The impact of information technology is reviewed by scholars who are leading pioneers in the application of that technology to research in their disciplines. From both a general appreciation of their fields, and from their own personal research, they discuss whether this impact amounts to a paradigm shift, posing new research themes and new approaches. This volume provides a unique overview of IT across a wide range of disciplines in both the humanities archaeology, history (art, cultural, demographic, social), linguistics, music, philosophy, and theatre studies and the social sciences economics, human geography, law, psychology, social anthropology, and sociology. Stemming from a conference organized by the British Academy in October 1996, this volume provides a benchmark of the situation in the late 1990s from which future progress can be assessed.