History of open access - Peter Suber

"Analogy. Suppose a small town began to grow in a former wilderness. Early in its history it had a newspaper. In time it had a phone book, tax roll, town hall, post office, telegraph office, public library, school, church, cemetery, train station, doctor, surveyor, bartender, 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 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 them out. In this sense, I [Peter Suber] 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 on their scope, preservation, 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...."