In mid-March 2020 a rash of emergency “lock-down” orders from State governors confined millions of North American workers to their homes. Students suddenly needed to flip from classroom-based to remote instruction. Scholars in the humanities could no longer get to archives. Movement restrictions cut off the opportunity to travel for fieldwork and conference attendance almost overnight. As publishers and librarians dealt with the ravages of COVID-19 on their personal lives and relationships, they also embarked on a massive experiment in transforming access to scholarly information. Rather than being a unique benefit only available to members of a library subscriber’s “gated community,” access to hundreds of thousands of books and journal articles suddenly became free-to-read globally. That access, of course, had severe limitations. It was temporary (most programs expired at the end of August 2020), only available to users with an internet connection, and far from comprehensive in its coverage. However, a massive experiment was still underway, and the results are proving transformative for publishers and libraries. So, what did we learn about humanities scholarship and its publication? This article explores some emerging themes.