are, if not leaping, then poised to do so. And most of the 70 participants in April, as well as the 120 in December, also expressed a commitment to venture forward.

It is not possible to adequately thank the many people who make the dream of a Symposium achieve its own reality, and any omissions should be laid at my door, but particular thanks go to:

The Association of American University Presses, the co-sponsor; Peter Grenquist as Executive Director; and a volunteer group including Ken Arnold (Rutgers University Press); Charles Creesy (Princeton); Terry Ehling (MIT); Janet Fisher (MIT); Sue Lewis (then at Penn State); and Frank Urbanowski (MIT).

The American Mathematical Society; particularly the Systems Staff in the Ann Arbor offices (Dave Rodgers, Drew Burton, and Kevin Curnow), who have maintained technology support including electronic discussion lists, along with planning and teaching the hands-on training sessions for December registrants -- and immense patience and good cheer.

The NSF and in this case program officer Al Thaler for recognizing, on sight, an excellent idea, and offering witty and fitting words of encouragement and inspiration.

Always to the ARL; its Board; and Duane Webster, its Executive Director, for energetic and spirited dreams and visions of a robust new information world of the future.

—Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries