not a student of science fiction, I placed a query on the CompuServe science fiction forum -- I suppose that such a query might in some modest way resemble the brother Grimm's interrogation of bearers of folktale.

PACS-L @UHUPVM 1

Discussions contained in the Bitnet list PACS-L @UHUPVM 1 suggest that there is some interest in recognizing the Internet as a publica- tion, albeit an amorphous one, that might never- theless be subject to cataloging.

Ultimately, we may discover that an Internet- based system for distribution, together with the donated, institutionally subsidized, labors of au- thors and editors can result in less cost to aca- demic consumers and a greater variety of mate- rials becoming available

With the dissemination of large textual data- bases via media such as disks, authors and editors lose control over their work: users can generate subsets, modify them according to their own sense of what constitutes improvements, and even change them so as to avoid charges of plagiarism and copyright infringement.

In effect, their exchange of corre- spondence (e-mail) publicly on lists over global networks constitutes participation in a new form of publication. This dimension is central; such network communications systems as Bitnet and the Internet offer new modes of publication, often but not always with counterparts in print media.