Robert: I agree wholeheartedly with your posting about resources on the Net and others which are being sold. I actually don't object at all to the Witt's policy of selling their information. It was more that I was struck to see an announcement of a new information resource on the Net that wasn't a gopher or web site. I had a good long talk with the director of our publications program (which is the largest non-university botanical publication program in the world), about all of these subjects. Apart from her instinctual mistrust of the Net and of digital publishing, which comes from years of paper publishing, she made many of the same points about the implications of "refereeing" and therefore the validity of print journals vs. electronic postings. But that is an artifact, not integral to the medium. In other words, there is no intrinsic reason that electronically published and disseminated journals could not have the same authority as print journals. It's just that they don't now because of the Wild West nature of the Net (bless its pointy little head). So, the critical question for her, and for other publishers of scholarly journals, is "how can we find the money to sustain our efforts if we make it accessible for free." And there is no more reason that they should than that the people who sell gasoline should give it away. So, believe me, I am very sympathetic with the need to get money for things such as the Witt finding aid, I am just fascinated by this aspect of the information evolution. Eric Siegel [log in to unmask]