>>Community Report COMMUNITY REPORT 2001: Susan Hockey Susan Hockey Director, School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, University College, London "I had a look at what I wrote before and I think it still stands." I think there are two real issues to be noted here: 1. Those of us involved in this activity seem to be largely a community of producers. I am really interested to know who the consumers are, what they think of our products and for what purposes they will use those products. I don't mean here the "consumers" who are known to the producers and are lined up to write letters of support for grant applications or to sit on test panels, but the people out there who will use these products and create enough of a user community to make them sustainable. 2. "Sustainability" is my next point - I don't want to use the term "costs" as it raises so many hackles in academia. I think that we need to do a lot more fundamental research in how to make electronic products and how to ensure that they meet the needs of as many groups of users as possible without compromising the academic standards that we all expect to see in print publications and without eating up too many resources. This might mean less emphasis on the kind of "glitzy-interface" project which is usually trotted out for the Board of Governors and other dignitaries, but which also may well lack any serious academic depth. It ought to mean more emphasis on user studies, pilot projects that write up and publish their experiences in detail, and the development of general purpose tools that address user needs in the humanities. I'm not really in favour of creating lists of exemplary projects unless it's absolutely clear by what criteria they are being judged. Things which might be exemplary for high school level are probably of much less use for advanced research. (9/28/98)