Scindex's Instant Publishing Service is about empowerment. The price of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals has skyrocketed in last few years, often way out of limited means of libraries, universities, individual scientists and scholars. A "scholarly divide" has opened between haves (academic institutions with rich endowments and well-heeled corporations) and haves not (all others). Paradoxically, access to authoritative and authenticated knowledge has declined as number of professional journals has proliferated. This is not to mention long (and often crucial) delays in publishing research results and shoddy work of many under-paid and over-worked peer reviewers.

The Internet was suppose to change all that. Originally, a computer network for exchange of (restricted and open) research results among scientists and academics in participating institutions - it was supposed to provide instant publishing, instant access and instant gratification. It has delivered only partially. Preprints of academic papers are often placed online by their eager authors and subjected to peer scrutiny. But this haphazard publishing cottage industry did nothing to dethrone print incumbents and their avaricious pricing.

The major missing element is, of course, respectability. But there are others. No agreed upon content or knowledge classification method has emerged. Some web sites (such as Suite101) use Dewey decimal system. Others invented and implemented systems of their making. Additionally, one click publishing technology (such as Webseed's or Blogger's) came to be identified strictly to non-scholarly material: personal reminiscences, correspondence, articles and news.

(ZDNet quoted by "Publisher's Lunch on July 13, 2001)

It is amazing that traditional archivists of human knowledge - libraries - failed so spectacularly to ride tiger of Internet, that epitome and apex of knowledge creation and distribution. At first, libraries, inertial repositories of printed matter, were overwhelmed by rapid pace of technology and by ephemeral and anarchic content it spawned. They were reduced to providing access to dull card catalogues and unimaginative collections of web links. The more daring added online exhibits and digitized collections. A typical library web site is still comprised of static representations of library's physical assets and a few quasi-interactive services.

This tendency - by both publishers and libraries - to inadequately and inappropriately pour old wine into new vessels is what caused recent furor over e-books.

The lending of e-books to patrons appears to be a natural extension of classical role of libraries: physical book lending. Libraries sought also to extend their archival functions to e-books. But librarians failed to grasp essential and substantive differences between two formats. E-books can be easily, stealthily, and cheaply copied, for instance. Copyright violations are a real and present danger with e-books. Moreover, e-books are not a tangible product. "Lending" an e-book - is tantamount to copying an e-book. In other words, e-books are not books at all. They are software products. Libraries have pioneered digital collections (as they have other information technologies throughout history) and are still main promoters of e-publishing. But now they are at risk of becoming piracy portals.