Electronic publishing for engineering education

Electronic transmission of text is a revolution in progress with a profound effect on engineering education. As with all revolutions, the result is both a threat and a promise. The promise is the ease and speed of dissemination of text. The threat involves serious difficulties that arise in efforts to protect: the intellectual property rights of the authors and publishers of the technical information. In this paper, we discuss both the threat and the promise. We highlight the differences in dealing with books and with journals. We give a wide range of examples from both inside of and outside of the scientific and engineering fields.