Re: NTIS and copyright

On Mon, 23 Aug 1999, Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> On August 12, Commerce Secretary William M. Daley announced
> his intention to close the National Technical Information
> Service. NTIS is the federal government's central agency
> for the sale of scientific, technical, engineering, and
> business related information produced for or by the U.S.
> government. Its collection includes about 3 million
> publications representing billions of dollars of information
> paid for by taxpayers.

FWIW, NTIS has flirted with online access to its databases. Problem is that the access fees to the material are prohibitive to the average citizen -- typically $300 to several thousand dollars for a single-user subscription.

Though shorter-term access is available at reduced rates, and the fee schedules are likely attractive to corporate subscribers, I feel there's a serious efficiency loss in making the data as unavailable as is to the general public.

.... Of course, you can always go to your nearest NTIS repository and browse the 'fiche for free... (not that I've ever had a job at a UC library filing NTIS document submissions...).

-- 
Karsten M. Self (kmself[_at_]ix.netcom.com)
    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

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