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The Biology Department has been very lucky to have its "own" Falconer Library that has been a jewel of a resource for our students and faculty for over thirty-five years. Every Falconer librarian, especially our current librarian, Michael Newman, has been very service-oriented and provides a comfortable space in which to work, as well as collection management that optimizes our resources-especially in these times of budgetary restraint and the transition from print to electronic publication. Michael is highly consultative, insuring that critical resources are retained and new opportunities are made available.
The most dramatic, transforming change in science publishing in the last 100 years has been electronic publishing of journals. Electronic publication and distribution on the Internet is a revolution that was started, and is still led, by Stanford Libraries' HighWire Press. Mike Keller, Stanford's chief librarian, is the visionary who created HighWire Press ten years ago, and John Sack has been the creative energy that has shaped it. Every scientific journal of value on earth has now followed HighWire's lead and publishes their research electronically. It is now possible to explore an entire research topic without ever leaving one's office. Soon, the traditional print journal will disappear and the electronic transition will be complete. And it all started here!
While electronic publication has indeed been a revolution, the transition from print to electronic has been relatively slow and costly because librarians are maintaining both print and electronic versions of the same journal in order to serve everyone. I'm confident that with leadership from Mike Keller, John Sack and Michael Newman and their library colleagues, we will emerge from this transition period as a international leader in newly defined library services.
Robert D. Simoni
Robert D. Simoni is the Donald Kennedy Professor of Humanities and Sciences, and professor and chairman of Biological Sciences. His area of research focuses on the nature of cellular membranes using a broad range of techniques, from molecular biology and biochemistry to cell biology. He notes, "We continue to analyze the role of cholesterol in biological membranes, as well as the genetic mechanisms by which cholesterol production is regulated. This study has direct clinical relevance to the problems of atherosclerosis and heart disease."
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