Evolving Ecological Niches: Technological Change and the Transformation of the Libraries Role in Publishing

Print has been the most significant scholarly communication technology for the last three hundred years (at least). Kaufer and Carley’s Ecology of Communicative Transactions analyses print communication in ecological terms. This paper applies this perspective to the changes now occurring in scholarly communication. The theory of punctuated equilibrium proposes that evolution of new species occurs both in bursts and in response to changes in environments. Rapid changes in the scholarly communication environment have occurred over the last fifty years, and most particularly since the rise of the Internet. Viewing the Internet as a new ecological niche, this paper looks at five university libraries that are redefining their roles in the scholarly communication ecology. They are acting as facilitators for electronic scholarly publishing rather than just as access points for content created by others. The five projects (Highwire Press, Internet Library of Early Journals, Project EDUCATE,...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: ELPUB
• Authors: Andrew E. Treloar
• Keywords: ELPUB 1998, Information Management, Scholarly Communications, Scholarly Publishing, Significant Scholarly Communication