Over on our ResourceShelf site, my colleague, Shirl Kennedy, offers a bunch of links to the recently introduced: S. 1121 and H.R. 1877.

News Release:

The legislation co-sponsored by Senators Jack Reed and (D-RI) and Thad Cochran (R-MS), "to address the shortage of librarians in low-income areas across the country."

Track the Legislation as it Moves through Congress with GovTrack
Bill #'s:
S. 1121 ||| RSS Feed

H.R. 1877 ||| RSS Feed

Last year we posted a note on ResourceShelf about the “2004 Presidential Term Web Harvest” containing more than 75 million .Gov and .Mil web pages, equal to about 6.5 terabytes of data. It's a project of NARA and The Internet Archive. The archived sites can be browsed or keyword searched.

Now available is the 109th Web Harvest.
What does it contain?
+ More than four million pages (42 GB) crawled and archived between 11/11/06 and 12/11/06
+ Browse by Members Name
+ Browse by Committee Name
+ Browse by Leadership
+ Browse by House or Senate Organizations

Go to: http://www.webharvest.gov/collections/

The harvest produced a public reference copy of the web sites for the purpose of continual availability to the public, and also produced a record copy to be retained in the holdings of NARA…Web sites included in the harvest were identified from information provided by the Web Systems Branch of the House Information Resources staff and by Senate webmasters in the Offices of the Secretary of the Senate and the Sergeant at Arms.

A bit more on ResourceShelf including a comment by Librarian of Congress, James Billington, about the average lifespan of a web site.

First, thanks to the FGI team (especially James) for allowing me to "guest blog" last month and for the invite to continue posting I'm going to take him up on the offer.

Second, planning calendars are all over the web. On ResourceShelf, we are constantly updating this post with all sorts of calendars, From election dates (around the globe) to diplomatic events to scientific meetings to space events and a lot more. We hope you find it useful.

It's likely many of you are aware of CapWiz from Capital Advantage but just in case you haven't, a quick look.

CapWiz (it's available on several sites) offers a number of databases with congressional data, local political data, media info, and more. Almost all links allow you to contact a politician/reporter/etc. via email.

Three places to find the database:
1) C-SPAN

2) The Hill (a D.C. polical newspaper/web site)

3) USA Today

Key Features:
+ Weekly Free E-Mail Alerts with Voting Records of U.S. Reps
+ Selected Legislation Listed at Bottom of Page
+ Media Database (organizations, reporters, producers).
The scope is impressive and useful for addresses and phone numbers. However, I found a few cases where it could be updated in a more timely manner. One example.

Perhaps the most featured filled version of the CapWiz database comes directly from Capital Advantage at Congress.org.

Features include:
+ Weekly Congress.org Update Newsletter
+ Congress This Week Podcast
+ RSS Alerts from Various issue-based Organizations (a directory is also a available)

On ResourceShelf, our co-senior editor, Shirl Kennedy, has posted some thoughts and recent memos about general public access to CRS content.

Said CRS Director Daniel P. Mulholland, in a memo (PDF; 132 KB) dated 20 March 2007, “(T)o avoid inconsistencies and to increase accountability, CRS policy requires prior approval at the division level before products can be disseminated to non-congressionals.”

We also link to a blog post by Steven Aftergood at FAS.

When I was first asked to be a guest blogger on this site I asked if it would be possible to every now and then mention some of what we were up to at Ask.com. I was told, absolutely yes, go for it. Well, here it's the 20th of the month and I have shared very little about Ask.com.

So, without further adieu here are some fast facts and examples. For more about my role at Ask, I was interviewed by Search Engine Watch last week.

It's important to remember that the Ask.com of 2007 is not the same Ask Jeeves product that was around in the 1990's. Far from it. Jeeves retired :-) in 2006 and Ask.com is now an algorithmic engine (like Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, others) with some human edited features. We can save the discussion about what makes are algorithm different (ExpertRank) for another time.

1) Smart RSS
If a person enters the name of a blog or feed, the editors name (in some cases) not only do they get web results back but also a near real-time feed of headlines. Three Examples:
+ Metafilter
+ Om Malik
+ FDA Recalls

2) Query Context
If the search is pics of golden gate bridge not only are web results returned but also results from the Ask.com image database. Ask was the first major engine to offer this feature.

3) If a country name is searched Ask offers several sources for info about the country (or state) at the top of the page. Sort of a virtual ready reference shelf. In some cases, if a stat is searched for, that will also be returned on the results page. Example: Market Cap Cisco (CSCO).

or

Area of Iceland

or

Seattle, WA
Direct links to NCES database, city home page, chamber of commerce, etc.

4) This search for Ben Franklin not only offers useful results at the top of the page (a Smart Answer) but also options to narrow, expand, and see related names. These results are called Zoom, related results and are similar to what once was available on Teoma. In fact, Teoma technology powers Ask.com. Here's another example for San Francisco earthquake.* We place them on the right rail because it's a highly visible spot (where others place sponsored links).

5) Ask.com also owns Bloglines and both sites have blog/feed engines. Same database, different features. One feature people like about the Ask.com interface are the direct links (below each title) to subscribe to the feed or share the post using a variety of services, including Ask.com and Bloglines competitors.

6) Ask Maps.
Two points here.
A) Ask offers both walking and driving directions.
B) Ask offers dynamic rerouting and route recalculation.
Here's an example.

Now, drag the #1 or #2 "pin" to a new location. Watch the street name(s) change and the route recalculated on the fly. You can have up to 10 locations. You can also add location by simply selecting a spot on the map, right clicking and selecting "Add Location." Aerial imagery is also available by selecting the aerial link at the top of the map.

7) Ask.com is also helpful for the typical searcher who might want a Zip Code but only enter a city name. Example:
Zip Code Springfield. We offer a pull-down that lists all cities named Springfield along with a direct link to the USPS for all Zips in the selected city. Here's another example with disambiguation built in. This time, a search for info about man's best friend.

* Ask.com offers a near real-time feed of Earthquake data with a simple search for earthquake. Via the USGS. Clicking the link takes you to the data, mapped.

Over on our ResourceShelf.com site we've recently posted on several newspaper and book digitization projects.

Here's info (and of course, links) to a couple of them.

New today (official launch tomorrow night) is the debut of the Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers database and directory from the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities. The project (beta release) includes over 260,000 digitized newspaper pages and a nicely structured and searchable directory of newspaper info back to 1790.

Newspapers in the public domain from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910 are part of the database. More content to come. You can also find information about specific newspapers back to 1690.

Next, we are happy to report that it's once again easy (no registration required) to access the FREE "special collections" from NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

These collections contain the full text and full images of thousands of digitized newspaper pages. Delivered as PDF files.

Not only keyword searchable but many collections offer browsable timelines. Btw, full text access to a large portion of the entire NewspaperARCHIVE database (over 60 million pages) remains available to K-12 schools and public libraries at NO CHARGE.

More here!

Btw, the current list of free special collections includes the following topics:

+ Abraham Lincoln
+ AIDS
+ Asbestos
+ Chocolate Wars
Content Coming Soon.
+ Earthquakes
+ FBI
+ Global Warming
+ Holocaust
+ Immigration
+ Kennedy Assassination
+ Martin Luther King, Jr.
+ Outlaw
+ Pro Baseball
+ Ronald Reagan
+ San Antonio, Texas
+ September 11
+ Space Program
+ Target America
+ Hurricanes
+ Pearl Harbor
+ Terrorism
+ Titanic
+ Tornado
+ Winter Games

Webcast: Tom Blanton, Director of National Security Archive at George Washington University chatted with Briam Lamb on C-SPAN this morning for about one hour. Direct to the Real Video.

Also, the National Security Archive has just awarded the 3rd Annual Rosemary Award for Worst FOIA Performance to the U.S. Air Force.

In the early days of the web, TerraFly.com from Florida International University was super cool.

Using TerraFly you could virtually fly over the United States using USGS imagery. This feature is still available.

Well 7 or so years have passed and the imagery, well, it's everywhere and in some cases better.

However, this free service still as one very cool and very useful feature, gobs of local data.

From Census info to local hotels to fires, it's in Terrafly.

Give it a try.

1) Go to TerraFly

2) Enter in an address or just a Zip and make sure your pop-up blocker is off.

3) Wait for a couple of two new windows to open.

4) Review imagery. Now, click on a specific point on the image.

5) A new window will open with filled with local data. If you clicked a few blocks away some of the numbers and items would be different.

Here's what a page for a specific address looks like for a spot in Chicago.

Cool!

It's always cool to see librarians/researchers getting a bit of the spotlight.

Maria Wygand and Marion Paynter two researchers/info pros at the Charlotte Observer are publishing the, Your Right to Know blog with info about public records (what they are, where to find them, and how to use them).

Impressive work and a great idea. Btw, a link to the blog also appears in the print edition of the paper and on this web page where you can find all of the Sunshine Week articles.

A very useful source for calendar info regarding events here in D.C. (from Congressional events, to statistical releases to think tanks issuing reports) is the Washington Daybook from Find-Inc. The Daybook is also published each morning in the Washington Times at this URL:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/daybook.htm

If you look near the top or bottom of the page, you can even have the page spoken to you using the Washington Times "Click-2-Listen" service.

Here's an example.

Links to the last 5 daybooks are found at the bottom of the page.

If you're interested in archiving each Daybook page for the long term, you might want to consider using a web clipping service like eSnips that offers 5GB of free online storage and sharing space.

Btw, on our ResourceShelf site, we've collected a number of planning calendars that might be of interest from the BBC, UN, APTV, and other sources.

Yesterday, I posted this item linking to a new investigative report from the AP about documents removed from public view since 9/11.

Here are some interactive resources and stats from the AP regarding FOIA.

1) Take the AP "Records of Concern" Interactive Quiz
Based on the AP story linked to yesterday.

2) Interactive Chart: Information Requested From Federal Agencies
1998-2005, Stats by agency and a look at slow responding agencies.

3) U.S. Government Agency FOIA Links

4) Interactive Map: State Laws on Information Access
Cumulative Sunshine Laws, 2001-2005.

IFLA's Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters has posted country reports (PDF files) for the following countries.

Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters (CLM) - Country Reports 2006

• Canada
• China
• Denmark
• France
• Germany
• Netherlands
• Israel
• Japan
• Philippines
• Poland
• South Africa
• South Korea
• Sweden
• USA

From the AP article: Government guards papers from public eye

More than 1 million pages of historical government documents -- a stack taller than the U.S. Capitol -- have been removed from public view since the September 2001 terror attacks, according to records obtained by The Associated Press. Some of the papers are more than a century old. In some cases, entire file boxes were removed without significant review because the government's central record-keeping agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, did not have time for a more thorough audit. "We just felt we couldn't take the time and didn't always have the expertise," said Steve Tilley, who oversaw the program. Archives officials are still screening records, but the number of files pulled recently has declined dramatically, he said.

At the beginning of the month I promised that most of my posts would be primarily focused on resources/documents/etc. (hopefully useful ones) along with a personal note or two.

Today, a personal note.

I am a firm believer that mobile or wireless access to information is only in its infancy.

The question for this site as well as others is how will it play a role in government information.

I mentioning this topic because I'm posting this note and the two notes prior to this one (via my laptop) from a train moving about 100mph on its way to Stamford, CT where I am speaking tomorrow.

Let's be clear, I am NOT simply using my Treo 700P and its QWERTY keyboard to post. Qwerty keyboards are useful but after a while your fingers somehow seem to grow larger and typing becomes slower. :-)

Instead, I am using my Treo Internet connection and porting it directly into my laptop.

Since my 700P is using Sprint's EVDO network, I can not only post, check email, but I'm also listening to streaming audio.

For those of you interested, here's the software.

1) Sync Cable or Blue Tooth

2) PDANet
http://www.junefabrics.com

Various versions available for various phones and carriers including a fully functioning trial version.

Of course, I could go out a purchase a PCMCIA card and pay another fee but since I have Sprint's unlimited data plan, I do have (or at least to this point, have not) incurred any extra fees.

p.s. JuneFabrics also has developed PDA Reach. Very useful!!!