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Content

David Nasaw, a historian and director of the Center for the Humanities at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, said the ability to use keywords to locate books and documents could save academics traveltime and money and broaden their research. "This all captures people's imagination in a wonderful way," Said Kate Wittenberg, director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia University. "But whether it's right or wrong is not the whole question and not the whole answer." This year Ms. Wittenberg's group completed a three-year study of research habits that included 1,233 students. The study concluded that electronic resources had become the main tool for gathering information, particularly among undergraduates. But Ms. Wittenberg does have concerns. "What I've learned is that libraries help people formulate questions as well as find answers," Ms. Wittenberg said. "Who will do that in a virtual world?" On the other hand, she Said, an enhanced databank could make it easier for students to research topics across disciplines. For example, a topic like "climate change" touches an both political science and science, she Said, and "in the physical world, the books about them are in two different buildings at Columbia." Online research could bring the two subjects together instantly. Robert Darnton, a professor of history at Princeton who is writing a book about the history of books, noted that by looking at a book's binding and paper quality, a researcher can discern much about the period in which it was published, the publisher and the intended audience.