Administrative Notes includes information on new publications and services of
the Government Printing Office as well as depository library processing information
HTML (web) version of text with links to additional information
Begins August 15, 1996
Its Technical
Supplement covers the status of individual government
publication, addresses of the Library Programs Service, and changes
in depository library designations
You can also search Web
Tech Notes since 1991 or GPO Administrative Notes since 1995 by the TITLE of the publication for discontinued and suspension notes as well as changes in item numbers
If title does not appear, it is no longer available
If title does appear, obtain the item number; check the item number
in the Item
Lister to see if your library has selected it and enter
any changes into the Amendments
to Item Selections
Select Publications by Agency
If not already apparent, search index to the United States
Government Manual to identify the agency responsible for a
particular subject
Grace York, Coordinator, Documents Center
University of Michigan Library Graphics by Sherry Piontek and Barbara Perles
Send comments and suggestions to govdocs@umich.edu
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/dlfed.html
Since April 7, 1997 this page has been accessed
FDLP Desktop Site syndication for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).
FDLP Desktop Re-launch published on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:36:25 +0100
On Monday, January 12, 2009, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO)
will re-launch the FDLP Desktop. Visitors to http://www.fdlp.gov
(http://www.fdlp.gov) will see that the beta version has been replaced
by the new design. At the same time, the homepage for the legacy FDLP
Desktop (http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/index.html) will
redirect users to fdlp.gov. This re-launch comes after a year of
development and community feedback and is designed to streamline GPO’s
dissemination of Program-related news, content, and tools to enhance
library participation and public services. Highlights of the re-launch
include: Homepage news organized by categories Easy login using your
depository number and internal password Access to depository-only
services (e.g., promotional ordering) The ability to bookmark Desktop
pages within your library’s login Please note the following: URLs to
content may have changed. Please update your bookmarks. The navigation
scheme has changed. Content is continually being migrated from the
legacy FDLP Desktop. Individual accounts are no longer active on the
FDLP Desktop. Social networking tools (e.g., blogs, forum) are
consolidated under the FDLP Community site (http://community.fdlp.gov
(http://community.fdlp.gov)). Users are encouraged to sign up and
participate. More information on the structure, design, and
functionality of the FDLP Desktop is available under Tutorials, which
is available from FDLP Desktop homepage.
GPO Announces New Partnership with GAO published on Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:05:55 +0100 The
U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is pleased to announce a new
partnership with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to provide
permanent public access to the GAO Reports and GAO Comptroller General
Decisions databases that are available on the GAO Web site. The GAO
Reports database (http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/repandtest.html)
contains reports on audits, surveys, investigations, and evaluations of
Federal programs conducted by GAO. The content in this database dates
back to 1970 and earlier. The Comptroller General Decisions database
(http://www.gao.gov/legal/decisions.html) contains decisions and
opinions issued by the Comptroller General in areas of Federal law such
as appropriations, bid protests, and Federal agency rulemaking. It also
contains historic material dating back to 1970. GAO is actively working
on digitizing its legacy collection so historic material will continue
to be added to the two databases. The content contained in the GAO
Reports and Comptroller General Decisions databases is currently
duplicated on GPO Access. With a partnership to ensure permanent public
access to the content on the GAO Web site, this duplication is no
longer necessary. GPO will maintain archives of both databases as they
were at the time the agreement was signed, but no new content will be
added to the GPO Access versions of...
OPAL for Everyone: Share Your Knowledge published on Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:44:41 +0100 Depository
library staff are encouraged to present educational and training
sessions for the benefit of the depository community through OPAL, a
Web conferencing service. GPO welcomes proposals on any aspect of U.S.
Government information, Federal Depository Library Program issues, or
depository library operations and management. Most GPO OPAL sessions
are recorded and archived at OPAL online-archives
(http://www.opal-online.org/archiveGPO.htm), allowing depository staff
who cannot travel to depository conferences the opportunity to share
their expertise with a large group of their peers. Two of the most
popular OPAL presentations to date include “The Conservation Kitchen:
Basic Tools for Any Preservation Recipe,” presented on May 20, 2008 by
Diane Hutchins and Marcea Horst from the Washington State Library and
“Cooking with Content - Creating Successful OPAL Presentations,”
presented in October 2008 by Diane Hutchins from the Washington State
Library. Both of these presentations can be viewed in the archive. So
if you are already doing training at your library, or if you have an
idea for an educational session, let us know! Just fill out the Online
Educational Program Proposal Form (learning/opalproposal.html). For
more information on OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries), see
OPAL online (http://www.opal-online.org).
International Scholar Studying the FDLP at GPO published on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:23:36 +0100 A
research scholar from Japan is spending a year at GPO and the Library
of Congress to learn how the U.S. government makes the documents of its
democracy available to the public. Professor Nobuhiro Igawa hopes to
take what he learns at GPO and propose a similar program for the
citizens of Japan. Professor Igawa is from the International University
of Kagoshima, Japan and will study the FDLP. “I am honored to study and
learn how the United States disseminates government information to its
citizens,” said Professor Nobuhiro Igawa. “If I could introduce a
system similar to the Federal Depository Library Program in Japan, it
would benefit all citizens who want to learn more about government
information.” Professor Igawa's visit is being facilitated by the
Library of Congress, where he has already performed some analysis on
production, dissemination and use of federal public information in the
Library’s Government Documents Section. Following his studies at GPO,
he will return for further research at the Library. GPO's Library
Services and Content Management staff will provide introductory and
advanced topics for his research. In addition to conducting his own
research, Professor Igawa will also study the many challenges facing
the FDLP and provide a fresh...
Promote the FDLP at Your Library with the Easy As FDL Video published on Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:01:00 +0100
http://media.fdlp.gov/easyasfdl/easyasfdl-hr.flv|cover1.jpg Using our
theme, Easy As FDL: Free Information, Dedicated Service, and Limitless
Possibilities , this video demonstrates what makes Federal depository
libraries so unique and essential to the American public. People who
are dedicated to and knowledgeable about the FDLP were interviewed and
asked to express their opinions about Federal depository libraries and
how the FDLP benefits the American public. This video is available for
you to distribute as you choose. Post it to your library’s Web site,
various social media sites, social networking sites, or in your
presentations. You may also ask local government offices and
educational institutions to place it on their Web sites. Read on to
download the videos and learn how to share them on the Web.
National Data Catalog from Sunlight Labs published on Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:22:43 +0000 Our
friends over at Sunlight Labs have announced a new project they call
that "National Data Catalog" that will build on data.gov: Today I?m
happy to announce Sunlight Labs is stealing an idea from our
government. Data.gov is an incredible concept, and the implementation
of it has been remarkable. We?re going to steal that idea and make it
better. Because of politics and scale there?s only so much the
government is going to be able to do. There are legal hurdles and
boundaries the government can?t cross that we can. For instance:
there?s no legislative or judicial branch data inside Data.gov and
while Data.gov links off to state data catalogs, entries aren?t in the
same place or format as the rest of the catalog. Community
documentation and collaboration are virtual impossibilities because of
the regulations that impact the way Government interacts with people on
the web. We think we can add value on top of things like Data.gov and
the municipal data catalogs by autonomously bringing them into one
system, manually curating and adding other data sources and providing
features that, well, Government just can?t do. There?ll be community
participation so that people can submit their own data sources, and
we?ll also catalog non-commercial data that is derivative of government
data like OpenSecrets. We?ll make it so that people can create their
own documentation for much of the undocumented data that government
puts out and link to external projects that work with the data being
provided. If you're interested in helping out on this effort, please
join the National Data Catalog Google Group at
http://groups.google.com/group/datacatalog?lnk=gcamv.
The Power of Versioning: Climate Change Bill published on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:12:47 +0000 Our
friends at Open Congress recently provided a concrete example of the
benefit of being able to work with government provided data. In a July
1, 2009 blog posting titled See all the Last-Minute Changes to the
Climate Change Bill blogger Donny Shaw notes: We may never get the
details of the back-room negotiating that took place leading up to the
bill?s passage in the House on Friday, but with OpenCongress?s
legislative versioning tool we can see exactly what was changed in the
bill in the process and then start to figure out why. Just go to the
text of the bill as passed by the House and select ?Show Changes.? You
can scan the entire bill and see, with color-coded text, exactly what
was changed ? red, stuck-out text denoting changed or removed sections
in the bill, and green text denoting sections that were inserted or
modified. Donny spent about 30 minutes scanning through the bill's
changes and documented what he found. What can you find? This sort of
quick work at finding rush changes is only possible because
copyright-free federal legislation is available to transparency
organizations like OpenCongress to put into their change revision
software. This gives regular citizens specialized access to legislation
that was formerly only available to subscribers to expensive premium
services. This is a good thing. The Government Printing Office's talks
with the Library of Congress about bulk distribution of legislative
data will only make things easier.
Eleven Great Sources of Government Data Sets to View in Google Earth published on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:50:33 +0000 One
great way to get your head around a large government dataset is to view
it using Google Earth. I went on a hunt for the most interesting,
striking and geography based government data sets currently available
in the KML format used by Google Earth. There is a large gallery of
tours and layers available from Google Earth's site, including some
based on government data - but I wanted to look beyond them. Here are
eleven data sources (in no particular order) that have KML files ready
and waiting for you to download. For some of these you will need to
read the instructions associated with the KML to understand what you
are looking at and what special features are enabled. Some have
multiple datasets within a single KML file -- others include
animations. Often when you open them in Google Earth they will start
out with either a helpful note or a built in graphical key. USDA Forest
Service: MODIS Active Fire Mapping Program: View fire detection data
and incident information USGS Earthquake Hazards Program: real-time
earthquake data (updated every 5 minutes!), geologic features and
virtual tours of historic earthquakes. FEMA Flood Hazards: Stay Dry
provides basic flood hazard map information from FEMA's National Flood
Hazard Layer for specific addresses while NFHL (National Flood Hazard
Layer) appears to be a more general application that displays flood
hazard zones, floodways, base flood elevations, cross sections and
coastal transects and much more. NASA: Goddard Scientific Visualization
Studio: provides various visualization layers including Tectonic Plates
Boundaries and African Fires during 2002. Dig through the various
categories, there is a lot here. Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory
OnEarth: multiple options are available for viewing daily updated views
of earth from satellites. Very striking! gCensus: provides access to
data from the 2000 US Census. The site lets you browse for various
elements of data and generate a KML file you can then view via Google
Earth. Air Quality Now: provides current and forcasted air quality
conditions for locations across the USA. It is a product of a
partnership of multiple US Government agencies. National Weather
Service: has a full page of KML layers related to all aspects of
weather - past, present and predicted. National Gallery of Art:
Afghanistan Hidden Treasures from the National Museum: visit Aï Khanum,
Tillya Tepe, and Begram?that and examine Afghan Treasures National Park
Service: National Register of Historic Places: provides Google Earth
layers per region of the USA that mark historic places. District of
Columbia Data Catalog: provides a wide range of data about our nations
capital. You must supply some simple data to identify yourself before
downloading these KML files. This is just a taste of what various
regional governments are providing. Give your home state, district or
territory's website a look to see if you can find KML data available.
Have a favorite KML formatted government data set I missed? Please
share it in the comments. I found many of these by starting in Goggle's
US Government Search and searching for Google Earth.
4th edition of "On their terms" govt information lexicon published published on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:55:12 +0000 Susan
Maret, professor in the School of Library & Information Science at
San José State University and co-author of Government Secrecy: Classic
and Contemporary Readings, gave us a heads up that the 4th edition of
On Their Terms govt information lexicon has just been published. She
kindly sent a PDF of the lexicon which we've attached below. Check it
out, it's amazing the breadth of govt information described in the
lexicon which represents ..."a virtual seed catalog to federal
informationally-driven procedures, policies, and practices involving
among other matters, the information life cycle, record keeping,
ownership over information, collection and analysis of intelligence
information, security classification categories and markings,
censorship, citizen right-to-know, deception, propaganda, secrecy,
technology, surveillance, threat, national security, and forms of
warfare." and the introduction is quite a good read too!! Thanks for
the heads-up Susan! (btw, if you're reading this, we'd love to invite
you to be a guest blogger sometime on FGI. you know where to find us if
you're interested :-)) Since the first edition in 2005, On Their on
Terms has reported language that reflects the scope of U.S. information
policy. Now in its fourth edition, the Lexicon features new terms that
further chronicle the federal narrative of information and its
relationship to national security, intelligence operations, and freedom
of information, privacy, technology, and surveillance as well as types
of war, institutionalized secrecy, and censorship. This fourth edition
of the Lexicon emphasizes the historical aspects of U.S. information
policy and associated programs in that it is a testament to the
information politics of the Bush-Cheney years; there is also a look
back to historical agency recordkeeping practices such as the U.S.
Army?s computerized personalities database , serendipitously discovered
in a 1972 congressional hearing on military surveillance of civilians1
and the 1970s DoD program Project Camelot , which has parallels with
Project Minerva efforts to recruit academics.2 Including these programs
alongside contemporary federal information initiatives and public
policy critiques furthers the ?history of ?govermentality,? ? an
inquiry put forth by Michel Foucault (1994,1978: 219-222) that examines
the ?ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses, and
reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of
this very specific albeit complex form of power.? This latter thought
suggests an active, genealogical role for FOIA researchers, archivists,
historians, information professionals, and public interest groups in
not only rescuing lost histories but integrating findings into existing
understanding of federal information practices. Throughout the Lexicon
, links have been verified and replaced. However, in certain instances,
Web pages and documents have been removed by the issuing federal
agency. Considering the historical and archival importance of this
information, links to the original source at the Wayback Machine is
included.
GAO has YouTube channel, two Twitter feeds published on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:28:25 +0000 The
official YouTube channel of the U.S. Government Accountability Office
(GAO): youtube.com/user/usgao. Twitter feed for: reports and testimony.
Twitter feed for: Legal Decisions and Opinions. more:
Guide of the Week & Concluding Remarks published on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:40:01 +0000 A
Happy Independence Day to all of our US readers! May we live out the
values enshrined in our founding document, including a sincere belief
that all people are created equal and have inalienable rights no state
can take away. Not even the United States. This is going to be the last
regular installment of "Guide of the Week" because I have hit two
milestones. With this guide highlight, I will have hit every subject
page at least once. With this week, I have done roughly a year's worth
of guide highlights as I started on July 12, 2008. I would end with
July 11, 2009, except that I will be in Chicago attending the annual
conference of the American Library Association. So it seems good to end
this regular column today. This isn't the total end of highlighting
materials from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange, which you better have
bookmarked by now. As I notice new guides being added, I will try and
highlight them here. Additionally, if there seems to be an all
consuming news topic that I can identify a relevant guide for, I'll
highlight it. We have created an archives page for past Guide of the
Week features at http://freegovinfo.info/node/2654. If you are a
govdocs blogger, I hope you will use the Handout Exchange as a source
of posts. And like I've been saying almost every week in the past year,
if you are a docs librarian with a handout, I expect you to share it on
the Exchange. Housekeeping done, let's move on to our last Guide of the
Week: Gender Equality (University of Colorado at Boulder Government
Publications Library, 2008) This annotated guide is divided into three
sections: U.S. Information, International Information and
Nongovernmental Sources. Some of the resources include: Title IX of the
Education Amendments of 1972 this the Department of Education's page on
Title IX, it contains the law, along with guidance and publications on
the law. United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender
Equality (IANWGE) or WomenWatch, is "a central gateway to information
and resources on the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment
of women throughout the United Nations system, including the United
Nations Secretariat, regional commissions, funds, programmes,
specialized agencies and academic and research institutions." Women
Working, 1800-1930 is a collection of digitized historical, manuscript,
and image collections on working women from the Harvard Library
collection. In addition to this guide on Gender Equality, there are
three other guides on women's issues on the Exchange. They date from
the late 1990s. Think that is too few from too long ago? Then link to
your more current guide or handout on women-related government
information resources! Although I've now hit all of the guide subject
pages from A to Z, there is much more to explore in the Handout
Exchange Wiki. So go forth and explore. And if you're a docs librarian,
please link your favorite handout (or 12) to the Handout Exchange.
Sunlight Foundation's Transparency Corps Recruits People Amazon Turk Style published on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:22:50 +0000 The
Sunlight Foundation recently announced the creation of the Transparency
Corps. Modeled after Amazon?s Mechanical Turk, the Transparency Corps
aim to make it easy to harness small efforts by enthusiastic volunteers
to move forward efforts to improve government transparency. From the
June 30, 2009 Sunlight Foundation press release: ?Inspired by Amazon?s
Mechanical Turk, Sunlight created Transparency Corps as a new way for
people to volunteer to make government transparency a reality,? said
Ellen Miller, executive director and co-founder of the Sunlight
Foundation. ?Now, when people ask ?how can I help?? Sunlight and future
partners can provide micro-tasks that when aggregated, help solve
research and data analysis problems when computers alone cannot
properly scrutinize government information.? Right now there are two
projects: Read Those Earmarks II Upload Your Photo Telling Congress to
READ THE BILL Each time you complete a task, you get points. Those
points add up and are how you move up the transparency leader board. I
joined up to see what a task would look like. For the earmarks task I
was presented with a PDF of a letter requesting funding for a local
project and a form to the right of the letter to be filled in with data
such as the quantity requested, title of the project and other
requester information. You can see an example of one of the letters on
ScribDB. I am curious to see how big they can grow their corps &
see what projects they target over the next year. I love that they are
grabbing structured data. This particular task is part transcription
and part encoding and reminds me of some of the work being done over on
Freebase.com. For an example of one of the datasets they are building,
take a look at their U.S. National Register of Historic Places base or
the Government Commons.
Jefferson, cryptology, moose and the internet published on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:47:04 +0000 Thomas
Jefferson's been on my mind and in the news lately. Today, there was a
fascinating article about Jefferson and the breaking of an unbreakable
cipher in the Wall Street Journal -- Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist
Cracks a Presidential Code. Rachel Emma Silverman. Wall Street Journal,
Thursday July 2, 2009. Don't miss the interactive graphics that
describes the mysterious cipher sent to Jefferson by his friend Robert
Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania
and how the cipher was finally broken 200+ years later by Lawren
Smithline, a mathematician who works with cryptology, or code-breaking,
at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a
division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. This article comes on
the heels of a June 25 NY Times pictorial thought-piece on Thomas
Jefferson by Maira Kalman called "Time Wastes Too Fast". That there are
over 900 comments is testament to both the power of Jefferson's life
and Kalman's words and drawings. Last but not least, I just finished
David Post's truly mind-blowing book, "In Search of Jefferson?s Moose:
Notes on the State of Cyberspace." Post's book is a juxtaposition
between Jefferson's intrigue with large ungulates, the description and
mapping of the natural world, and the state and natural history of the
internet. Yes I know it sounds bizarre, but Post pulls of the
juxtaposition expertly. I highly recommend this book.
Welcome Jeanne Kramer-Smyth to the BOTM podium published on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:20:05 +0000 Happy
July everyone! This month we've got Jeanne Kramer-Smyth with us. Among
other things, Jeanne is a blogger at Spellbound Blog, a really
interesting blog about the intersection of archives, digital
humanities, cultural heritage institutions and technology -- here's her
full biography. Take it away Jeanne! We also want to thank Molly and
Lori from the Internet Archive for being our guests for the month of
June. They turned us on to a bunch of cool Archive-it digital
collections hosted at the archive. We really hope they'll continue to
keep us posted on the Archive's happenings. Thanks again Molly and
Lori!! View RSS feed
North Carolina State Archives and State Library of North Carolina?s Web published on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:35:13 +0000 The
North Carolina State Archives and the State Library of North Carolina
teamed up in 2005 to create Archive-It collections that collect,
preserve, and utilize the state's historic and evidential resources so
that present and future residents may better understand their history.
This contributes to their overall goal to safeguard the documentary and
material evidence of past generations for the education of all citizens
and the protection of their democratic rights. You can find the North
Carolina State Archives? portal to their Archive-it collections here.
The North Carolina State Archives and State Library specifically used
Archive-It during the 2005 Archive-It pilot period to capture former
Governor James Hunt?s website which they had been unable to obtain from
other sources, and the site came down from the web shortly after they
captured it. The Archives reports that it has gotten many requests for
information from Governor Hunt?s website and being able to point folks
to the website archives collection has elicited very positive feedback.
They also captured then Governor Mike Easley?s August 2003 video
message to President Bush regarding the closing of textile mills in
North Carolina (these mills were very important to NC?s economy). The
video is no longer available online due to a change in administration,
so having it archived will ensure continued access. The Archives and
State Library are now working to capture their current governor?s
Facebook and Twitter accounts as a way to document elected officials
use of technology to reach large communities with their message. -Lori
More Gov Info Presentations @ ALA Annual published on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:01:34 +0000 If
you are going to the ALA Annual 2009 Conference in Chicago next week,
please come to the "ALA Unconference" where I will be leading a broad
discussion on Friday, July 10th from 11:10-12:00 on the library's role
in current & emerging trends of civic engagement, transparency,
preservation and access to Government information. The supporting
materials and presentation will be linked in the Unconference wiki.
Also, please come to the LITA BIGWIG Social Software Showcase to
discuss and learn about Government Information Mashups! I will be
presenting on this topic and would love to have you help out and/or
join in on the conversation! The presentation will be posted on their
website but the face to face portion of the BIGWIG Showcase
presentations will take place Monday, July 13th from 10:30am - 12:30pm
in the McCormick Convention Center West, Room W-184.
Librarian Guide to Honduras published on Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:30:52 +0000 By
now, most FGI readers should know about the coup in Honduras. You may
not know that the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange has some resources to
help people learn more about Honduras: Honduras Country Guide from the
University of Colorado at Boulder Government Publications Library State
Department microfilm documents on Latin America from the University of
California at Berkeley. While not a handout nor in the Exchange, people
interested in historic interactions between the United States and
Honduras should check out the cross-agency Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) Search put together by Stanford University's Social Sciences
Research Group and hosted by Archive-It. Librarians - If you want to
use library/govdoc resources in highlighting news stories or themes
important to your audience, you don't need to work alone. The Handout
Exchange is there to help.
Guide of the Week: Treaty Research published on Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:30:36 +0000 Treaties
exist between many nations on many subjects. From mutual defense to
copyright to exchanging meteorological data, chances are there is at
least one treaty between at least two nations on almost any subject you
can think of. This week's Guide of the Week will help you navigate this
crowded field: Treaty Research: Sources and Tips (Debbi Schaubman,
Michigan State University, 1999) Last updated 10/27/2006 by Terri
Miller. This guide aims to be a starting point for the most important
sources to treaty finding. It is divided into five sections: General
Bibliographies and Indexes: World Coverage General Bibliographies and
Indexes: Regional/National Coverage Treaty Texts Treaties between
Native Americans and the United States or Canada Tips for Tracking
Recent Treaties and Treaty Actions Some of the resources include:
Treaties and Alliances of the World Canado-American Treaties United
States Treaties and Other International Agreements Avalon Project:
Treaties between the U.S. and Native Americans Texts of Recently
Deposited Multilateral Treaties In addition to Terri's guide, there are
currently at least six other guides on international treaties. Explore
them all at
http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Exchange_Subject_T#Treaties.
New "Global Legal Monitor" RSS Feeds @ LOC published on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:03:20 +0000 The
Law Library of Congress's Global Legal Monitor has added more than 300
topic and jurisdictional RSS feeds. Topics include the Census, Freedom
of Information, Government Publications, Intellectual Property,
Libraries, and Secrecy! There is also an RSS for all articles in the
Global Legal Monitor too. Tip o' the hate to Resource Shelf.
FGI @ ALA annual conference '09 in Chicago published on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:45:20 +0000 If
anyone's going to be in Chicago July 9-13, you might consider heading
over to the American Library Association's Annual Conference '09 for
their grassroots program. All of the FGI gang will be there. Jim
Jacobs, Shinjoung Yeo, and friend of FGI Gabriela Schneider will be on
a panel called "Libraries and Obama?s Information Policy" on Saturday,
3:30?5 p.m. Hope you can make it!! Libraries and Obama?s Information
Policy Saturday, July 11, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. Hilton, Lake Ontario room
The nation?s information policy is a major concern for the library
community. We are facing a critical historical juncture, where
libraries can raise our voices and provide a vision of information
policy. This panel will provide an opportunity to identify key issues
in the new administration?s information policies and discuss ways the
library community can participate in forming that policy. Moderator:
Caroline Nappo, Doctoral Student, Information in Society Fellow,
University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library & Information
Science Panelists: Jim Jacobs, Data Services Librarian Emeritus,
University of California San Diego, Co-creator of FreeGovInfo.info;
Gabriela Schneider, Communications Director, Sunlight Foundation;
ShinJoung Yeo, Information in Society Fellow Graduate School of Library
and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
There's also a panel on Monday July 13 from 8-10am called "From Legacy
Data to Linked Data: Preparing Libraries for Web 3.0." None of the
FGIers are on the panel, but we're sure to be there as data is very
important!!
Lunchtime listen: Tim Berners-Lee on government data published on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:51:08 +0000 I
just read Tim Berners-Lee's notes on putting government data online. I
must say, when TBL describes it, it sounds like a piece of cake :-) The
key seems to be the use of linked data. It's a snap; let's do it! RAW
DATA NOW!! Footnote: Do's and Don'ts * Do pick URIs which are likely to
be persistent * Do put RDF metadata giving the license. * Do use the
RDF and SPARQL standards * Make sure your human readable pages are
accessible. * Do NOT hide data files inside zip files unless they are
also available directly. * Do NOT put data up in proprietary formats. *
Do NOT wait until you have a complete schema or ontology to publish
data. * Do NOT seek to replace existing data systems.
University of Toronto?s Canadian Political Parties and Political Interest Groups Collection published on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:11:07 +0000 The
University of Toronto Libraries are a network of 30 collections with
over 15 million holdings, forming the largest academic library in
Canada, and ranking third among research libraries in North America.
With an average of 12,000 visits per day, and a rapidly expanding
online information system, the collections meet the research, teaching
and learning needs of scholars in an exceptionally broad range of
disciplines. Serving researchers in Canada's largest university, across
the country, and around the world, UTL is an internationally recognized
cultural resource. The University of Toronto has used Archive-it to
create a comprehensive collection on Canadian Political Parties and
Political Interest Groups. The collection archives the websites of all
of the national Canadian political parties, and a number of special
interest groups across the political spectrum. The University of
Toronto has been archiving these sites several times a year since 2005.
You can find the University?s portal to their Archive-it collections
here. -Lori
US Office of Historian site redesign published on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:27:10 +0000 Department
of State Office of the Historian has just released the redesign of its
site: www.history.state.gov. They've done a really nice job with the
redesign including new and easier access to my favorite Foreign
Relations of the United States. Users can now browse FRUS by themes
like decolonization, instability in Latin America, US-China trade etc
(though I'm surprised that there's no theme for Cuban Missile Crisis,
Vietnam, SALT etc. Perhaps they'll add those additional themes). Users
can also browse by country to find history of US diplomatic relations
and links to other key publications like Department of State Background
Notes, Department of State Country Information, CIA World Factbook, and
Library of Congress Country Studies. The new website boasts greater
accessibility and searching within the Foreign Relations of the United
States documentary series. It currently offers both textual and
facsimile copies of Foreign Relations volumes from the Kennedy
Administration through the Nixon-Ford administration. The Office plans
to continue to digitize older volumes and eventually house all of the
Foreign Relations volumes on its website. The website also contains
updated sections on the history of the Department of State, biographies
of notable diplomats, and an in-depth timeline of United States
diplomatic milestones. The Office?s educational curriculum guides are
also downloadable from the website. The Office hopes that through its
enhanced presentation and organization, the new website will become the
preeminent online resource for U.S. diplomatic history. --Source: U.S.
Department of State [Thanks Resource Shelf!]
Guide of the Week: Statistical Resources published on Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:55:18 +0000 Anecdotes
are not data. If you want data, you should turn to today's Guide of the
Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki: Finding Statistical
Resources (Sherry Engle Moeller, Ohio State University, 2005) CC Last
updated 9/6/2006 I especially like this guide because it is more than a
list of statistical resources. Sherry Moeller has a whole set of
questions to help guide people to the right resource. She starts out
with: Ask yourself the following questions: What is the subject of
interest? (Topic) Examples: Crime, Economics, Education, Health Who or
what is being counted? (Unit of Analysis) Examples: Individuals,
Families, Households, Businesses, Farms, States, Countries What level
of geography is desired? Examples: World, Country, State, County, City,
Census Tract, MSA, Zip Code Do you want data for a single location or
multiple locations? Examples: Ohio, Great Lakes Region by State, All
U.S. States What time period should the data cover? Examples: Most
recent available, 1870, 1900-1950 What frequency of data do you need?
(Are you looking for figures for a specific point in time or are you
comparing data over a period of time?) Examples: One time, decennially,
annually, monthly, daily What variables are of interest? Examples:
Race, Sex, Acreage, Gross National Product Sherry also gives this
practical suggestion: If you don't know who collected or produced the
data, can you make an educated guess? (Who would need this kind of
information?) Examples: Number of airplane crashes in the U.S. - U.S.
Department of Transportation?; Number of AIDS cases by country - World
Health Organization? Once she has given you some focus, Sherry's guide
moves into the following sections: General Sources, International
Resources, Foreign Government Resources, U.S. Government Resources,
State and Local Government Resources and Other Resources. Among the
many annotated resources listed are: Statistical Abstract of the United
States World Development Indicators (World Bank) Statistical Agencies
[By Country] Energy Information Administration (DOE) Statistics at the
State and Local Level The full guide is well worth your time if you
have any interest in statistics whatsoever. Aside from this guide,
there are about three dozen other guides to various kinds of statistics
available from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange. Go check them out at
http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Exchange_Subject_S#Statistics
Legistalker published on Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:33:05 +0000 Legistalker
- The latest online activity of Congress Members. Legistalker makes it
easy for you to stay on top of what your elected officials say and how
they vote. Legistalker was created by Forum One Communications as an
entry for the Apps for America competition. The ever-growing database
is updated every 20 seconds, and relies on data from Twitter, YouTube,
Capitol Words, literally hundreds of different news sources, and
others.
Archive-It Wiretapping and the National Security Agency Collection published on Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:41:56 +0000 John
Gilmore is an open software proponent, co-founder of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation and perhaps most importantly an Archive-It partner
(as an independent researcher). His Archive-It collections focus on
open access to government information and policy as well as free and
open source software. John has been archiving sites related to
wiretapping and the National Security Agency since 2007. Describing the
reasons for creating this collection, John says: "I'm trying to record
and make searchable some documents related to the controversy over NSA
wiretapping domestically without warrants, or with general warrants,
which the Fourth Amendment outlaws. " This collection
demonstrates how the recent change in administration has opened up
further crawler access to the National Security Agency (NSA) website.
Previously, most NSA web content was blocked to the Archive-It crawler
(as well as other crawlers) using the robots.txt exclusion protocol.
Looking at their old exclusion list, for example this one from 2008 you
can just how much of their website was blocked from crawler access.
(all the directories listed could not be accessed). Since January 17,
2009 however crawlers have access to much more content. At the Internet
Archive, we have noticed similar changes in other .gov websites
including www.whitehouse.gov (compare this version from 2006 to the
current exclusion list). Its exciting to know that moving forward John
and other Archive-It partners will be able to collect more complete
snapshots of government websites. -Molly and Lori
Update on Data.Gov published on Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:15:22 +0000 Sunlight
Labs has an update on the status of data.gov: Data.gov gets an update,
by Clay, Sunlight Labs, June 19 2009. Data.gov has given itself a
slight upgrade, adding a bunch more feeds. To compensate, Data.gov has
turned itself into three subcatalogs: A raw data catalog, a tool
catalog and a geodata catalog.
National Archives now on YouTube published on Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:09:11 +0000 www.youtube.com/USNationalArchives Thanks and a tip of the hat to Kate.
Idaho Digital Publications Archive published on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:32:04 +0000 As
an Idahoan, I was excited to learn that the Idaho Commission for
Libraries and the Idaho state legislature have made preserving and
providing digital access to government publications and other
information a priority. First a little background: the Idaho Commission
for Libraries is the State Library of Idaho, and assists libraries
throughout the state to build the capacity to better serve their
clientele. The Commission has been charged with the responsibility of
establishing and maintaining a digital repository of state publications
in a publicly accessible database in revised Idaho Code 33-2505. Many
state publications are preserved and made available online here. To
further achieve this end, the Idaho Commission for Libraries has used
Archive-it to preserve Idaho state government websites in their Idaho
Digital Publications collection. This collection includes websites for
state departments, universities, local and statewide initiatives, and
even the first lady?s website. Check it out! -Lori
LOC to Capture #sotomayor Tweets published on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:51:13 +0000 The
Library of Congress announced via their Twitter account, that: LOC will
capture tweets on #sotomayor for its web archives on the Sotomayor
nomination. http://www.loc.gov/webcapture/ Here is a list of some of
the latest web capture projects they are working on: Supreme Court
Nominations 2009 The Supreme Court Nominations 2009 Web Archive will be
a selective collection of Web sites archived between June 2009 through
the completion of the hearings process. Web sites collected will
include materials produced by watchdog, public policy, and political
advocacy groups, blogs and tweets, community and religious
organizations, foreign and domestic news sources, educational and
research institutions, and independent websites. Collection dates: June
2009 through confirmation hearings. Indian General Elections The
Library's Delhi Overseas Operations Office is documenting the ongoing
process of India general election in 2009. Presidential Transition
During a Time of Crises Web Archive Presidential Transition During a
Time of Crises Web Archive will be a selective collection of Web sites
archived between January 2009 and June 2009. Web sites collected will
include materials produced by domestic and foreign political groups,
community and religious organizations, advocacy groups, foreign and
domestic news sources, and independent websites. Collection dates:
January 2009 - June 2009. The collection will be evaluated prior to
completion and may be extended. I would suggest they start archiving
the tweets about the #iranelection (see earlier blog post) by James R.
Jacobs.
Improve PACER - Sign the Petition published on Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:45:30 +0000 Folks,
We crafted a very short petition directed at the Administrative Office
of the US Courts to improve PACER. The petition is online here:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/improve-PACER. It reads: We ask the
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to improve PACER by enhancing
the authenticity, usability and availability of the system. We the
undersigned, urge the Administrative Office of the US Courts (AO) to
make the following changes to the PACER system: For verification and
reliability, the AO should digitally sign every document put into PACER
using readily available technology. PACER needs to be much more readily
accessible if it is to be usable for research, education, and the
practice of law. Improved accessibility includes both lowering the
costs for using PACER and enhancing the web interfaces. Depository
libraries should also have free access to PACER. Please sign the
petition, comment on the ideas and share the petition with your friends
and colleagues! I encourage you to sign the petition. And if you have
any questions about it, please don't hesitate to contact me. Thank you,
Erika Wayne e-mail: evwayne AT stanford DOT edu
State dept asks Twitter to be eyes and ears of Iranian elections published on Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:11:53 +0000 Twitter,
the 140 character social media micro-blog, was scheduled to go down for
maintenance on monday night. But, according to the CNN blog, a little
thing called the Iranian elections and a request from the US State
Department caused them to change their scheduled downtime to yesterday
afternoon from 2-3 PST (middle of the night Tehran time) in order to
ensure that the flow of information from Iran remains open and that
Iranians can continue to communicate internally and with the rest of
the world. This is a pretty amazing development in that, despite the
Iranian restrictions on journalists and news organizations, the world
is still able to get up to the minute accounts - complete with video on
youtube, hashtags on twitter and facebook. Now libraries just have to
figure out how to collect, preserve and organize this massive flow of
information ;-) Mashable has more on why this matters as well as a
HOWTO guide on following the elections.
The Census and Politics published on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:55:09 +0000 This
article does an excellent job of explaining the issues involved in
picking someone to head the Census Bureau. Census Pick Illustrates
Broader Obama Strategy, by Michael J. O'Neil, The Huffington Post, June
15, 2009. If you need a non-statistician's explanation of why sampling
and estimation is as accurate as an actual enumeration, consider your
last blood test: did they remove and test ALL your blood?. These
matters are beyond any scientific dispute. Yes, sampling is theory --
the same way gravity is theory.
Lunchtime Listen: Catch up on your Internet History published on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:50:45 +0000 The
UK Open University has a series of 9 short interviews with Internet
pioneers available on iTunes: The Internet at 40 [iTunes link]. Listen
to Vincent Cerf, Donald Davies, Tim Berners-Lee, Ray Tomlinson, David
Filo and Jerry Yang, "Weld Pond" and "Mudge," and Shawn Fanning. Even
if you know the history of the Internet, you'll probably enjoy these
interviews. One of my favorites is the conversation with Rodney
Harrison, a Lecturer in Heritage Studies at The Open University, about
a his "Cyber Archaeology" research of Second Life. Note that
transcripts of each interview are available as well.