Background

The story of the ‘electronic resource’ is an ever-changing one. In a sense, it goes back to the earliest library and mankind's first attempt to store and order data. For centuries the focus had always been on the codex, and then in the mid-twentieth century the digital age was upon us. Efforts were still centred on the compilation, distribution, and referencing of the printed or handwritten work, but in the latter decades of the century there was increasing awareness of the emergence of information and data stored in electronic form, which was falling under the remit of the librarian. For authors and readers alike, the internal structure of the book had been the subject of continued development, and readers witnessed the appearance of numerous navigational aids (for example, indexes, tables of contents, footnotes, annotated editions, and cross-referencing). Publishers too had been focusing entirely on this one area – the printing, marketing, and selling of the paper-based medium. Yet with the advent of the electronic resource there was a feeling that all this had changed, and that new understandings about the use and procurement of information in digital format needed to be developed.