"The concept of Westview Special Studies is a response to thecontinuing crisis in academic and informational publishing. Librarybudgets are being diverted from the purchase of books and used fordata banks, computers, micromedia, and other methods of informationretrieval. Interlibrary loan structures further reduce the edition sizesrequired to satisfy the needs of the scholarly community. Economicpressures on university presses and the few private scholarly publishingcompanies have greatly limited the capacity of the industry to properlyserve the academic and research communities. As a result, manymanuscripts dealing with important subjects, often representing thehighest level of scholarship, are no longer economically viable publishingprojects-or, if accepted for publication, are typically subject tolead times ranging from one to three years."