Public Knowledge: Access and Benefits, edited by the late Miriam A. Drake together with Donald T. Hawkins, is the first book in years to explore trends and issues for researchers and organizations that rely on U.S. public information. More than a dozen topic experts, information specialists, and government documents librarians discuss the challenges inherent in collecting, preserving, updating, and disseminating a deluge of information generated daily by public sources.

Contributors describe agencies at the forefront of managing the information, explore the role of the federal government and its corps of information professionals, and highlight how public data are being consumed by a surprising range of stakeholders in the digital information age. They remind us of the value and diversity of public information, and of the imperative to make it readily available to all American citizens, to whom it belongs. No reader interested in the latter topic can afford to miss Barbie Keiser's closing chapter on open government, Big Data, and the future of public information.