This is a highly relevant and accessible book designed to introduce readers to a 'big picture' account of the dynamics associated with the establishment of the new information and knowledge-based economy. The author demonstrates that at the core of these dynamics is the contentious issue of the corporate ownership of intellectual property and the impact that the ownership is having, and increasingly likely to have, not only on the work of information professionals in particular and knowledge workers in general but also on the public at large. She argues that if business and commercial interests are free to appropriate, to exercise monopolistic control and to exploit the generation, exchange, dissemination, storage and retrieval of knowledge and information for the limited purposes of private profit, this is likely to put at risk the freedom of inquiry, the free flow and exchange of ideas, and unimpeded public access to knowledge and information on which scientific research and technological innovation depend
