In this sweeping history of the learned book in the West, education scholar and open access advocate John Willinsky begins by asking why so many people expect research to circulate freely. Some would answer that taxpayers' investment in government-funded research earns the public right of access. Philosophers might say that scholars' unrestricted access to scholarship is a prerequisite for the claim to knowledge, and lawyers might hold up learning's special legal status that recognizes copyright and patent exceptions for education and research. These answers, while compelling, are largely ahistorical. They beg additional exploration into the origin of learning's distinctive status. Willinsky begins with Saint Jerome in the fifth century, then traces the evolution of reading, writing, and editing practices in monasteries, schools, and universities and among independent scholars through the medieval period and into the Renaissance. He delves into the influx of Islamic learning and the rediscovery of classical texts, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the founding of the Bodleian Library before finally arriving at John Locke, whose influential lobbying helped bring about the first copyright law, the Statute of Anne in 1710. Willinsky shows that learning gave rise to our idea of intellectual property, while remaining distinct from, if not wholly uncompromised by, the commercial economy that this concept inspired. He concludes by making the case that today's push for marketable intellectual property threatens the very nature of the quest for learning on which it rests. -- from dust jacket.