Librarianship is a unique nexus between academic perspectives and intense loyalty to the needs of clients. It is not surprising that this professional community continues to filter Web resources into valuable collections, at universities, national laboratories and government sites. Most of these sites are readily accessible to you, though some material is site-licenced, restricted to users within the licensed domain (e.g. yale.edu).

Good material cannot all be free. Users willing to pay a fee can sustain the professional traditions of authors, editors and librarians making their living by increasingly electronic means. Important and complex legal issues of copyright and licensing need to be resolved, and "trusted systems" developed for the transactions between author and reader. Information furnished without charge, or advertiser supported, will most likely depend on low-cost computer-based indexing with its evident limitations.

Sample library sites:

Yale Univ. Engineering & Applied Science Library

Yale Univ. Library Research Work Station

Engineering Electronic Library (Swedish Univ. of Technology)

Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL)

WWW Virtual Library: Electrical Engineering

Los Alamos Preprint Archive (Paul Ginsparg's electronic publishing milestone, strongly suggestive of the future of professional publication. But see also "The Dangers of Ubiquity")

Electronic Journals and Newsletters