A Tale of Two Worlds

Preprints are the highest-in-demand, and often the shortest-lived, documents in the field of high-energy physics. In the 1990s, this document form was becoming increasingly available fulltext on the World Wide Web, and the Fermilab Information Resources Department needed also to make Fermilab preprints available electronically. In this paper, the author describes the processes the Department underwent in moving preprint delivery, access and storage largely (but not completely) out of the print realm and into the electronic realm. Challenges, milestones, and cost-savings are all discussed.