Informant38

federal agencies might be forced to give way to private gatekeepers that would control access to information and research, much of which was created with public money. Government agencies maintain extensive databases and search engines for information on medicine, agriculture, finance and other disciplines.

"What we worry about is what's next," said Charles A. Hamaker, associate librarian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

PubScience, which began on paper in the late 1940s and went online in 1999, offered one-stop shopping for people looking for literature on energy and science topics.

Searching on PubScience was free, and the service provided brief summaries of articles or reports that related to requested topics. The service would link either to full texts that were free or to payment systems for information that was for sale.