A FASTR Open Access
22/02/2013 § 6 Comments
Last week Nicole discussed getting political, and the very next day an opportunity came. On February 14, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) was introduced in both the House and Senate. As a library school student who is passionate about open access and interested in scholarly communications, this bill is exciting!
This bi-partisan bill has the potential to have a great impact for access. No matter what type of librarianship you pursue, this bill could significantly help your future patrons. Maybe it will be an adult patron wanting to read a study, a high schooler doing his first research paper, or a university student working on her honors thesis—all needing articles from a journal that your library cannot afford to subscribe to. Sometimes when I think of open access I hear Oprah’s voice shouting, “You get articles! And you get articles! Everybody gets articles!” All right, maybe that is a bit weird… but for librarians, information becoming more accessible is kind of like a dream come true.
Original image CC BY-SA Mack Male
