Jean-Claude may feel that > > Librarians create the illusion of free access by supporting the whole > > structure financially
and Stevan may disdain > Anyone who prefers instead to fight with publishers over tolls -- or to > lock horns with clueless lawyers, blindly leading the blind around the > uncharted regions of cyberspace while clutching the old, inapplicable > paper-based categories for dear life I want to remind them that there will be an interval until the scientists see the light and make their articles available by true open access. In the interim, there is value in continuing some system of scientific communication that will include the contribution of those less-enlightened in this regard, but who may be doing good science in other respects. This does require people who will work to provide as much access as possible to as many members of the community as possible, who will negotiate with publishers over not merely affordable tolls, but access to unaffiliated users, access by interlibrary loan, stability and permanence of access, and access in the third world. We do not work for ourselves: we are the agents of those who wish to obtain information. I think both Jean-Claude and Stevan would want to have some means of accessing the work of those who still publish in monetarily restricted ways. David Goodman Princeton University Library and Palmer School of Library and Information Science, LIU dgood...@princeton.edu