Rethinking the library's role in publishing

Print has been the most significant scholarly communication technology for over three hundred years. In the last decades of the twentieth century, technological developments have revolutionized our attitutes towards communication as well as our ability to communicate ideas and research results electronically, to a global audience. As a result university libraries have begun to redefine their traditional role as guardians and gatekeepers of our repositories of knowledge, and have entered an arena that was previously the domain of commercial and university presses. This paper surveys five library projects (Highwire Press, Internet Library of Early Journals, Project EDUCATE, Project Muse and the Scholarly Communications Project) which demonstrate different organizational models, funding sources and types of content.