R. Kent-Drury, Database Access, January 18, 2006. A listserv posting to SHARP-L (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing list). (Thanks to Issues in Scholarly Communication.) Excerpt:
As a faculty member at a mid-sized, underfunded public university, I certainly appreciate the suggestions for gaining access to materials through alternative means. After seven years spent attempting to get access to a number of databases I'd only seen advertised because my university couldn't afford hundreds of thousands of dollars in access fees, I was lucky enough to spend 5 weeks last summer participating in an NEH seminar at Brown. I was astonished to discover that in only a few weeks with access to databases my institution can't afford, I could complete research that would have taken me months or even years to accomplish through travel and interlibrary loan. What amazed me was not only the exponentially greater access I had at Brown, but also the sheer acceleration of the research process available to those at more generously funded institutions. Until I visited Brown, I (perhaps naively) didn't realize what a difference access makes and how much the gap had widened since I completed my graduate program.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/19/2006 08:47:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
