In a supreme twist of irony, Newt Gingrich, speaking at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner which honors free speech, said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism. So in order to save the Constitution, Gingrich is proposing that it be "reexamined," a poor euphemism for completely gutting it. Here's the story about the speech, and here's a link Keith Olbermann discussing Gingrich's comments with George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley. George Orwell is truly rolling in his grave!

[Thanks Crooks & Liars!]

Here is a quick source of links to agencies and some key government documents dealing with government information policy.

OMB Watch is a nonprofit government watchdog organization whose mission is to promote open government, accountability and citizen participation. One of its major issue areas is Information Access. On its website, it lists several specific categories of information access issues that it tracks: Homeland Security, Environmental Right to Know, Data Quality Act, Peer Review, Politics & Science, Freedom of Information, Whistleblowers, and State Policies. In most of these policy areas, they have a useful page devoted to "Gov Docs" where they link to agencies and official and unofficial sources of laws, regulations, and reports dealing with government information policy.

• Homeland Security Gov Docs
• Environmental Right to Know Gov Docs
• Data Quality Act Gov Docs
• Peer Review Gov Docs
• Freedom of Information Gov Docs
• Whistleblowers Gov Docs

I was listening to KPFA, my local pacifica station this morning, and they were having a fund drive for the Pacifica Radio Archives. The archives contain the voices of 20th century history: Studs Terkel, Mahalia Jackson, James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, Alice Walker, Martin Luther King, jr., Rosa Parks, bell hooks, and *many* more voices of peace and justice! The fund drive is needed to support their preservation project (and other projects) which seeks to digitize many of the old tapes in the archive in order to make them more accessible and longer-living. Or think about a donation in someone else's name for the holidays -- really, how many ties does your dad really need?!

Please, please, PLEASE donate to the pacifica archives if you can!

[Please note: I am not on the Pacifica board and FGI has no affiliation whatsoever with Pacifica. I just think that librarians and those interested in preserving history should support valuable preservation projects like this one.]

The approach of December means that millions of Americans will soon be shopping, shipping, printing, mailing, baking, eating, traveling, and/or simply hiding at home and watching cable TV or DVDs. Whatever the case, most people will spend the last month of the year consuming a wide variety of goods and services.

Therefore, this is an excellent time to think about being a wise consumer. Two sources that can help you in this quest are the Consumer Action Handbook and the Consumer Action Website.

Both are produced by the General Services Administration’s Federal Citizen Information Center. Both provide a wealth of advice on what to consider before and after making a purchase. They also provide information about the proper way to file a complaint if the item or service you purchased was unsatisfactory, in addition to a long list of consumer contacts at major corporations.

One feature available on the website that isn’t replicated in the Handbook is the Consumer News box. This very useful little box provides links to consumer alerts and announcements from a number of different federal agencies.

To paraphrase both the Coneheads and Sergeant Esterhaus from Hill Street Blues, go forth and consume mass quantities, but hey, let’s be careful out there.

P.S. Thanks for letting me be the Blogger for November. It was fun!

FCC LAUNCHES "RURAL HEALTH CARE PILOT PROGRAM" WEBSITE Press Release (November 21, 2006) fcc.gov

The FCC has launched a website (http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/rural/rhcp.html) that provides a consolidated source of information about the FCC's recently announced Rural Health Care Pilot Program. The website includes the Order adopting the pilot program and the accompanying news release, a PDF slide presentation giving an overview of the program, and frequently asked questions (FAQs), The website will be updated periodically, as appropriate.

The FCC's pilot program is an innovative, enhanced funding initiative intended to help public and non-profit health care providers construct state- and region-wide broadband networks to provide telehealth and telemedicine services throughout the nation. The program will fund up to 85% of the costs of constructing those networks, as well as the costs of advanced telecommunications and information services that will ride over these networks. If selected, up to 85% of the cost of connecting to Internet2, a dedicated nationwide backbone, may also be funded by the pilot program. Connection to Internet 2 is not required, but may be requested by the applicants....

We'd like to thank everyone who took the time to comment on the GPO/DLC Digital Discussion questions that we at FGI prepared responses to.

Our input along with your comments and a cover letter, have been submitted to selected GPO staff and all members of the Depository Library Council.

If you have thoughts about how either the Government Printing Office or the
Depository Library Council could broaden the discussion on digital distribution of federal electronic documents, please comment here or consider sending a suggestion through the GPO Help System, available from any page on GPO Access.

Alternet just posted a story about the closing of the EPA libraries ("A Step Shy of Book-Burning." By Kelpie Wilson, 11/23/06). This article, in addition to positive news stories over the last month or so has moved the plight of the EPA libraries into the mainstream and caused our Congress people to reevaluate the horrendously bad decision that has caused the closure of EPA libraries. But the fight's not over yet. Please, please, please contact your representatives and let them know you support the refunding of EPA libraries -- AND fill in ALA's legislative action. See the ALA Washington office for background information.

In August, under the guise of fiscal responsibility, the Bush Environmental Protection Agency began closing most of its research libraries, both to the public and to its own staff.

The EPA's professional staff objected strongly, insisting that closing the libraries would hamstring them in their jobs. In a letter to Congress protesting the closures, public employees said, "We believe that this budget cut is just one of many Bush administration initiatives to reduce the effectiveness of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and to continue to demoralize its employees."

[..]Closing the EPA libraries is the perfect symbol to characterize the methods of the Bush administration. Since 2000, the Republicans have cemented their reputation as ushers of a new dark age. They have sought to shroud the light of science by closing libraries and by suppressing scientific reports. They have gagged their own scientists and persecuted whistleblowers. They have cloaked government in secrecy, a prime example being Dick Cheney's secret meetings with oil companies to draft an industry-friendly national energy policy. But that era is now winding down.

Recently, there was a govdoc-l thread on the posibility of Congress discontinuing its printed index to the United States Code. At first this didn't seem to be such a big deal since my library also subscribes to the U.S.C.A, LEXIS and the code itself is freely available online.

Subject: Re: US Code Index may be eliminated

I'm so glad you posed this question! I sometimes feel in the minority in the gov docs community because I'm at a public library, and your question brings up issues that are at the heart of serving our public! Our limited funds mean that Westlaw, Lexis, and other paid databases are not options, so yes, our patrons do use the index, and usually prefer using the print to the electronic option. They also use the appendices.

Please let the good folks at the Office of Law Revision Counsel know that if they do not put the money into the print version, then PLEASE spend that money on more computers, more instructional classes for library staff and the public, and more database access in our public libraries! Access to our country's laws should not be dependent upon the economic class of the person requesting it!

Melissa Earley

Reference Librarian II, Government Documents & H. Carlisle Bean Law Library
Spartanburg County Public Libraries

Since the vast majority of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) libraries have historically been academic and special libraries, it is easy to overlook the needs of public libraries (20%) which as a group have fewer resources. Additionally, although public libraries are the smallest part of the FDLP, they are closest to the ordinary citizen that the FDLP is supposed to serve. So the federal government and the rest of the depostiory community have a responsibility to make it easier for public libraries to provide federal government information, not harder. If print is what is needed to help public libraries, the government should give it to them.

Thanks Melissa for bringing this issue of public library needs to the community's attention.

Here's a twofer to give you some more reading matter over the long weekend:

A friend sent me this internet campaign to shed public light on the secret Smithsonian/Showtime contract that would give Showtime a 30 year, non-competitive stranglehold on Smithsonian (i.e. public domain!) archives. Background on the story can be found at boingboing. If you want to be added as a signatory, please send email to Carl Malamud (carl@media.org) no later than Sunday, November 25, 2006.

After, I signed the letter, I was looking around the public.resource site and came across another campaign (perhaps dated but still viable!) that Carl had put together calling for a hacker tax credit! The basic idea is that open source software, because it is the driving force behind our new information culture, should be supported publically so that more growth can happen. Check out the text of the letter below that Malamud suggests you send to your Congresspeople. This campaign, as I said earlier, may be dated (he lists Vice President Al Gore as a suggested addressee), but open source software (sometimes called FLOSS) is still something for which we should all be advocating!

Pablo Picasso once said that good art is created, but great art is stolen. On the Internet, the same holds true. Good code is created, but great code is copied over and over.

The Internet was created from open source software, code that people can freely use to build new code, to run their networks, to create a new business, or to build a service that people can use.

Take for example the work of Paul Vixie, who has placed in the public domain the software that the Domain Name System runs on. This software has been used by every major Internet Service Provider and has been bundled into the operating system products of IBM, DEC, Silicon Graphics, and Sun.

Open source software created the Internet, and created the economic boom we now see in Silicon Valley. Most of the large web sites in the world run on the open source Apache web server. The $4 billion Netscape Corporation was built from the open source Mosaic. The PERL programming language was created as open source, but now fuels over $100 million in book sales for publishers like O'Reilly & Associates.

But, we are eating our seed corn. There is no systematic national effort to create open source software and it is increasingly difficult to keep this infrastructure alive. For every success story like Apache, there are dozens of projects that languish because of the lack of formal support for open source projects.

In the global village, open source software is not an alternative to commercial software, just as in our real cities public parks are not an alternative to our commercial districts. The parks make our cities thrive, and thriving cities are a good place to do business.

It is a happy accident that we have open source software, but there are simple steps that the federal government can take to provide even more fuel for the growth of our information economy. Here is a simple algorithm for a Hacker Tax Credit that could be added to the U.S. Code:

      #/us/usc/irs
      if {
            You produce software that is in the public domain ; 

      } andif {
            That software is used by at least 1000 people ; 

      } then {
            You may deduct your development and operational costs from your gross income for tax purposes ; } 

If the U.S. Congress could compile this simple subroutine into the U.S. Code, this simple step would have a greater effect than any cuts in capital gain taxes. I urge you to consider steps that the U.S. Congress can take to insure a strategic national reserve of open source software.

Sincerely,

Carl Malamud
media.org

**Public announcement**

It's never too early to start planning for Sunshine Week 2007 (March 11-17), the national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information! The 2nd annual webcast conference will include the results of a nationwide information audit organized by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Sunshine Week, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government and the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

But they need your help! The audit, which is set to be conducted in early January, 2007, will consist of requestors going to pre-selected government offices, asking for copies of a particular public document and then recording how well the agency responds.

If you are interested in participating or would like additional information, please contact Debra Gersh Hernandez, Sunshine Week coordinator, at dghernandez@asne.org or (703) 807-2100 as soon as possible. If you are ready to begin the audit but need a local partner, please contact the national audit facilitator Judith Burrell at judith_burrell@cox.net or (703) 281-3836.