Some possible leads on scholarly web sites are in Librarians' Index to the Internet under Law: Law by Subject - Privacy Rights & Patriot Act; Law: Law by Subject - Constitutional Law & Civil Liberties - Privacy ; and Society and Social Science: Librarianship - Intellectual Freedom. You can also roughly limit a web search to college and university sites – though this will also get some recreational or at least not very scholarly pages that are merely hosted by schools (student blogs, organizations' web pages, etc.). For example, the Google search: "corporate secrecy" site:edu gets 190 hits; and "corporate secrecy" site:ac.uk gets 18 hits. Unless you are on campus at a very large university, or have student/staff remote access, you may get discouraged using Google Scholar, because it also links to commercial e-journals and databases that will NOT let you into free full text unless your institution subscribes. But it does get some free access reports among its 34 hits for the search: "corporate secrecy".

There are many thousands of books on secrecy and freedom of information, and your main challenge may be to limit your focus to a particular aspect of these – or to general reviews of them. To get some books on the web, try Google Books Advanced Search, limiting to "Full View" (not restricted by copyright) books. "Corporate secrecy" gets 4 free books; "government secrecy" gets 56; and "freedom of information" gets over 600. Some of these will be very old (for a historical perspective, possibly?) but many others will be recent free government publications or position papers.

Open Worldcat is a surprisingly good substitute for the subscription version available in many academic and some large public libraries. The Keyword search: "government secrecy" gets 131 hits, some of which will be variant editions of similar titles. When you click on a title, Worldcat gives libraries in your region that have it. It also links to possible subject headings. For example, the subject heading: "Official secrets" gets 1050 hits. But it is not possible to limit by audience level, or to scholarly books.

You can also approach this from differing perspectives; for example, try the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table; official government positions at usa.gov under the category Freedom of Information; and organizations such as the ACLU. You can search most sites individually, to get a more focused web search. Usa.gov gets 99 hits for the search: "government secrecy". Many of these are congressional hearings. The Defense Technical Information Center would give you a military perspective on security issues. It gets 57 hits for the search: "government secrecy"; and 736 for: "patriot act", and some of these are full text on the web.

Finally, I can mention specific titles. One Rad Ref librarian suggested a philosophic book on secrecy: Secrets, by Sissela Bok. Worldcat shows 1839 libraries that hold it. Its call number will be BJ1429.5.B64 1983 in most academic libraries and near call no. 177... in many public libraries. Some books I have found very useful, for a well documented and scholarly introduction to secrecy and government, are by Herbert Foerstel, who retired about 10 years ago as our Branch Libraries Head here at the University of Maryland. These include: Surveillance in the stacks : the FBI’s library awareness program, 1991 (Z678.2 .F64 1991); Secret science : federal control of American science and technology (U393 .F64 1993); Free expression and censorship in America : an encyclopedia (Z658.U5 F644 1997), Banned in the media : a reference guide to censorship in the press, motion pictures, broadcasting, and the Internet (P96.C42 U654 1998), Freedom of information and the right to know : the origins and applications of the Freedom of Information Act (KF5753 .F64 1999), From Watergate to Monicagate : ten controversies in modern journalism and media (PN4731 .F58 2001), and Refuge of a scoundrel : the Patriot Act in libraries (KF4315 .F64 2004)

Please let me know how this project turns out, and also if we can help find more or different sources.

Thanks,

Jim Miller
jmiller2@umd.edu