I am addressing only the original issue: The non-academic public will benefit from these archives in several ways besides the accelerated development of scientific research that they will help bring about:
1. In those cases where they want to read the original articles that form the basis of rational public policy, health care, and the like, they will easily be able to access them, without having to negotiate entrance to a major library. 2. In many fields, many articles are accessible to any intelligent person willing to use a dictionary. In some others, a basic understanding of elementary mathematics of chemistry may be pre-requisite. Some may take more advanced preparation. A user can perfectly well not read what he cannot understand, just as in a paper library. 3. The structure of the archive will encourage the growth of a layer of commentaries, summaries, layman's explanations, and so on. This will lead non-specialists to develop the ability to understand and read the primary literature. 4. The structure of the archive can also easily include appropriate metadata indicating intellectual level. Standardizing criteria such as these is not a trivial problem. 5. The amount of potential data available in an archive, as on the even larger web, does require more sophisticated searching mechanisms than presently exist. A large number of people in different fields are working on this problem. I am not very optimistic about its rapid solution. 6. The best guide at present is a human librarian. The web make it much more feasible to put user guides online, but at this time direct interaction is the most effective approach. 7. The refusal of academic scientists to interact with the interested public makes rational developments in society harder to achieve. It also encourages the growth of pseudo-science, and discourages the public support of science. -- David Goodman, Ph.D. Biology Librarian Princeton University Library Princeton, NJ 08544-0001 phone: 609-258-3235 fax: 609-258-2627 e-mail: dgood...@princeton.edu