Pardon me while my head explodes. The word “access” is one with generally good connotations among librarians. It’s in a lot of mission statements. It takes on a more mercenary meaning when it refers to the relationship between the press and power. And The New York Times has a very scary story about it today. [...]

A researcher recently discovered something odd: she couldn’t use “abortion” in a keyword search Popline, a standard database on reproductive health hosted at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. What the–? Turns out, it’s now a stop word. Like “a” and “the.” Something you want excluded from a search. What the–? Turns [...]

Yes! A judge has just said (again) that NSLs are unconstitutional!! Well, duh, we knew that. But it’s good to have it on record, and with a civics lesson built right in. Specifically, the automatic and unlimited gag order, and the indiscriminate way in which they’ve been handed out, offers the FBI an opportunity to [...]

A friend writes: You all know firsthand as academic librarians that the present system of scholarly communication is badly broken. Faster and wider sharing of knowledge, like that funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), would fuel the advance of science. Broad communication of research results is an essential component of the US government’s [...]