"It's my private thoughts. They are not organized yet. They are not in finished form." So says Robert Proctor, Professor of the History of Science, who is in a legal battle against submitting his manuscript about the tobacco industry to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Professor Proctor regularly testifies against the tobacco industry.

The rights of academic freedom are at stake because there are few legal precedents dealing with access to unpublished material. Read more in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

While debates continue about how Facebook, Twitter and other online social tools are causing the degeneration of writing proficiency, Professor Andrea Lunsford disagrees. In 2001, she began The Stanford Study of Writing, a longitudinal study tracing 5 years of student writing practice, primarily in the undergraduate years. Her study reveals "a richness and complexity" in student writing, with new ways of expression that are clear, concise and open to the exchange of ideas. Combing through over 15,000 pieces of writing that include all coursework, emails in 11 languages, blog postings, private journal entries and poetry, over one third (38%) of the writing is not course-related. Read more in the article in Stanford Report.

Professor Lunsford is the Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric and one of the goals of the study, was to "use findings to inform the work of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric."

Sergey Brin, co-founder and technology president of Google, shares his thoughts on the vision of Google Books in The New York Times Opinion.

For information about Stanford's collaboration with Google, see Stanford Google Library Project