see this link for chat logs and more details on GITCO

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TOPIC: GITCO committee structure and our impact within GODORT and beyond

Accessing government information electronically is now common in both US and international contexts. How can GITCO best position itself withing GODORT/ALA and beyond to provide leadership on issues associated with electronic government information?

This session is meant to be a brainstorm -- to collect ideas and examples, rather than to follow each contribution to its conclusion. The room will be open after the session if you would like to add things after the planned session. There is also a brief participant survey which includes a place for feedback.

Agenda for Today's Forum:

* introductions
* logistics
* reflections on past projects
* reflections on committee structure within GODORT
*take the survey

I don't see a post yet about the latest comment instrument on Recovery.gov -- the "Recovery Dialogue: Information Technology Solutions" site here . The premise is --- What ideas, tools, and approaches can make Recovery.gov a place where the public can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds? Also with this entertaining u-tube intro

This seems like a thread that documents librarians can really sink our teeth into. See the latest post by scholar Katy Borner from IU on semantic web enhancements

"Recovery.gov should adopt semantic web technologies as key enablers for promoting an agile, transparent data ecosystem in which federal agencies and other recipients of stimulus monies can share spending and performance data in a way that is truly transparent, readily available, and useful to anyone who wants to view, consume, or analyze the information. "

Come on - help them out this week!

see this link for April chat logs, upcoming May date and more details on GITCO

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TOPIC: emerging issues in ADVOCACY for electronic government information

Accessing government information electronically is now common in both US and international contexts. How have communications with government providers, with users and communities changed?

This session is meant to be a brainstorm -- to collect ideas and examples, rather than to follow each contribution to its conclusion. The room will be open after the session if you would like to add comments after the planned session. There is also a brief participant survey which includes a place for feedback.

Agenda for Today's Forum:

*introductions
*logistics
*how have communications with government information providers changed? US/international, etc.
*what are the most important things users need to know now to gain access to electronic gov info -- how should librarians be supporting these needs?
*How can GITCO help librarians with electronic gov info advocacy? What resources, or tools should we be producing?
*take the survey

see this link for April and May dates and more details on GITCO

Scroll down and start typing to join the chat. or if it does not seems to connect join here
What is Meebo and how do I get set up?

TOPIC: Emerging issues for USERS of electronic government information

Accessing government information electronically is now common in both US and international contexts. How have user experience and requirements changed?

This session is meant to be a brainstorm -- to collect ideas and examples, rather than to follow each contribution to its conclusion. The room will be open after the session if you would like to add comments after the planned session. There is also a brief participant survey which includes a place for feedback.

Agenda for Today's Forum:

*introductions
*logistics
*how are users accessing it now? US/international, etc.
*what do users ask now -- have questions changed?
*digital divide?
*take the survey

A live webcast of a discussion on the impact of government suppression and manipulation of scientific information on public health, safety, and accountability at national, state, and local levels, entitled “Closed Doors; Open Democracies?”, will be hosted by New York University Libraries’ Business and Government Documents Center and the Coles Science Salon on Monday, March 12, from 1-2:30 p.m. The webcast will be shown at 19 W. 4th Street, room 101 in New York City.

The event features Ira Flatow, host and executive producer of NPR’s “Science Friday” and two panels of experts in a national dialogue addressing issues of access to government information. The webcast is free and open to the public. Visit OpenTheGovernment.org for a list of venues, registration information, and more.

The first panel will focus on national issues and will feature such speakers as Francesca Grifo, senior scientist and director of Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, presenting an overview on “how secrecy can make you sick”; Rick Piltz, whistleblower on the Bush administration’s manipulation of scientific reporting related to global warming; Susan Wood, former FDA official who quit over the delay of Plan B; and Jay Dyckman, director of The Knowledge Project.

Panel 2 focuses on state and local issues. Speakers include Dorothy Biggs, former EPA librarian; Bill Wolfe, director, NJ Chapter of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility; and Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of the Washington Examiner.

The program originates from the National Press Club in Washington D.C. and kicks off Sunshine Week 2007.

We are posting to FGI to let you know about an ongoing project to deal with depository CD-ROMs (and other legacy formats). This post talks about recent pilot projects and a pending NSF proposal to test emulation and initiate migration activities.

As some of you may know, there was a presentation on CD-ROMs at the Fall depository library conference, chaired by Lisa Russell of GPO.

Julie Linden of Yale and Gretchen Gano of NYU talked about a migration pilot they have been working on
slides

Kay Collins was also on the panel; her presentation on weeding CDs and
DVDs - which ends up where we all seem to end up, considering a
cooperative effort to solve the problems of this collection! - is here:
slides

The other panelist was a computer science professor from Indiana
University, Geoffrey Brown, who is exploring "virtualization" (emulation) as a
strategy for long-term access to government documents distributed on tangible
electronic media. His presentation slides are here:
slides

Shortly after the conference, Professor Brown invited Julie and Gretchen to collaborate on an NSF proposal to fund his emulation work. A significant aspect of the proposal is to
involve "domain users" (NSF terminology) - in this case, depository librarians - in testing the emulation environment, contributing CDs that Indiana doesn’t have, contributing metadata, etc.

We will not find out whether it is funded until the middle of next year. In the meantime, we are continuing to think about models and funding for a large-scale collaborative effort to ensure long-term access to the CDs. We welcome suggestions, musings, cautions, leads - anything - from you all. We are planning to put up a web page with information about our project and will let you all know when it is live. What follows is a summary of the proposed grant activities:

*******************************************
Project Summary III-CXT Virtualization of
Government Information in Legacy Formats: Enabling Long-Term
Access to a Large Collection of Digital Documents

Over the past 20-years the United States Government Printing Office (GPO) has distributed important data and reports on electronic media such as floppy disk, CD-ROM, and DVD through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). This digital document collection, comprised of more than 3000 items with millions of individual files, includes fundamental data on the economy, the environment, the population, the life sciences, and the physical sciences. Accessing many of these items requires installing proprietary and increasingly obsolete software. The goal of this project is to develop technologies supported by a large user community to ensure continued long- term access to these documents (the "FDLP collection") while lowering existing barriers to their use.

This project will generate tools to evaluate the software requirements of this large document collection, and to configure and automate the delivery of individual collections through emulation (virtualization). In addition, the project will extend schemas for descriptive and preservation metadata to document both the contents and technical requirements of the collection.

This collection represents a significant preservation challenge because of its size and heterogeneity, and because the collection exists only on physical media distributed across the many depository libraries. Fortunately, a large community of depository librarians with extensive knowledge of the issues supports the collection. Success in preserving these materials requires actively engaging these users. To encourage and enable their participation, the project will utilize off-the-shelf tools to provide web accessible renditions of the collection and its associated metadata. Participation of these users will range from simply accessing a "virtual" collection, to contributing to the creation of metadata, to configuring and testing document renditions delivered through emulation.

A key technology this project explores is the use of emulation to enable access to documents within their contemporary software infrastructures. While emulation has been frequently discussed as a preservation strategy and has been used successfully for small-scale projects, it has never been explored in the context of a large and diverse document collection. Applying emulation to such a large document collection requires developing technology to automate tasks such as the evaluation of software requirements and the dynamic configuration of specialized emulation environments.

The GPO documents on electronic media are important resources at risk of becoming inaccessible due to obsolescence. Furthermore, many of these documents already present a significant access barrier because they require specialized skills and equipment for installation and because most of the roughly 1260 depository libraries have only selected subsets of the overall collection. An expected outcome of this project is a technical strategy to en- able all depository libraries access to the entire collection with significantly lower technical barriers to access. The primary outcomes of this project are technologies, strategies, and metadata to ensure the long-term access to this important document collection.

Let us know what you think...

Julie Linden --julie.linden@yale.edu, Gretchen Gano --gretchen.gano@nyu.edu, and Geoffrey Brown --geoffrey.brown@acm.org

See our new site for updates on the project