Information access is the freedom or ability to identify, obtain and make use of

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

or information effectively. There are various research efforts in information access for which the objective is to simplify and make it more effective for human users to access and further process large and unwieldy amounts of data and

information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random ...

. Several technologies applicable to the general area are

Information Retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...

Text Mining Text mining, also referred to as ''text data mining'', similar to text analytics, is the process of deriving high-quality information from text. It involves "the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information, by automatically extract ...

Machine Translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...

, and

Text Categorisation Document classification or document categorization is a problem in library science, information science and computer science. The task is to assign a document to one or more classes or categories. This may be done "manually" (or "intellectually") ...

. During discussions on free access to information as well as on

information policy Information policy is the set of all public laws, regulations and policies that encourage, discourage, or regulate the creation, use, storage, access, and communication and dissemination of information. It thus encompasses any other decision-makin ...

, information access is understood as concerning the insurance of free and closed access to

. Information access covers many issues including

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

, and

security Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social ...

. Groups such as the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members a ...

, th
American Association of Law Libraries

Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the Un ...

'
Taxpayers Assets Project
have advocated for free access to

legal information Legal advice is the giving of a professional or formal opinion regarding the substance or procedure of the law in relation to a particular factual situation. The provision of legal advice will often involve analyzing a set of facts and advising a p ...

. Th
vendor neutral citation
movement in the

legal Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

field is working to ensure that courts will accept

citations A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...

from cases on the web which do not have the traditional (copyrighted) page numbers from the

West Publishing West (also known by its original name, West Publishing) is a business owned by Thomson Reuters that publishes legal, business, and regulatory information in print, and on electronic services such as Westlaw. Since the late 19th century, West h ...

company. There is a worldwide

Free Access to Law Movement The Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) is the international movement and organization devoted to providing free online access to legal information such as case law, legislation, treaties, law reform proposals and legal scholarship. The movement b ...

which advocates free access to legal information. The Wired Magazine Articl
Who Owns The Law
is an introduction to the access to legal information issue. Postsecondary organizations such as K-12 work to share information. They feel it is a legal and moral obligation to provide access (including to people with disabilities or impairments) to information through the services and programs they offer. Some effects of charging for information access, such as literature searches for physicians, is studied in the article "Fee or Free: The Effect of Charging on Information Demand". In this study, a $5 charge resulted in a 77% decrease in searches.

References

External links

CRS Report - Access to Government Information in the United StatesALA- Access to Electronic Information, Services, and Networks

Information science Library science {{Technology-stub

See also

References

External links