Two recent changes for the US government's government search engine, USAsearch.gov:

• In the Advanced Search option, the option to limit a search to federal websites has been removed. USAsearch.gov searches both federal and state websites. An option previously available under the Advanced Search option of "Search In" allowed a researcher to specify that they were only interested in results from federal websites. The option never worked cleanly. I had dubbed it a "leaky limit" because some state website results always seeped in. Now there is no federal-only option. Fortunately, once you have your USAsearch.gov results, the agency-sort option makes it easy to view just those results coming from federal agencies.
• On the plus side of the equation, USAsearch.gov now indexes the USDA Forest Service websites that use the .fed.us domain. Any search engine can limit results to those that have a .gov or .mil domain suffix. But some federal websites are exceptions to that rule, as was the case with www.fs.fed.us. Now your searches will find that Forest Service information. I had often run a search in training classes for information about "remote sensing." It was a good way to show how many agencies were involved with this technology, and to show off the agency sort option. Now I have one more agency showing up in my results!

Carl Malamud has challenged Smithsonian Institution restrictions on use of the images at the Smithsonian Images website. The Associated Press reported today on the action by Malamud's Public.Resource.Org site.

C-SPAN issued a press release today, announcing:

...a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency-- about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks--which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution.

(The emphases are C-SPAN's own.)

You will find a bit of background about this development on National Journal's Beltway Blogroll posting.

The C-SPAN announcement is causing a stir in the blogosphere, where bloggers are wondering about the definition of "non-commercial" and whether it includes them.

Any FGI insight?

The website OpenCongress.org was launched today by the Participatory Politics Foundation with help from the Sunlight Foundation. As stated on the website: "OpenCongress brings together official government data with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind each bill" and also "OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement." The site incorporates:

• Official Congressional information from Thomas, made available by GovTrack.us: bills, votes, committee reports, and more.
• News articles about bills and Members of Congress from Google News.
• Blog posts about bills and Members of Congress from Google Blog Search and Technorati.
• Campaign contribution information for every Member of Congress from the website of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.org.
• Congress Gossip Blog: a blog written by the site editors of OpenCongress that highlights useful news and blog reporting from around the web. The blog also solicits tips, either anonymous or attributed, from political insiders, citizen journalists, and the public in order to build public knowledge about Congress.

According to Govtrack creator Josh Tauberer, "OpenCongress is based (mostly) on the data set that GovTrack assembles and makes available for others to reuse, so I'm particularly happy that someone has finally reused it to make something new. As you can see from the front pages of the two sites, the focuses of the sites are fairly different, GovTrack being mostly reference and tracking, while OpenCongress is taking a stab at some analysis."

The Sunlight Foundation has just issued a press release about its new Open House Project. The goal of the project is to explore ways that the workings of the U.S. House of Representatives can be made more transparent using the Internet. The most encouraging news: the project has the support of Speaker Pelosi. The initial list of participants includes high-profile names such as Markos Moulitsas-Zuniga of Daily Kos and my favorite masher of congressional info, Josh Tauberer of Govtrack.us. The group intends to make a report to Congress in March 2007.

From the Feb. 1 Congressional Record Daily Digest, page D130:

Committee on Environment and Public Works: February 6, to hold an oversight hearing to examine recent Environmental Protection Agency decisions, focusing on EPA actions and documents, including monitoring regulations related to perchlorate, the process for setting National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), the lead NAAQS process, air toxics control (the once in always in policy), the Toxic Release Inventory, and EPA library closures, 10 a.m., SD-406.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearings are webcast; see the hearings section of their site at http://epw.senate.gov/ .

My first take on the THOMAS beta is now available online at LLRX.com -- specifically at http://www.llrx.com/columns/govdomain23.htm. (The full January issue of LLRX is not up yet, so you have to go directly to this URL.) The Library of Congress is looking for feedback, so be sure to use the THOMAS beta comment page if you have something to say.

The THOMAS legislative information system from the Library of Congress has posted a beta version of several new features. The direct link to the features being tested is thomas.loc.gov/beta/ -- or you can click on the Explore new features link on the main page to check it out.
New capabilities being tested include:

• Search all THOMAS databases for all congresses with one search.
• Sort search results by document type (bills, committee reports, etc), relevance, or date.
• Navigate and refine searches with new options on the search results and document display screens.

THOMAS includes a link to offer comments on the new features. Before doing so, be sure to read the helpful section About the New THOMAS (Beta) and--in particular--the helpful FAQs.
(This message was also posted to the SLA DGI blog; please pardon the duplication.)

LegiStorm -- a new, free website -- has put the congressional pay data from the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate reports online in an easy to use format. Check it out at http://www.legistorm.com .

The new site has been blogged by POGO and many other bloggers are taking delight in new access to the data.

I don't have much time left as the August guest blogger, so I will use my current position of power here in the center column to point out the new post by James R. Jacobs over there in the side column: "Google for government spending" blocked by unknown Senator . This post from James concerns S. 2590, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. My lunching lobbyist friend just let me know that the story is also covered in the August 28 Washington Times. (For those not familiar with the Washington Times, its editorial spin is somewhat different than that of, say, Mother Jones.)

I have wanted to write a post about the power of August recess, and this breaking story gives me just the opportunity.

Don't like what's happening? Talk to your Senators and Representatives in the U.S. Congress. They should be back home for August recess. For some of the flavor of a congressional recess, check out the article "Recess!" by Paul Jenks in the August issue of LLRX.com. Jenks is slightly more cynical than I am about your constituent power during recess, but he does observe that "in Washington [members of Congress] are isolated somewhat from their constituents and are at the beck and call of their national parties, interest groups and the administration. On recess, they are on their own amongst their own." And you certainly have more power than I do: I live and vote in DC.

Whether the topic is the spending database, or net neutrality, or EPA Libraries, you can use what is left of August recess to make government information issues real to your elected representatives. But this is no endless summer. The Senate reconvenes on September 5, and the House reconvenes on September 6.

Two recent posts on the beSpacific blog that should be of interest to FGI readers:

• The Nation: Librarians at the Gates - To quote from the article, "While the ethic of secrecy often prevails in the gathering and dissemination of corporate and governmental information, the work of a librarian is imbued with just the opposite."
• Appeals Court's Website Features RSS, Audio Recordings - From the press release, "The next time you see someone pop on the headphones and get that faraway look in his or her eyes, don't be so sure it's a tune that's beguiling them. It just may be the latest oral arguments from the Seventh Circuit."

An earlier FGI post inspired me to write a column about efforts to link documents to the news about them. Take a look at The Government Domain: Government Documents and the News in the August issue of LLRX.com. (Actually, as I write this, the full August issue is not up yet--will be soon--but you can get to my column via the link I just provided.) I give FGI credit in the column so, if people read to the end of it, I may spread some FGI awareness.

We have weird ads on the DC Metro subway system. They advertise things like fighter jets, the Coast Guard Integrated Deepwater System, or some sort of "government solution." These are not goods the typical consumer can buy. Often I can’t tell what it is they are selling, I only know the target customer is someone who influences federal agency procurement, not me.

Convera has been advertising its new government search engine on the subway since sometime in July. That is how I heard about it. For once, something I could relate to! The search engine, called GovMine, was launched on August 14. Convera is looking to sell its solution to federal agencies, but we the people get some immediate benefit with another free .gov/.mil search engine. GovMine follows quickly on the heels of Google U.S. Government Search, which followed (kind of) on the heels of the new FirstGov search engine, which used solutions from Microsoft and Vivisimo.

I have not had time to take GovMine through its paces, but I can tell you that it seems to bring to the surface some relevant pages that Google and FirstGov do not. That’s the beauty of this competition for federal eyeballs. Another site to try, another possible route to the answer. Take a look at GovMine. Try a simple search and explore the options that pop up with the results screen.

I have written in the past about Google’s product and FirstGov Search for LLRX.com. A new player entered the arena after Google and before Convera: search guru Tara Calishain at ResearchBuzz is offering a tool built on Google Government Search that narrows results by state.

A new version of The Open Government Guide is now available online at The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press website. The guide to state open records and meetings laws was formerly titled "Tapping Officials' Secrets."

Thanks to Law Librarian Blog for the tip.

Harris Corporation of Melbourne, FL has been awarded the contract for GPO's Future Digital System (FDsys). You can read about the award, announced on August 4, in several places:

- GPO's FDsys Blog

- GPO's Press Release and Fact Sheet [PDF]

- Federal Computer Week article

- Government Computer News article