https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/12/21/the-dream-of-a-universal-library... To be sure, the complex realities of technology, publishing, libraries, and authorship cannot be reduced to a Manichaean notion of progressives battling money-grubbers, because most of the participants in the knowledge industries pursue self-interest, whether it is profit or prestige. The recent history of academic books and journals shows how these interests have collided, driven by tectonic shifts in the global order of research and publication.