This week, Oxford University Press announced that, in the wake of the government shutdown, they would give free access to Oxford content for all those who wanted it. This access included access to
- Oxford Reference (username: tryoxfordreference password: govshutdown)
- American National Biography Online (username: tryanb password: govshutdown)
- Social Explorer (e-mail onlinereference@oup.com for login credentials)
While American students all over Tumblr have shown great appreciation of this generosity, the question must be asked: How impacted must American research be to merit this generosity?
The clearest impact of the government shutdown on academia stems from the closure of the Library of Congress. According to a statement, both the buildings of the Library of Congress and nearly all of its Web pages will be shutdown. The only Web sites remaining up are Congress.gov and Thomas.gov, where everyone can track Congress’s progress at resolving the shutdown.
Beyond this, many other public access resources have been impacted. A key one is the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health. This is an important database of innumerable biology research papers, as well as a resource for many research tools, and until the government shutdown is ended, its information will not be up to date.
So, during that all-nighter for your Social Studies research paper, be glad for a helping hand from overseas, and then call your Congressman the next morning.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons