As I have moved along the "editor’s learning curve" over the past several months, I have become increasingly aware of the exciting potentials of electronic journal publication. I would like to take a moment to comment here on three aspects of such publishing which I find particularly exciting: access, quality, and interactivity.

Web publication yields an increase in access which is quite extraordinary. The electronic journal is available not only to subscribers and those with access to an academic library, but to anyone, anywhere, with access to the Internet. Needless to say, this is a huge number of people. Granted, there are many people who do not at this time have access to the needed computer technology, and that this inaccessibility is particularly concentrated among those people of the world who are more poor and remote. Nevertheless, access to electronic knowledge is very great; is growing all the time; and the net effect, it seems to me, is an exciting quantum increase in the democratization of knowledge.

Electronic publication also affords a significant enhancement of the quality of available knowledge. In traditional journal publication, production costs ran high, space was severely limited, enhancements were few, supplemental materials were typically prohibited, and what did make its way into academic publication was often scaled back and not in the format best suited for its purposes. With electronic publication, the restrictions on what and how scholarly work can be presented are greatly eased. Powerful new possibilities are also available, such as color, high quality graphics, animation, audio, virtual images, links to related sites and persons, and attachments such as data sets or additional tables, which more interested readers may wish to refer to. There are some satisfying examples of such quality enhancements in the articles that appear in this volume. Much more can be done, however, and I hope my colleagues will be inspired to report further exciting experiments in the coming years.

Lastly, I am impressed with the greatly increased opportunity which electronic publication provides for scholarly interaction. As an example, I myself have been able to engage in extensive electronic communication over the past several months with the former editor of Perspectives and with the numerous authors whose works appear herein; to visit their Web sites and home pages, to electronically tour their campuses, to visit numerous other sites which they have linked me to, and to consult with IT personnel in their campus computer centers. Through these interactions, my own horizons, both as a scholar and as a teacher have been substantially broadened. Additionally, the "lag-time" that was involved in pursuing clarifications, collaborations, and syntheses of ideas presented in press-printed formats is dramatically fore-shortened, and knowledge should, as a result, advance more rapidly.

Many of the forces which are altering scholarly publication are also altering collegiate teaching. As the articles published in this volume indicate, an astonishing amount of experimentation with technology applications in higher education is now underway. Fields which have been set for decades in the manner in which they are taught are now being rapidly innovated. The breadth of this influence is evident in the current volume which contains reports on experimental efforts in such diverse areas as undergraduate mentoring internships with troubled teens, international collaborative distance learning between the U.S. and a former Soviet state, diversity training for law enforcement officers, the education of journalists in converged campus news facilities, and collegiate education in penal institutions. More than this, it is almost certainly true that there is far more that can be done than has as yet even been imagined. Indeed, years of worthwhile work in experimenting, describing, assessing, and reporting on the effectiveness of various new educational possibilities lie ahead of us. It was, I feel, a matter of considerable foresight that the officers of our association dedicated the past two annual meetings to the theme of technology in collegiate education. The excellent selection of papers in this area which appear in this volume are a testament to their inspiration. Perhaps a special niche is developing for our association and its publications.

At the same time, all is not technology and experimentation. Other important concerns, such as the ethicality of our professional activity, our intellectual history, and the social and psychological needs of our diverse students appear here as well.

Finally, behavioral and social scientists at four year institutions have always, and continue today, to make important contributions to the knowledge bases of their disciplines and professions. Given that more limited funds and heavier teaching responsibilities prevail among us, we cannot generally produce as much as our colleagues in primarily graduate and research oriented institutions. Nevertheless, high quality and worthwhile contributions do emanate from among us, and I am pleased that we are able to highlight, in this volume, some of our members’ contributions of this type as well.

In conclusion I would like to thank the Association and Drs. Norma Winston and Bill Winston for the opportunity to serve in the capacity of editor of this volume, and to commend all of the authors represented herein; all involved have been utterly responsive and gracious.