In the humanities and sciences alike, electronic networks are increasingly used to access, disseminate, and work with research data and to communicate with colleagues in connection with this research. The imminent development of the National Research and Education Network (NREN) is greatly accelerating this process, but also brings with it the need to develop structures of communication, collaboration, and critical control which are largely unprecedented. Basic questions about what is feasible and what is desirable need to be addressed. We also have little shared understanding of how to handle the problem of network management so as to insure the preservation of academic autonomy. In view of this, twenty-five experts in network development, database design, electronic information management, and network user research are being convened to consider how to turn to maximum advantage the opportunities implicit in the development of NREN as a medium for research and education. Rapid experimental prototyping is needed, and at this symposium/workshop, a substantive conception of an electronic research and learning environment will be presented as a hypothesis to be critiqued systematically by the participants in the interest of establishing a concrete understanding of what is required to make such a prototype intellectually sound and technologically and fiscally feasible. The results of this symposium will be reported to decision makers in the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.
