In the pre-Internet days, one of the standby reference books on the desks of most Canadian journalists was a book called Sources.... Sources is still published but I suspect most newsrooms and most journalists might use the electronic version.... A journalist would e-mail a query to ProfNet and then the query would get circulated to the PR shops at universities and colleges across the continent (but mostly in the U.S.).

Gene Spafford is no Luddite (though he worries, below, he might sound like one with this rant he mailed in to Dave Farber's list) but he is a smart guy and a digital pioneer who worries about the implications of generations of students hooked up to Bittorrent never having to pay for a textbook: As noted, the whole mechanism of textbooks (and books in general) is changing.... I know all the arguments about the cyber revolution making knowledge quickly available, at how we can avoid cabals and politics by publishing new results quickly, about how scarce funds can be spent on items other than books, and how even 3rd world scholars can have instant access.... Yet, as a scholar and educator, i worry how to ensure that all our students get the best, most correct materials, that our researchers use correct and commonly-available results, and that we document our progress in correct and archival formats for generations to come.