The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) has a report on the House bill that would cut NSF funding for political science and eliminate the American Community Survey:

• House Passes CJS Spending Bill: Amendments Eliminate NSF Political Science Program and American Community Survey, Washington Update Volume 31, Issue 9, COSSA (May 14, 2012).

There are at least two ways to look at this story from National Journal's technology newsletter.

• Data, Data Everywhere, By Adam Mazmanian, Tech Daily Dose (May 16, 2012).

  It's not clear why access to 600 gazillion terabytes (or thereabouts) of free, machine-readable data covering traffic accidents, copper smelting, phytoplankton cell counts and other fascinating, everyday topics have only inspired, at last count, 85 mobile apps.

One is that government hasn't found the right incentives to attract development of applications that make use of the wealth of government data in datasets that are more easily available than ever. This explanation is probably what drove the administration to host a "data pep rally... designed to stimulate interest in translating raw data into simple, navigable apps that consumers can use on mobile devices" today.

Another is that the whole idea of relying on the private sector to make information freely useable and useful (see, for example, The Federal Government Must Reimagine Its Role As An Information Provider) is not sufficient. This free-market approach to government information suggests limiting the role of governments to that of providing raw data to developers. This approach assumes that the market will turn that raw data into useful information products.

There is, I believe, reason to be concerned about the free-market approach to government information.

One reason is that, by reducing the role of government we will not gain better or more complete access to information; we will diminish and reduce our access to information. We can see that already with the Census Bureau's cancellation of the Statistical Abstract (see The demise of the Statistical Abstract and other critical Census titles.) With this model, the government stops producing useful information packages and the private sector does its best to fill the gap and charges a lot of money to do so. That has a lot of bad side effects, though. For one thing, it puts a cost barrier between the information and users. For another, to use the Statistical Abstract example, it is not even clear that the private sector can do more than imitate the product the government produced. (See all the tables in the StatAb that contain "unpublished" data from government agencies. For example, in section 2, "Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Divorces," I count 12 tables with unpublished data; in section 4, "Education," I count 32 tables with unpublished data. [counts from the 2012 Statistical Abstract].)

But there is another alternative. We could recognize that the government does have an important role in packaging raw data into meaningful packages of statistical tables, reports, views, and end-user-ready information. This makes sense for two reasons: First, it builds on the idea that information gathered and created by the government is public information and should be easily, freely, publicly usable by the public. That means that the government, which knows this information that it gathered and created best, should create the first package or product or view of that information. This is still, mostly, the default way governments behave for lots of government information. They use everything from press releases of current economic statistics, to amazingly useful reports like the Special Studies (P-23) series from the Census Bureau, to complex web sites like that at the The Bureau of Labor Statistics. Second, it makes sense because these government-produced information products will be better than any "pep rally" to attract others (private sector, public sector, and individual users) to dig into the raw data, to analyze the data, and to develop apps.

Building on our post from a couple of days ago, Outgoing U.S. Census Bureau director Robert Groves just posted on the Census Bureau Director's blog "A Future Without Key Social and Economic Statistics for the Country" in which he simply *blasts* the US House decision to pass the Webster-Lankford amendment to HR 5326 appropriations for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013

"This bill devastates the nation's statistical information about the status of the economy and the larger society. modern societies need current, detailed social and economic statistics. the US is losing them."

[HT to Alesia McManus at the "Save the Statistical Abstract" facebook group]

From Secrecy News: "The laws and policies governing same-sex marriages were exhaustively surveyed in a newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service."

• Same-Sex Marriages: Legal Issues, by Alison M. Smith, Congressional Research Service RL31994, (May 9, 2012) [PDF at www.fas.org].

The House voted today 232 - 190 on the Webster-Lankford amendment to prohibit the use of funds for conducting the American Community Survey. The amendment was one of many on HR 5326 "Making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013". The data from the American Community Survey, collected since 1790, is generally considered vitally important for policymakers, businesses, researchers and students to write public policy, make decisions, do research and generally know more about their communities.

Here's Representative Daniel Webster (R-FL) talking about the ACS as an unconstitutional invasion of privacy:

Dr. David S.H. Rosenthal, who is Chief Scientist at LOCKSS, and Kris Carpenter Negulescu of the Internet Archive recently organized a workshop on the problems of harvesting and preserving the Web as it evolves from a collection of linked HTML documents to a programming environment whose primary language is Javascript.

David and Kris, with help from staff at the Internet Archive, put together a list of 13 problem areas already causing problems for Web preservation:

Database driven features
Complex/variable URI formats
Dynamically generated URIs
Rich, streamed media
Incremental display mechanisms
Form-filling
Multi-sourced, embedded content
Dynamic login, user-sensitive embeds
User agent adaptation
Exclusions (robots.txt, user-agent, ...)
Exclusion by design
Server-side scripts, RPCs
HTML5

Read more about this on David's blog:

• Harvesting and Preserving the Future Web, by David Rosenthal, DSHR's Blog (May 7, 2012).

Activity at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project continues. For a blow by blow description of the changes over the last two weeks, see http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d. Here are some highlights:

DATABASES ADDED

GEORGIA (Chris Sharpe)

Search General Assembly Audio/Video - "Search through the sound tracks of audio and video files from the Georgia State Legislature." From 2001-2008

MAINE (Alex Burnett)

Bill Tracking and Text Search - Database of bills in the Maine Legislature since the 112th (1985) Legislature. Includes basic information about bills.

MICHIGAN (Michael McDonnell)

Trail or Pathway Search - You can search for information on a trail by name, by county, by feature or accommodation, or activity. You can also search from an interactive map. The site does not include many small county and city trails. Be sure you reset the search parameters after each search.

TEXAS (Ann Ellis)

Manufactured Housing Report Options - For those interested in information about manufactured homes in the state of Texas, this database provides records for ownership history, retailer data, tax information, and title, license, and inspection reports.

UTAH (Susanne Caro)

Statewide Warrant Search - First and last name required for searching The Utah Statewide Warrants file (SWW) is designed to provide information on individuals wanted in the state of Utah. The warrant information comes from courts that send in data to the Utah Criminal Justice Information System (UCJIS) via electronic transfer, which means that the data viewed is the direct result of court activity. As with any warrant system, caution must be used when viewing data from this file. Accuracy and timeliness are critical factors when acting on warrant information, as this system is dependent upon timely entry and removal of records by the courts.

How did I miss this when it was published in late 2011? Government Issue: Comics for the People, 1940s-2000s by Richard Graham looks to be a valuable addition to any library's collection. Richard Graham is an associate professor and media services librarian at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He created and curates UNL’s digital collection of government comics.

Since the 1940s, federal and state government agencies have published comics to disseminate public information. Comics legends Will Eisner and Milton Caniff produced comics for the army. Li’l Abner joined the navy. Walt Kelly’s Pogo told parents how much TV their kids should watch, Bert the Turtle showed them how to survive a nuclear attack, and Dennis the Menace took “A Poke at Poison.” Smokey Bear had his own comic, and so did Zippy, the USPS mascot. Dozens of artists and writers, known and unknown, were recruited to create comics about every aspect of American life, from jobs and money to health and safety to sex and drugs. Whether you want the lowdown on psychological warfare or the highlights of working in the sardine industry, the government has a comic for you!

Government Issue reproduces an important selection of these official comics in full-reading format, plus a broad range of excerpts and covers, all organized chronologically in thematic chapters. Earnest, informational, and kitschy, this outstanding collection is the ultimate comics vox populi.

[HT BoingBoing!]

Just finishing up the first Webinar hosted by the ALA Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) entitled "Lions, and Podcasts, and Videos! Oh My!" Kathryn Yelinek from Bloomsburg University did a great job in showcasing audio-visual resources available from the US Government. Check out the following:

• Library of Congress National Jukebox
• Smithsonian Folkways
• National Gallery of Art podcasts
• National Zoo Animal Cams

While tangible print documents have dominated traditional government sources, the United States government has always produced information in a variety of formats. This session is intended to introduce librarians to the rich variety of online government audiovisual material. Come and learn how
to point your patrons to folk music recordings, historical videos, and more (there might be lions!)

About the Presenter: Kathryn Yelinek received her MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh and her MSIT from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. For the past seven years, she has served as Coordinator of Government Documents for Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. While still a bibliophile at heart, she's becoming more aware of the educational benefits of audiovisual material.

For the past five years, the Georgetown Law Library and the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group have been doing doing studies on "link rot." This year, they discovered that "link rot has increased to 37.7 percent within five years."

• "Link Rot" and Legal Resources on the Web: A 2012 Analysis by the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group.
• Georgetown Law Library Finds 38 Percent of Online Documents Disappear from Web Pages Within Five Years, press release, Georgetown University (April 25, 2012).

The Chesapeake group gathers information from the web and preserves it for their users and each year they study how many of the URLs from which they originally gathered information "no longer provide access to the content that was originally selected, captured, and archived by the Chesapeake Group."

This study is particularly relevant to government information specialists because more than 90% of their sample URLs were from state governments (state.[state code].us), organizations (.org), and government (.gov) the top-level domains.

For "dot-gov" domains (URLs ending in ".gov") the studies have shown cumulative link rot of:

10% in 2008
13% in 2009
25% in 2010
31% in 2011
36% in 2012

Cumulative link rot of state government URLs (.state.__.us) were almost as bad: 10.8% in 2008 15.8% in 2009 32.1% in 2010 30.4% in 2011, and 33.8% in 2012.

The total cumulative link rot for all URLs was 37.7% in 2012. Another way of looking at this is that, of the documents the Chesapeake Project has preserved, only only 62.3% were still available at their original URL as of the 2012 study.

This year's report includes two samples of URLs. The first sample includes 579 URLs that Chesapeake captured during 2007 and 2008. They use this sample to examine how link rot changes over time.

The second sample is a new and represents the full content of the Chesapeake archive at the time the study was conducted. Using this second, broader sample the study reports a link rot rate of 25.9%.

For libraries that rely on pointing to URLs rather than preserving information in their own digital libraries, the new report from the Chesapeake Project provides sobering, factual data on the reliability of that strategy.

The General Services Administration has launched two new sites: one for federal agencies to register their social media accounts and one for users to verify if a social media account is really an official federal account.

• GSA tool lets people verify genuine federal social media accounts, By Alice Lipowicz, FCW (Apr 27, 2012).

  Federal agencies need help tracking their social media accounts, and citizens need help verifying which government accounts are authentic. Now the General Services Administration has stepped in to address both of those concerns with a new online solution.

• Verify federal U.S. government social media accounts, USA.gov

  The government uses social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to connect with people and communicate official information, so it's important to know if a social media account is really managed by the government.

  We're currently working on a tool that will let you verify if a social media account is officially managed by the U.S. government. This tool will be available soon on this page.

• Check & Register: Federal Social Media Accounts, by Justin Herman, HowTo.gov (Apr. 26, 2012).

  GSA has built a federal social media registry -- a government-wide solution that gives the public a way to verify whether a social media account is official.

  It also provides a place for agencies to register their accounts centrally so they don't have to build a solution within each agency.

Yesterday, the U.S. Copyright Office posted two RFI's.

The first, is to learn more about software to build a virtual card catalog of historical copyright records.

The second, is to learn more about crowdsourcing the data capture from about 70 million catalog cards.

For those of you interested, you can find highlights, links to the full text docs, and a bit of background in a new LJ infoDOCKET post.

Direct to:

U.S. Copyright Office Posts Requests for Information About Crowdsourcing and Developing a “Virtual Card Catalog” of Historical Records (via LJ infoDOCKET

The Spring 2012 issue of DttP:Documents to the People has an article that shows the power of librarians working together:

Laster, Shari. Crossing Institutional Boundaries to Build a Digital Collection. Dttp: Documents to the People, v.40, no. 1, p.25.

The article describes a project by the Ohio Government Documents Roundtable to build a collection of digitized publications from the War Relocation Authority.

What distinguishes this article from others about building digital collections is that this was done under the umbrella of a state government documents roundtable with the support of a number of Ohio libraries. I find this to be an exciting model for collaboration elsewhere.

According to Ms. Laster, future plans of Ohio GODORT include adding new collections, which will probably require the development of a process for distributed digitization. All of us at FGI wish them well in that work and hold up Ohio as an example of how other state GODORTs might be able to collaborate on projects of statewide interest.

Gary Price points out a great new tool for getting alerts on Federal and State Government Info:

• Scout: A New Alerting Tool (Beta) for Fed/State Government Info From Sunlight Labs, by Gary Price, Infodocket (April 25, 2012).

 

• Scout.

  Scout is a free service that provides daily insight to how our laws and regulations are shaped in Washington, DC and our state capitols....

  Scout allows anyone to subscribe to customized email or text alerts on what Congress is doing around an issue or a specific bill, as well as bills in the state legislature and federal regulations.

While it has been nearly a month since my last report on the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases, our volunteer document specialists have stayed active.

WIKI ACTIVITY

For a play by play of the last two weeks worth of activity, see http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d. Below are some highlights:

HEALTH CARE PRACTIONER DATABASES

Lynn McClelland did link checking this past week fixing a significant number of links for Arkansas, Maryland, New Mexico and Oregon, among others.

NEBRASKA

Beth Goble checked links and added a database of legislative transcripts.

NORTH CAROLINA

Jennifer Davison reorganized the page and fixed some broken links.

UTAH

Susanne Caro added the following database:

State History Publications Online - Full text for Utah State History and the Utah State Historical Society publication beginning with the first issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly in 1928. Includes books, periodicals,professional and technical literature searchable by keyword, date and table of contents.

OTHER ACTIVITY

Daniel Cornwall (Alaska) touched on the SADATFS project in a webinar titled "Databases By Alaskans" which can be viewed at http://library.state.ak.us/is/info_services_training.html.