Top Highlights

• What distinguishes it from other open-access policies is its mandatory character. Faculty members are required to transfer a nonexclusive license to Harvard, making their scholarship freely accessible from a repository, which the library
• But the oldest machine of all, the codex, continues to dominate the market for reading matter. In fact, its market share is actually increasing. According to Bowker’s Global Books in Print, 700,000 new titles appeared worldwide in 1998; 859,000 in 2003; and 976,000 in 2007. Despite the current downturn of the economy, soon a million new books will ...
• The staying power of the old-fashioned codex illustrates a general principle in the history of communication: one medium does not displace another, at least not in the short run.
• As book historians insist, authors write texts, but books are made by book professionals, and the professionals exercise functions that extend far beyond manufacturing and diffusing a product. Publishers are gatekeepers, who control the flow of knowledge.
• book professionals provide services that will outlast all changes in technology.