The American Library profession is at a crossroads: will our future be marked by the predominance of free and open source integrated library systems and open access journal publishing, or will we continue to use proprietary software and tolerate barriers to scholarly information? Does it matter? The ethical and philosophical implications of open source and [...]

You probably saw a recent final post from Lauren Jensen, ACRLog’s 2006-07 new academic librarian. It seems like we were just introducing Lauren to you. On behalf of the blog team I want to thank Lauren for agreeing to be our first new academic librarian, assigned with the task of providing field reports on the [...]

The New York Times has a lengthy and scary article (the first in a series) on the environmental effects of China’s booming economy. Though freedom of information was not a theme of the article, it kept cropping up. First, basic public health data is being suppressed by the government because . . . well, it’s [...]

Though it is probably not as eagerly sought after by prospective (and even active) college students as their top party schools list, the folks at Princeton Review may have noticed this and decided that students would also want to know more about the best libraries. You can get to the list via a post at [...]

According to The Guardian, one of the reasons a German academic has been arrested on terrorism charges is that he had access to a university library. Academics from around the world have protested to Germany’s federal prosecutor about the arrest and detention of a Berlin sociologist who is accused of associating with a terrorist group [...]