Time once again for a selection of news and new resources that we hope will be an interest to the FGI community. The posts are from INFOdocket.com (@infofodocket) where we compile and post new items daily from a variety of resources.

1. “Obama Wants Better Digital Archive of Federal Records” + Full Text of Presidential Memorandum

2. Now Available: EPA Releases Formerly Confidential Chemical Information

3. San Antonio, TX: New Online Database: Historical Election Results are Digitized

4. Statistics Canada to Make All Online Data Free

5. UK Parliament: MPs to Investigate Library Closures

6. TR Center Officially Launches the Theodore Roosevelt Digital Collection

7. Idaho: Libraries to Adjust to New Internet Filtering Law

8. U.S.: National Archives Trust Fund To Sell Copies of the 1940 Census (Digital & Microfilm Versions) Available

9. All Thing Preservation: New NARA (National Archives) Twitter Stream & Tumblr Page

10. U.S. History: Senator George Mitchell Oral History Project Debuts Online

11.New Social Media Resource: “PolitickerUSA is the Best Way to Track Politicians’ Tweets”

12. Video Now Online of NARA’s “What’s Next in Social Media” Forum

13. Child Welfare Information Gateway — State Guides & Manuals Search

14. GPO Releases Its First App

15. New UN Database Available: Expert Panel Launches Tool to Fight Arbitrary Deprivation of Freedom

16. State of Minnesota Posts Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDD)

17. U.S. Government: USAID Launches New GeoCenter

18. Public Access to Indiana’s Historic Sanborn Maps Provides Treasure Trove of Information

19. California: More than 13,000 Online Maps Provide Historic View of State

20. UNESCO’s Global Open Access Portal Now Online

Have you ever checked out the reading lists of the armed forces? Interesting!

• Reading Lists Aim to Promote Personal, Professional Growth, By Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service (Nov. 22, 2011).

  [P]rofessional reading remains an important part of the military culture. Every service, most professional military schools and an increasing number of geographic and combatant commands offer up reading programs and reading lists as part of their professional development efforts.

  In fact, many have multiple reading lists, aimed at different groups within the military at different ranks and stages of their careers.

  "...What I discovered reading Hemingway, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner, Updike, Forester, McCarthy and countless other authors shaped my world view and honed my understanding of the most complex terrain in the world: the human heart." [Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe]

Hat tip to beSpacific!

Here is an interesting article that examines the use of criminal digital forensic tools to discover and repair corrupted digital information in digital archives, but there is another story here as well. Although the title doesn't tell you this, Fox actually looks at two alternatives for digital preservation: digital forensics and what he calls "the buddy system."

• Fox, Robert, Forensics of Digital Librarianship, OCLC Systems & Services, 27 (2011), 264-271 . [subscription required]

Fox describes the buddy system this way: "[W]hen more than one system is responsible for maintaining the integrity of any given digital object. If each system in question has a copy of the object, and they are verifying the integrity of that object against the objects that their "peers" possess, there is a much higher probability when they agree that the integrity of the object is intact. This is a "digital buddy system" of sorts, because each peer helps the other peers in it's network maintain the integrity of commonly held digital objects. This is the principle behind the LOCKSS electronic resource preservation system (LOCKSS, n.d.; Rosenthal and Reich, 2000), which is a peer-to-peer preservation system now in wide use, and developed and maintained by Standford University."

He notes further:

Studies over the last decade have indicated that digital preservation is most successful when the information "is best preserved by replicating it at multiple archives run by autonomous organizations".... These concepts have been in place for almost ten years, but it has only been in the last four-to-five years that libraries have attempted to preserve anything beyond e-journal content using P2P network systems. [emphasis added]

Politics is so tiring. The same old talking points every day. Wouldn't it be nice if someone in Congress would give us a non-partisan objective view of our options? Oh, wait! The Congressional Budget Office does just that! Recent testimony by the CBO director tells us (yet again) what CBO has been telling us: that extending unemployment benefits produces more output and better increase in employment per dollar spent than any other option. Looking for a document (or an agency) to feature on your blog or GovInfo home page? Here you go!

• Policies for Increasing Economic Growth and Employment in 2012 and 2013, Statement of Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director Congressional Budget Office, before the Committee on the Budget United States Senate, Congressional Budget Office (November 15, 2011) [54 pages, PDF].

  Comparing the estimated effects of different policy actions shows the following:

  • Policies that would have the largest effects on output and employment per dollar of budgetary cost in 2012 and 2013 are ones that would reduce the marginal cost to businesses of adding employees or that would be targeted toward people who would be most likely to spend the additional income. Such policies include reducing employers’ payroll taxes (especially if limited to firms that increase their payroll), increasing aid to the unemployed, and providing additional refundable tax credits in 2012 for lower- and middle-income households.
  • Policies that would primarily affect businesses’ cash flow but would have little impact on their marginal incentives to hire or invest would have only small effects. Such policies include reducing business income taxes and reducing tax rates on repatriated foreign earnings.

Our friends at OMBWatch just published an interesting post highlighting several studies that compare and contrast the policy and practice of transparency of the US and other countries based on comparative analysis of FOIA, foreign aid, and budgets and revenues. The post, entitled "Global Studies Highlight U.S. Transparency Strengths, Weaknesses" "...provide[s] useful measures of U.S. openness relative to real-world conditions, in addition to highlighting global best practices and alternative approaches." It also references a group created in September 2011 called the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and highlights the US' role in the group and their joint Open Government Declaration signed by the US and 7 other countries -- with 38 more countries signing in March 2012. Read the rest of the post to find out where the US ranks among the countries of the world in terms of transparency and open government.

Here's the list of studies cited by OMBwatch:

• audit of FOIA laws in 105 countries and the European Union by the Associated Press (AP)
• Global Right to Information Rating released by Access Info Europe and the Centre for Law and Democracy
• Quality of Official Development Assistance report, published Nov. 14 by the Brookings Institution and the Center for Global Development
• "The Money Trail: Ranking Donor Transparency in Foreign Aid" by Anirban Ghosh and Homi Kharas, published in the November issue of the journal World Development (available to subscribers only :-( )
• Aid Transparency Index 2011 by the organization Publish What You Fund

The CIA World Factbook is adding new categories of societal data.

• The World Factbook Is Changing, Central Intelligence Agency (Nov 18, 2011).

  [T]he Factbook is adding new categories of societal data, which--along with other demographic and economic entries--offer additional insight into a country's economic strength, internal stability, and impact on the environment. After a comprehensive search for datasets that are current and regularly updated, nine new fields have been added, with the World Health Organization and the World Bank providing most of the information. Eight of these fields appear in the renamed "People and Society" category: Health expenditures (as percent of GDP), Physicians density (per 1,000 people), Hospital bed density (per 1,000 people), Maternal mortality rate (deaths per 100,000 live births), Drinking water source, Sanitation facility access, Children under the age of five underweight (percent), and Obesity - adult prevalence rate. The ninth new field appears in the Economy category: Unemployment, youth ages 15-24.

Hat tip to INFOdocket!

Congress Nixes Climate Service, By Curtis Brainard, Columbia Journalism Review (Nov 21, 2011).

NOAA's budget request for fiscal year 2012 (which began October 1) included a proposal to reorganize its existing climate capabilities and services into "a single point of entry" for users called the Climate Service. The stated goal was to "more efficiently and effectively respond to the rapidly increasing demand for easily accessible and timely scientific data and information about climate that helps people make informed decisions in their lives, businesses, and communities."

Despite the fact that the proposal did not call for any additional funding to establish the new office, Republican lawmakers opposed it every step of the way, according to the Post's Brian Vastag, who was seemingly the only reporter to spot Congress's decision to scuttle the Climate Service during budget negotiations last week.

A new article in LLRX:

Learning to Live Without a Statistical Abstract: Thinking about Future Access to Government Information, By James T. Shaw, LLRX (November 20, 2011).

Please do not get your hopes up, or at least not very much. There is no truly good alternative to the Statistical Abstract in terms of providing both convenience and breadth.

Our Sunlight friend John Wonderlich provides some in-depth context for the Department of Justice's proposed new FOIA rules and from the blog title it's easy to guess what those new rules look like -- "Justice Department's New FOIA Regulations: Still Worse than Reported". Wonderlich's colleague Daniel Schuman created a side-by-side comparison of current and proposed new regulations, to help illuminate the differences.

Instead of obfuscating regulations and making them more restrictive, DoJ lawyers should be trying to simplify and expand the scope of FOIA in line with the Obama Administration's stated goals and Open Government Initiative. Otherwise, the rhetoric of "an unprecedented level of openness in government" and the establishment of "a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration" will ring hollow or worse.

The DOJ sent a letter to respond to Congressional concerns about their lying about the existence of records. The letter hardly paints a clear picture, but basically says that the DOJ will withdraw a section of the proposed regulations, but that their conduct won't change, and that they'll continue to mislead requesters about whether records exist or not.

Unmentioned in the letter, however, are all the steps backward on FOIA that the DOJ is proposing in their rules. In a package completely at odds with President Obama and Attorney General Holder's public FOIA rhetoric, the new DOJ rules throw up new roadblocks and hurdles to requesters, and generally make it easier to deny requests. One has to wonder what possible motivation DOJ has for forcing elementary schools to pay for FOIA requests, where they used to qualify for fee waivers. Have elementary school students' FOI requests become a burden?

It has been two weeks since our last report, mostly because I've been wrapped up in National Novel Writing Month (NANOwrimo).

Our volunteers remain active and productive at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project.

SUBJECT PAGE ACTIVITY

Health Practitioner Databases (Lynn McClelland)

With the addition of OK, OR, TX, WV and WY. Lynn now has 38 states plus the District of Columbia represented on this page. I was particularly surprised by the number of practioner databases were available for West Virginia.

OTHER WIKI ACTIVITY

See our last 14 days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d for a blow by blow description of changes to the wiki. Here are a few highlights:

DATABASES ADDED

INDIANA ( Kimberly Brown-Harden)

Closed Institutions and Student Records - This website contains a database of defunct, or closed schools in Indiana and were accredited by the Commission. Students can also request academic transcripts.

MISSOURI (Annie Moots)

Missouri State Highway Patrol Online Boat/Drowning Incident Reports - From the web site: "Information on this site is preliminary information relating to boat incidents and drownings investigated by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Water Patrol Division. (Incidents investigated by agencies outside the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Water Patrol Division are not included.) They are posted here automatically and remain online for 29 days." These are not official reports.

NEW MEXICO (Adrienne Walker)

Find Your Legislator - Locate current members of the House of Representatives and the Senate by name, district or zip code. Former legislators can be searched by name. There are also documents available listing current leadership, addresses, phone numbers and seating charts for the New Mexico House of Representatives and the Senate.

OTHER STATE NEWS

Liz Paulus has done EXTENSIVE link checking and fixing to the Oregon page.

ORPHAN NEWS

Our last official orphan remains Rhode Island. Will you be the one to take the last "unadopted orphan?"

If you're interested in adopting Rhode Island, check out our volunteer guide and then send me an e-mail if you'd like to adopt it. If you adopt Rhode Island, be prepared to put your name and contact information on the main project page AND your state page within two weeks of receiving your wiki login. See the Volunteer guide for more details.

Thanks OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation! These two open government groups just sent a letter to the Senate about the E-Gov Fund in the second “minibus” appropriations bill. In the letter, the groups raise and echo concerns regarding the funding level for e-government in the Statement of Administration Policy concerning H.R. 2354. They state that funding levels are inadequate to support crucial transparency programs such as USAspending.gov and Data.gov and ask that the E-Gov Fund remain a separate budget line to preserve the reporting requirements of the E-Gov Act, which provide transparency about how this money is spent.

Here's the text of the OMBWatch/Sunlight letter:

November 16, 2011

Re: FY 2012 Appropriations for the Electronic Government Fund

Dear Senators:

We are writing to urge you to protect funding for the Electronic Government Fund at the General Services Administration in H.R. 2354, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. As currently written, H.R. 2354 would not provide adequate funding for the E-Gov Fund’s important programs, which provide critical support for the construction of a more transparent and efficient government and serve as a building block for private-sector innovations that create high-tech jobs.

The E-Gov Fund has a proven track record of successful transparency projects that have delivered efficiency improvements and increased government accountability. For instance, USAspending.gov and the IT Dashboard have helped root out government waste and inefficiency and recently led to the elimination of some $3 billion in failing technology projects. PaymentAccuracy.gov shines a light on improper federal payments, which total billions of dollars each year, and Challenge.gov provides a low-cost platform to help agencies bring the public in to identify more efficient solutions to problems facing the country.

In addition, E-Gov Fund projects provide the framework for vibrant private-sector business and job creation. The thousands of government data sets now available through Data.gov are building blocks for innovative new IT products. For instance, the search engine Bing now integrates Medicare quality data into searches for hospitals. Brightscope, a start-up company, has raised $2 million in venture capital and created 30 jobs through their analysis of retirement plan data from the Department of Labor.

Unfortunately, cuts to the E-Gov Fund in FY 2011 have already hurt successful projects. Needed upgrades to increase transparency and improve data quality have been delayed or abandoned, and two early-stage projects have been terminated. Additional cuts will further hamper efforts to make government more efficient and transparent.

These cuts are penny-wise and pound-foolish. The E-Gov Fund supports powerful tools for reducing waste, fraud, and abuse and for creating private-sector jobs, and given appropriate funding, these projects result in benefits far in excess of their costs.

To support continued transparency, efficiency, and job creation, we respectfully urge you to restore full funding for the E-Gov Fund. In particular, we ask you to support the president’s recommendation of $34 million to preserve these important programs.

We also ask that the E-Gov Fund remain separate from the Federal Citizen Services Fund, as requested in the Statement of Administration Policy on H.R. 2354. Because the proposed Information and Engagement for Citizens account would not be subject to reporting requirements of the Electronic Government Act of 2002 and has not been authorized by Congress, combining the funds would decrease government transparency and accountability.

We appreciate your time and attention to this issue. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this issue further, please contact Sam Rosen-Amy of OMB Watch at (202) 683-4806 or Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation at (202) 742-1520 x 273.

Sincerely,

OMB Watch Sunlight Foundation

From the NTIA Blog:

The Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released a report today entitled Exploring the Digital Nation: Computer and Internet Use at Home (PDF). This report investigates broadband Internet use in the United States and finds that disparities continue to exist in broadband Internet adoption among demographic and geographic groups. The report also delves into the reasons why households have not adopted broadband Internet.

Broadband internet adoption has increased substantially in only a few years, rising to 68% of households in 2010 from only 51% of households three years earlier and from 64% in 2009, the last time ESA and NTIA looked at these issues.

While this points to progress, a digital divide still exists between different racial and ethnic groups and between urban and rural areas in the United States. Broadband adoption rates varied substantially between different racial and ethnic groups, with 81% of Asian and 72% of White households having broadband Internet access, compared to only 55% and 57% of Black and Hispanic households. The urban-rural divide is also wide, with 70% of urban households having broadband Internet access compared to only 57% of rural households. Socio-economic differences, such as income and education, explain much – but not all – of this divide.

Here is what we know: Households that do not subscribe to any Internet service—dial-up or broadband —cited as the main reasons a lack of need or interest (47%); lack of affordability (24%); and an inadequate computer (15%). However, 27% of dial-up users -- a rapidly declining group of users --- indicated that they did not have broadband internet access service in their area.

Access the Full Text Report (72 Pages; PDF)

From an NTIA News Release:

Overall

• Sixty-eight percent of American households used broadband Internet in 2010, up from 64 percent in 2009. Only three percent of households relied on dial-up access to the Internet in 2010, down from five percent in 2009. Another nine percent of households had people who accessed the Internet only outside of the home.

• All told, approximately 80 percent of American households had at least one Internet user, whether inside or outside the home and regardless of technology type used to access the Internet.

• Cable modems and DSL were the leading broadband technologies for home Internet adoption, with 32 percent and 23 percent of households, respectively, using these services.

Differences in Household Broadband Adoption

• Households with lower incomes and less education, as well as Blacks, Hispanics, people with disabilities, and rural residents, were less likely to have Internet service at home.

• Eighty-one percent of Asian households and 72 percent of White households had broadband at home, compared to 57 percent of Hispanic households and 55 percent of Black households.

• Seventy percent of urban households had broadband at home, compared to 57 percent of rural households.

• Households with school-age children were more likely to have broadband at home (78 percent) than the national rate. Older householders, particularly those ages 65 and older (45 percent), were less likely to have broadband at home.

• Less than half (43 percent) of households with annual incomes below $25,000 had broadband access at home, while 93 percent of households with incomes exceeding $100,000 had broadband.

• Average broadband adoption in 2010 varied by state from about half (52 percent) of all households to 80 percent.

Role of Socio-Economic Factors

• Socio-economic differences do not explain the entire broadband adoption gap. For example, after accounting for socio-economic and geographic factors, Black and Hispanic households still lag White households in broadband adoption by 11 percentage points, though the gap between Asian and White households disappears.

• After accounting for socio-economic and demographic factors, rural households still lag urban households in broadband adoption by five percentage points.

• In contrast, differences in socio-economic characteristics do explain a substantial portion but not all of the broadband adoption lag among people with disabilities.

Reasons for Not Subscribing to Broadband at Home

• The main reasons cited for not having Internet access at home were a lack of interest or need (47 percent), the expense (24 percent), and the lack of an adequate computer (15 percent).

• Not surprisingly, individuals without broadband service at home relied on locations such as public libraries (20 percent) or other people’s houses (12 percent) to go online.

Long-term Trends in Internet and Computer Use

• Between 2001 and 2010, broadband Internet use at home, regardless of technology type, rose from 9 percent to 68 percent of households.

• Between 1997 and 2010, Internet use among households, regardless of technology type, rose from 19 percent to 71 percent.

• More than three quarters (77 percent) of American households had a computer at home in 2010, up from 62 percent in 2003.

Access the Full Text Report (72 Pages; PDF)

Reposted with Permission from INFOdocket.com

From NARA:

On November 4, 2010, President Obama signed Executive Order 13556, "Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)," and designated the National Archives and Records Administration as the Executive Agent "to implement this order and oversee agency actions to ensure compliance with this order."

On November 4, 2011, as required by this Executive Order, the National Archives Controlled Unclassified Information Office established a publically available registry reflecting the initial categories and subcategories of unclassified information that require dissemination or safeguarding controls consistent with and pursuant to law, regulation, and Government-wide policy. This registry is online.

[Clip]

The CUI program will be implemented in phases based on compliance plans and target dates to be submitted by executive agencies and departments. When fully implemented, the CUI program will require executive departments and agencies to exclusively use these categories for controlling and marking such unclassified information. The National Archives will consult with the agencies and the Office of Management and Budget and then set implementation deadlines for CUI, to include for applying standardized CUI markings.

Currently, there are more than 100 different policies for such information across the Executive branch. This plethora of policies has created inefficiency and confusion, leading to a patchwork system that fails to adequately safeguard information requiring protection, and unnecessarily restricts information sharing by creating needless impediments.

Learn More ||| Access the Registry

Read the Complete Announcement

"The federal government and its geospatial partners today unveiled www.geoplatform.gov, a prototype Geospatial Platform website providing an initial view of the future of user-friendly, integrated, federal data collections on common geographic maps." (Federal Geographic Data Committee Launches New Geospatial Website, press release, U.S. Department of the Interior (11/09/2011).

"This prototype version of the Geospatial Platform combines map-based data and tools with the latest internet technologies to deliver geospatial information in a simple, understandable package. Users—including the public, federal agencies and their partners—can easily find federally-maintained geospatial data, services and applications, as well as access data from our partners across State, Tribal, Regional and local governments."

• Geospatial Platform
  Explore,
  Collaborate,
  Build
• Interior Launches New Crowdsourcing Map Portal, By Joseph Marks, TechInsider (11/10/11).

In May 1975, the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) decided that it was necessary to question former President Richard M. Nixon in connection with various investigations being conducted by the WSPF. Mr. Nixon was questioned over the period of two days, June 23 and June 24, 1975, and the testimony was taken as part of various investigations being conducted by the January 7, 1974, Grand Jury for the District of Columbia (the third Watergate Grand Jury). Chief Judge George Hart signed an order authorizing that the sworn deposition of Mr. Nixon be taken at the Coast Guard Station in San Mateo, California with two members of the grand jury present.

• press release, National Archives and Records Administration.
• Nixon Grand Jury Records, National Archives and Records Administration. Files from the National Archives' WSPF collection including the transcript of President Nixon's grand jury testimony and associated materials.
• Nixon Grand Jury Records at GPO, FDsys.
• Nixon Grand Jury Records at Scribd.

The Senate is expected to decide as early as Wednesday whether to throw out the Federal Communication Commission's "net neutrality" rules before they go into effect Nov. 20. The Los Angeles Times editorial board member Jon Healey explains the debate around the FCC's proposed rules and does as good a job of summarizing the issues as I have seen.

• Backgrounder on 'net neutrality', By Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times (Nov 9, 2011)

  The stakes are high for the phone and cable companies that sell Internet access services, as well as the companies that offer content and services through the Internet.

  ... In essence, the debate boils down to a question of what freedom online is most worth preserving: the freedom from regulation, or the freedom from interference by ISPs.

The National Archives and Records Administration is active in using social media. It also recently announced its intention to create a "Citizen Archivist Dashboard that will encourage the public to pitch in via social media tools on a number of our projects."

• What's Next?, AOTUS (Oct 19, 2011).

  Access to records in this century means digital access. For many people, if it is not online, it doesn’t exist. The use of social media to increase access is the new norm. NARA has been going after innovative tools and projects that increase digital access to our records, including projects that invite public participation. We are developing a Citizen Archivist Dashboard that will encourage the public to pitch in via social media tools on a number of our projects. You will hear about these and more of our projects at next week’s McGowan Forum, "What’s Next in the Social Media Revolution."

• From Access to Engagement, by Pamela Wright (Nov 7, 2011). [pdf]
   
• National Archives to launch Citizen Archivist Dashboard, By Joseph Marks, NextGov (11/07/2011).

  The National Archives and Records Administration plans to launch in December an online Citizen Archivist Dashboard through which volunteers can tag, transcribe and write articles about scanned NARA documents, said Pamela Wright, the agency's chief digital access strategist.

• Social Media and Web 2.0 at the National Archives.

  ...a comprehensive list of NARA's social media initiatives and those of our affiliate organizations. Please visit us often to see NARA's expanding Web 2.0 and social media projects.

Those of us of a certain age remember the debates in libraries over "access vs. ownership." We don't see those terms used as much any more, but the issue remains with us as libraries increasingly opt for a service-only, libraries-without-collections model in which they license access to information rather than acquire information that they can carefully select, organize, preserve, and for which they provide not just access, but access and services customized to their user-communities.

The distinction between having "access" to information -- where the access (and fees) are controlled by others -- and owning information has mostly been too subtle for the popular press. You can see this as the popular press regularly refers to Google as a "Library" and now refers to Amazon's new e-book loaning feature as a "lending library." This loose use of the term "library" diminishes its association with free-access libraries that are run by and accountable to their communities and replaces it with an association with fee-based commercial services accountable only to stockholders or company owners.

So I found it very interesting to see not one but two recent articles in the consumer press that make a clear distinction between access and ownership and make at least a tentative argument in favor of ownership even for individual consumers.

• Why Amazon lending worries me, By JP Mangalindan, CNN Money (November 4, 2011).

  For users, there's a drawback that isn't nearly as obvious yet, largely because it's still early days. By subscribing to one of these services, they're relinquishing ownership over the content they consume.... It's renting versus owning in its most basic form. In one scenario, that money is going towards something that's yours. In the other, you're paying for temporary use of a good, service or property.

• What happens to ownership as the world goes digital?, By Mathew Ingram, GigaOm (Nov 4, 2011).

  [T]here's also the way that renting changes our legal relationship to the content we are consuming. Amazon has shown the downsides of this in the past by actually deleting copies of e-books from people's Kindles remotely after a complaint by the rightsholder -- and those were copies that people had actually bought, not rented. One of the reasons I argued that a "Netflix for books" made sense was that it would at least make it clear to people that they didn't actually own the books they were buying, but only a short-term license to use them.

  That kind of behavior could become more common as we move to a streaming, rental-style model for all content. Netflix has run into trouble by changing the terms of its service in order to promote streaming at the expense of physical DVD rental -- but what is to stop it or Amazon from altering the terms of the contract that allows you access to the content that you listen to or watch or read? Amazon was quite happy to remove access to documents that were hosted on its platform by WikiLeaks, even though the organization had not been charged with nor convicted of any crime. What if companies decide you no longer have the right to watch certain TV shows or read certain books?

Maybe if the consumer press continues this trend and continues to point to the distinction between access and ownership, the idea will migrate to libraries and we'll begin to see more libraries fighting to control information for their communities. That would be a welcome turn of events. We'd be able to get back to valuing services and collections.

It has been a another productive week at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project at
http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases.

SUBJECT PAGE ACTIVITY

Health Practitioner Databases (Lynn McClelland)

With the addition of HI, IL, ME, MT, NE, NY, PA, RI, SC, TN, UT, VT, VA, WA and WI. Lynn now has 33 states plus the District of Columbia represented on this page. Way to go Lynn!

OTHER WIKI ACTIVITY

See our last 7 days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs for a blow by blow description of changes to the page. Here are a few highlights:

DATABASES ADDED

MICHIGAN (Michael McDonnell)

Active State Chartered Credit Unions Locator - Lets you find credit unions chartered according to the Michigan Credit Union Act, 2003 PA 215, as amended. It does not include credit unions chartered by the National Credit Union Administration and credit unions chartered by other states. You can search by credit union name (or part of the name), City, county, zip code, or charter number.

NEW MEXICO (Adrienne Walker)

Historic Markers - Search through the geographic regions of New Mexico for historical markers. A brief description of each marker and its approximate location will display by region on a map by scrolling over a marker name. There is also a section of New Mexico Women Historical Markers. Citizens can also report missing historical markers and make recommendations for additional markers.

TEXAS (Ann Ellis)

Portal for Comprehensive Health Data in Texas - This portal contains statistics for births, deaths, demographics, geographic and survey data on risk factors and disease prevalence, and hospital records within the state

ORPHAN NEWS

Our last official orphan remains Rhode Island. Will you be the one to take the last "unadopted orphan?"

If you're interested in adopting Rhode Island, check out our volunteer guide at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/SADATFS_Volunteer_Guide and then send me an e-mail if you'd like to adopt it. If you adopt Rhode Island, be prepared to put your name and contact information on the main project page AND your state page within two weeks of receiving your wiki login. See the Volunteer guide for more details.

FYI readers. GPO announced today that their legacy system, GPOAccess, is soon to go archive only. This has been a long and involved process to build FDsys, move content from GPOAccess over to the new platform and now finally sunset the older system. This has been a real community effort with much work by GPO staff as well as continuous beta testing and other input from the FDLP community.

On Friday, November 4, 2011, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) draws one step closer to shutting down GPO Access. Once the Friday editions of daily updated content (e.g., Federal Register, Congressional Record) have been uploaded, GPO will cease updating GPO Access in terms of both database content and HTML pages. This will mark the start of the archive only phase of GPO Access and new content will only be loaded to FDsys. During this phase, GPO Access will remain publicly accessible as a reference archive.

In order to make the switchover from GPO Access to FDsys as seamless as possible for users, GPO is in the process of creating one-to-one redirects from GPO Access content to the FDsys equivalent. This will ensure that bookmarks, Web links, URLs in print publications, and other GPO Access references point to valid Web resources. Once this has been completed, GPO Access will be taken offline. A date has not yet been established for the final shutdown of GPO Access; however, it is slated for fiscal year 2012.

Libraries should take this opportunity (if they have not already done so) to review their Web sites, presentations, brochures, and other materials that reference GPO Access and work to update or replace these materials. This includes imagery and URLs.

• Download FDsys logos
• View instructions on how to create links to FDsys content
• Download or order FDsys brochures

Thank you for your patience and assistance while we make this transition.

Via INFOdocket.com

From GCN:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released for public comment a draft “road map” designed to foster federal agencies’ adoption of cloud computing.

The road map also will support private-sector cloud efforts, improve the information available to decision-makers, and facilitate the continued development of the cloud computing model, NIST officials said.

"U.S. Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Release 1.0" (NIST Special Publication 500-293) is designed to support the secure and effective adoption of the cloud computing model by federal agencies. The public comment period is open through Dec. 2.

[Clip]

The draft publication defines high-priority requirements for standards, official guidance and technology developments that need to be met for agencies to accelerate their migration of existing IT systems to the cloud computing model.

Read the Complete GCN Article

See Also: NIST Releases Draft Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap for Comments (via NIST)

See Also: Final Version of NIST Cloud Computing Definition Published (October 25, 2011)

See Also: NIST Cloud Computing Program

Direct to Documents:

"U.S. Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Release 1.0" (NIST Special Publication 500-293)

The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing (NIST Special Publication 800-145).

Via INFOdocket.com

The full text of a letter dated November 2, 2011 from Joyce L. Ogburn, ACRL President to William Boarman, Public Printer of the United States and Mary Alice Baish, Superintendent of Documents is now posted on the ACRL Insider blog.

Before sharing the full text of the letter, Ogburn writes:

We recognize that there are members who fall on both sides of the issues as recently stated by other associations and consortia. Over the past few weeks we have been considering how to proceed – reviewing the current situation, what ACRL has done in the past, and giving careful thought to approach we should take.

We decided that ACRL needs to lend its voice to the conversation and that we have precedent to guide us. Our past actions and letters urged GPO to look to the future and work with libraries to develop collaborative models for managing federal documents. We believe the best approach is to continue in the same vein, an approach that is quite reasonable and measured, as ACRL is known to be.

Here are Two Paragraphs From the Letter Sent to Boarman and Baish:

ACRL believes that the future of libraries will be based in innovative uses of technology and intensive collaboration across geographic boundaries. The multi-state models for managing federal documents that libraries have developed address the pressing issues of the economic climate, the imperative for wider collaboration, and the improvement of access to these critical resources. We view these as necessary and viable partnerships that will sustain library collections and services and will create enduring programs of access and preservation.

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We understand that many people in the library community are concerned about the long-term quality of government information services, and ACRL is convinced that the quality of services associated with collaborative efforts will be stronger than stand alone efforts. ACRL urges the GPO to work closely and openly with depository libraries to explore and establish new models. It is essential that we leverage the possibilities inherent in 21st century practices to serve our citizens now and well into the future.

Direct to Complete Blog Post (incl. Letter)

Viewshare is a free platform for generating and customizing views, (interactive maps, timelines, facets, tag clouds) that allow users to experience your digital collections.

Viewshare is available to individuals associated with cultural heritage organizations including, but not limited to, individuals associated with libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, colleges and universities.

• Get an account.
• Import your collection. (Ingest collections from spreadsheets or MODS records. Upload from your desktop or import them from a URL. )
• Generate views (distinct interactive visual interfaces to your digital collections, including maps and timelines, and sophisticated faceted navigation).
• Embed and share. (Just copy-paste to embed your interface in any webpage. Provide your users with novel and intuitive ways to explore your content.)

See more:

• Announcement: "ViewShare.org: Create and Share Interfaces to Our Digital Cultural Heritage," by Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist with the Office of Strategic Initiatives, Library of Congress, Digital Preservation Blog, "The Signal" (October 31st, 2011)
• Terms of Service

An article in the Huffington Post examnes the White House We the People petition web site, and garners some interesting lessons about e-government. It finds that "getting 150 print signatures is vastly easier than getting 150 electronic ones," that the site was plagued with unannounced and unexplained downtime, and that the site had a cumbersome, difficult, time-consuming, and buggy registration process. It says that the registration process "violates the White House's own policy for registering on Federal government websites" and that the site's online record keeping features violate the White House's own Open Government Directive. It says that, initially, the We the People website was not even easy to find. It notes the special difficulties associated with assuring that individuals don't vote more than once, and the conflict of public officials wanting to maximize the public perception that they are open while at the same time doing as much as possible to control the flow of information that might prove politically damaging. It concludes that, regardless of the problems with the site, it "is praiseworthy as a significant new tool for bringing democracy into the Internet Age."

• The Case of the Missing White House Petitions by J.H. Snider, Huffington Post (Oct 31, 2011).

REPORT

For October, we received and posted 7 reports from librarians to GPO reporting documents that had seemingly fallen through the cracks of the cataloging process. The reports were originally sent to GPO during October 2011.

This month, of the 7 reported documents posted by us, one has been cataloged for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP), and 5 remain listed as "fugitive documents." One was a "false positive". To find out more about these fugitive titles visit the Lost Docs Project Blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and view those posts with October 2011 dates.

Please remember that our listing of "fugitive documents" reports is only as complete as you make it.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/ or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.