I <3 Project Gutenberg - Information Accessibility and the Internet

Something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is how someone’s access to information can make or break their opportunities. This sounds like an obvious thing to say, but as someone who is immensely privileged in going to an amazing research university like THE Ohio State University, it’s something that I’ve never really had to consider before. I’ve always been able to operate under the assumption that if I need something, whether that be a book, an article, or a librarian to advise me on just what path I should take for a particular research question, all I had to do was strut on down to Thompson Library and I would find it there.

This pandemic has shaken many things up, including that assumption. As I’ve mentioned here before, for a bit I wasn’t sure that I would get to do this fellowship at all. I figured that if I couldn’t access the library, there would be nothing for me. I was so incredibly wrong. I had always known about JSTOR and Project Gutenberg, had gotten some light use out of them for research assignments before, but this research has opened me up to a whole new world of online academia. It turns out that Ohio State’s libraries have loads of their resources available digitally, and with my OSU login I can get access to a surprising amount of articles on JSTOR. Eleven of Charlotte Brame’s works are available for free on Project Gutenberg, which was a surprise to me. I’m profoundly grateful that all these resources are out there, only a few clicks away. My sincerest hope is that these ‘unprecedented times’ provide an incentive for even more universities and academics to start making more articles and books available online. This would be beneficial for situations like this where whether all the libraries are closed, for people who have a hard time getting to libraries in person, or just for convenience’s sake.

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