As Larry recently pointed out, our local daily paper The Record is now offering open access to the day's current news stories. I love this move, as I'm a local news "junkie" and I missed it when the turned off access on their site a few years ago.

A couple things to note though... copyright issues are the same with the paper edition as the on-line edition, and the open access to a story only last for one day. That is, you won't be able to link to a story and then expect your blog readers to be able to do the same a day later. For details on how to get the most out of this on-line information, check out the "Using the site" section of their FAQ.

With the limited time access to stories, it's too bad that The Record won't be able to take advantage of search engines drawing people to the site. But, then again their customer base is local and likely to be checking it often anyway.

It's also good to note that the Waterloo Chronicle (a local, and free weekly paper) has had open access to their stories for some time.