The Professional Implications of Electronic Information

The author discusses the effect that electronic information resources can be expected to have on the academic profession. The most obvious issues concern the extent to which faculty effort in the area of electronic information resources will be recognized in decisions on professional advancement. In particular, the author discusses the differences in research and teaching applications in relation to electronic resources. In the second part of this paper, she looks at the character of the academic profession itself, discussing the academic profession as a whole and its relation to the universities. To assist in an understanding of the place of technology in academia, she describes the technology that will be most significant in professional life and estimates the pace at which such change might be expected to occur. The third section of the paper focuses on the decentralizing effects of computers and networks, and speculates upon the consequences.