That vision thing.

The 1991 Janet Doe lecturer describes the vision held by the founders of the Medical Library Association of medical information being readily accessible to health professionals no matter how far they were located from major medical centers, and traces the pursuit of this vision to current outreach activities.     

Publishing,copyright, and the public good

For centuries publishers have acted as intermediaries between author and audience. Copyright, like freedom of expression, is an essential element of freedom in this role, because without it authors' rights are not fully protected. Only when they are protected against theft and other economic or moral infringements are authors free to express themselves without fear. Publishers, too, rely on copyright to protect their investments and their freedom Paul Nijhoff Asser has been secretary of the International Group of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), Amsterdam, since 1970. He has been active in publishing and bookselling for more than forty years. This article was adapted from a presentation at the seminar “East Meets West: Copyright and the Publisher in a Market Economy”, Hamburg, March 1991.