From: Laval Hunsucker <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:43:30 -0700

> Perhaps librarians AND publishers would chime in here on this topic,
> for a breadth of experience.

Fine; nothing wrong with that. But:  I'd also, myself, especially like
to see the most significant of the concerned parties chime in on this:
the researchers, the scholars, the scientists, the educators, the
students and other learners. That's where the really important
commentary and answers will have to come from, it seems to me.
Statistics or no statistics. That's where one finds the 'experience'
which, at the end of the day, actually matters. Pity is: few of those
(primary) stakeholders are going to be hanging out on this list. So,
we'll have to find some other way to get that so essential input.
(By which I don't, mind you, mean to say that some of us haven't
been trying, in mostly haphazard and isolated ways, lo these many
decades, to get some of that.)

It's the old story that we still have, after all this time, precious little
practical knowledge of what those parties actually do with what we
provide them -- print _or_ electronic -- and, more in particular, of
_how_ they do it. Without that knowledge, our own deliberations
and pronouncements, however eloquent, will never mean a whole
lot, at any rate outside of our own circles.

- Laval Hunsucker
  Breukelen, Nederland