Dan, is this book going to provide a substantial, coherent and timely
contribution to CSCW or is it just going to be a ragbag of papers from
several meetings stuck together? The latter, of course, Colston.
However, . . . . . . and the "However" was rather long and technical,
but not substantially different in overall content from that of this
pref- ace. Most of the papers contained in this book were initially
presented at meetings organized by the UK's Computer Supported
Cooperative Work (CSCW) Special Interest Group in 1991, but the book is
not a proceedings, whatever the above quo- tation suggests. Readers will
immediately notice that, unlike typical proceedings, all the references
are placed together at the end of the book and that there is a
substantial index: the hall- mark of all proper, technical books of
quality. If you choose to delve further than this preface, you will find
that each chapter is cross-referenced, thus you also gain a coherent
structure across chapters - an advantage traditionally associated with
high quali- ty single-author books. Furthermore, turning apparent
disadvantage to advantage, while single-author books must inevitably
present the idiosyncratic perspective of their author, in this book, and
appropriately for a young area such as CSCW, you will be presented with
the views of a dozen CSCW experts who all have considerable, hard-won
experience, gained over many years.