For a long time, I was a detached observer of the hoopla surrounding desktop publishing. I read breathless accounts of how the increasingly powerful and more affordable machines on our desks would radically and forever change academic publishing. Journals would circulate in electronic form on the Internet, while camera-ready copy would turn every academic into a publisher and thereby reduce the power and influence of university presses. In general, academic publishing would become more dynamic, more diverse and more egalitarian. All of this seemed very heady, but it also seemed abstract and far-removed from the paper-bound world I inhabited. More recently, however, I have myself become a desktop publisher. This experience has convinced me that the computer will indeed change the nature of academic publishing. It has also convinced me that not all of these changes will be for the better.
My sudden (and somewhat reluctant) debut as a desktop publisher and editor came with the formation of the International Boethius Society in the spring of 1991 to promote the study of this sixthcentury philosopher who is best known as the author of The Consolation of Philosophy.