Working here at Choice, it is easy enough to overlook the contradictory nature of some of things we do—using the Web to publish reviews of print books, for example.  Since 1998, Choice Reviews Online subscribers have had Web access to the latest Choice reviews of materials that, for the most part, are not available on the Web at all.

To be sure, Choice also reviews materials that are available via the Web, and has done so since 1997, but print books still comprise the lion’s share of the materials reviewed in Choice.  How did we get here?  Why does this make sense?  And when, if ever, is it going to change?

These are really good questions, but the first two are a lot easier to answer than the third.  The decision to launch Choice Reviews Online, for example, was a relatively easy one, almost a no-brainer.  That decision, made circa 1997, was prompted by a variety of converging influences—queries from subscribers, gentle nudging from the Choice editorial board, a belief that Choice content, especially the reviews, is a particularly good match for Web delivery, and a general desire to get involved with this exciting new phenomenon called Web publishing.

Once the final decision was made—with the enthusiastic support of the editorial board–things progressed quite rapidly.  The beta version of Choice Reviews Online was up and running in the spring of 1998.  The formal launch of CRO 1.0, as it is known in-house, followed a year later in April 1999, and Choice has been on the Web continuously ever since.

Whether there is anything odd about publishing reviews of print materials on the Web depends on your perspective.  Ours is and has been strictly pragmatic.  For as long as academic libraries continue to buy scholarly monographs that are published either primarily or exclusively in print, Choice will review them.  Under these circumstances, publishing reviews on the Web is simply a means of getting them to our readers a bit faster and in a format that many, although not all, of our subscribers find highly convenient and useful.  There are, after all, some things you can only do on the Web, e.g., provide a searchable database of all Choice reviews published since September 1988.

Conversely, there are some things you can only do in print, e.g., take the latest issue with you for reading while at the beach.  (And yes, we know, you could browse the latest issue of CRO at the beach via your Web-enabled cell phone, but most people are not doing that just yet, and they have their reasons).  Nor are we recommending that anyone read Choice at the beach, believing that down time is supposed to be down time.  (We’re old-fashioned that way.)

When all this is going to change is, of course, the sixty-four dollar question.  The easy answer is that it will change when scholarly monographs stop being published primarily in print.  When that day comes, and our guess is it will come, we have a very straightforward Plan B.  We’ll review the electronic editions.  Until then, we’ll keep on keeping on, contradictions and all.—IER