ABSTRACT
The most important development in British-based academic and professional publishing has been sustained prosperity in the face of doom-sayers who foresaw decline in the face of new information technology, photocopying, and reduced library funds. Piracy is beginning to be contained. Nearly 40% of the revenue of British publishing is from sales outside of the United Kingdom. The British are perhaps more conscious of the needs and aspirations of the Third World than either the American publishing industry or the other-language industries. Publishers and librarians need not only more dialogue with one another, but also to learn each other’s language, and sympathize with each other’s hopes and fears. Librarians are instinctively defensive about public access to knowledge. Copyright licensing has become institutionalized, and new copyright legislation is seen in Britain and elsewhere as sustaining rights of copyright holders satisfactorily. Copyright holders are defensive about intellectual property, and the subject tends to be emotive.
