History of open access - Peter Suber

"Nobody has yet written a comprehensive history of open access (OA), and I don't plan to. But many of my writings and projects over the years will help those who want to study or write up parts of that history. Here are some of those pieces and projects....

Analogy. Suppose a small town began to grow in a former wilderness. Early in its history it had a newspaper covering daily events. In time it had a phone book, tax roll, town hall, post office, telegraph office, public library, school, church, cemetery, train station, doctor, surveyor, and private eye, each accumulating records in its own idiosyncratic, incomplete way. None of these caches of information is a history of the town. All are materials useful for studying the history of the town. Someone who knew where a good fraction of them were located would do a service by pointing it out. In this sense, I haven't written a history of OA. But I've created materials, alone or with others, useful for studying the history of OA. And here I'm pointing them out, with some notes their scope and searchability. Needless to say, the history of OA is still unfolding. The small town didn't disappear except in the sense that it grew into a large city...."