Leave it to Ze Frank (many of you will remember Ze from "The Show", a daily video blog he did from March 17, 2006 - March 17, 2007), a comedian, to put this whole healthcare debate into proper perspective.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) "now features two new videos on the site (www.nlrb.gov): 'Introduction to the NLRB Public Website' and 'How to Use CiteNet,' the Agency’s electronic legal research database."

• announcement (pdf)
• Introduction to the NLRB Public Website ("demonstrates how to find published decisions and administrative memoranda, how to ask questions via the website or to speak to a person, as well as how to use E-Gov, the Agency’s on-line services such as E-Docket, E-Filing, online forms, and E-FOIA
  requests."
• How to Use CiteNet (CiteNet is a free public service offered by the Agency to assist labor law professionals and the public with their legal research needs.)

Hat tip to: IWS Documented News Service!

Dr. Elizabeth Losh, digital rhetoric scholar at U.C. Irvine, presents her research on how government agencies are using social media and how their use impacts government information and the public record.

Video of presentation (~68 minutes)

Presentation Slides

Digital Preservation Europe is in the process of creating a series of short animations introducing and explaining digital preservation problems and solutions for the general public. Their first one is cute. Future ones will be released on their YouTube channel.

(Cross-posted on GODORT blog) At last week's Spring '09 Depository Library Conference in Tampa -- which was, to remind everyone, live-blogged! -- GODORT chair Cass Hartnett spoke on the topic "Reflections of a Mid-career Government Documents Librarian." Cass' talk was both thoughtful and thought-provoking. The video runs about an hour. During the talk, Cass handed out a list of 14 "memory questions." After viewing the video, please share your answers to the questions in the comments section below. Thanks!

1. An early library job
2. technology
3. an early career dream
4. good committee you served on or good workshop attended, or both
5. mentor(s) who helped you at the state/local level
6. up and coming student/librarian who impressed you
7. Washington D.C.
8. Library user(s)
9. future of FDLP
10. government information in everyday life
11. good article or book
12. power of description
13. digital amazement
14. Web 2.0 triumph or trouble

Happy Friday! John Stewart discusses the supreme irony of former VP Cheney and Carl Rove going to the media and calling on the Obama administration to declassify information. It makes one's head explode!

The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) has launched a set of videos on the FDLP Desktop, "What Does the Public Know About the FDLP? GPO Takes to the Streets". Staff members of GPO "took to the streets" of D.C. to ask the public what they know about the FDLP and Government Publications. What do they know? Not much, as evidenced by these videos! These videos can be embedded on your website, so let's take a look at them here, shall we?

The marketing plan website states that "As evidenced by the Person on the Street videos, promoting the FDLP to the public is essential and necessary".

I agree. However, is the FDLP Marketing Plan as it stands now, up to the job? Feedback was requested and the results of these findings were published. I think they need to ask for more feedback and publish more results soon, especially for those that did not get to take part in this feedback opportunity before.

One problem I have with the marketing plan is the slogan itself, "Easy as FDL: Free Dedicated Limitless" which I believe means absolutely nothing to the average person, which they proved in these videos! They don't know what a FDL stands for. They don't know what a Federal Depository Library is. So why use Easy as FDL as one's slogan to market itself?

Case in point: A couple of months ago, I left a bunch of the most recent "Easy as FDL" marketing promotional materials on our library brochure table for patrons to take, but I also left a bunch of the older GPO/FDLP promotional materials on the table as well (i.e. the brochures that have images of our nation's capitol building, stating "Make the Connection for Government Information", etc). Which ones were completely gone by the end of the week? The older materials. Which were left still sitting on the table? The newer "Easy as FDL" materials. From what I can deduce, patrons grabbed the visuals that had the "government information" phrase on it and the visual of a capitol building or an American flag because those images and phrases "spoke to them" more and they knew exactly what the brochure was about. Hopefully they took the time to read the brochure and learn more about what an FDL is, but I feel the term "government information" grabs their attention a whole lot more!

The marketing plan website also states that "GPO designed The FDLP Marketing Plan to empower Federal depository libraries with the tools they need to market their valuable services to all audiences in the most effective way possible."

I disagree. I don't think they designed the marketing plan to empower Federal depository libraries in the most effective way possible and I don't think we did a very good job of giving them enough feedback. I think that we ("we" meaning librarians, patrons, GPO, FDLP, etc) still need to improve and redesign the marketing plan in a more effective way. What do you think? Let's give GPO our feedback and ideas! A lot of work was put into this but lets make this a labor of love and really work to improve it even more.

Thanks to BoingBoing.net for posting about NASA's "remixable videos", audio clips, and images, as well as a DIY Podcasts page.

You can mix and mash these video clips with NASA images and your own narration, original video, special effects and transitions. Preview the video and download the clips you want to use in your creative masterpiece.

I hope the collection grows. It looks like the only remixable videos so far are about spacesuits.

Anyway, I thought this would be fun for those of you who love mashups! I become more and more impressed with the NASA website and all the cool stuff it has to offer. I hope they continue to post more remixable videos and audio files for us to download and manipulate.

Josh Tauberer at GovTrack.us, our hero and a prince, has created an easy way to follow new videos posted at Congress's YouTube sites. (See Congress on YouTube).

• Tracking YouTube Videos which aggregates all videos posted by Members to YouTube. The RSS is here.
• Pages for Members at GovTrack.us now highlight their latest YouTube video at the top of the page.
• Feeds/Trackers at GovTrack.us for Members (which you can subscribe to directly, include with your other trackers, or get email updates for) now include their latest video postings.

Read more: Track your representative’s YouTube videos, Josh Tauberer, Jan. 13, 2009.

Here's an It's-a-wonderful-life-esque look at the US Congress for your friday afternoon viewing pleasure. This video can be found at the Internet Archive's Prelinger Archives. I happened upon this film when it jumped out at me from the credits of John Hodgman's Spamasterpiece Theater Vol II: "Wuthering Wire Transfers."

that is all.

The GPO just released a new video promoting the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), a network of 1250 libraries across the US where the public can get access to government information in a variety of formats. This is a nicely done, succinct explanation of the FDLP. It's nice to see friends and fellow government documents librarians expounding on the FDLP! Thanks GPO!!

Last month, at ALA Annual Conference 2008, FGI volunteers participated in the GODORT preconference "Docs2.0: emerging web technologies for the government documents community". At long last, we've got the video of all the speakers up and available!! It's also available on the internet archive (slightly better quality video). You can now access all the slides, video, and notes from the preconference at the GODORT wiki.

Speakers:

• James R. Jacobs, International Documents Librarian, Stanford University. "Social tagging for building subject portals"
• Amy West, Interim Head, Government Publications Library, University of Minnesota. "Integration of 2.0 tools like Instant Messaging (IM) for reference"
• Jim A. Jacobs, Data Librarian Emeritus, University of California at San Diego. "RSS for documents librarians"
• David Oldenkamp, International Studies Librarian, Indiana University. "Custom search engines with GoogleCSE"
• John Wonderlich, Program Director, Sunlight Foundation. (keynote) Open House Project

No this isn't a news item from The Onion! It's Stephen Colbert's latest Wørd segment. In it, Colbert finds much to celebrate that our individual monetary value (IMV) as derived by government actuaries has declined by almost a million dollars -- a 12% drop in five years. And Colbert rightly points out that with IMV dropping, the cost of environmental regulations is higher than their benefits which causes IMV to drop even more in a "circle of life -- minus the life!"

If the video doesn't load here, you can also get it over at Crooks and Liars!

Wow, today is a convergence day of holidays! Not only do we have May Day, International Workers' Day, and Loyalty Day, but now there's also RSS Day! RSS (aka "rich site summary") is the little XML file that could; that is, RSS can help librarians and readers in general collect and read the stuff in which they're interested. See the video below for a really good, straighforward description of RSS. And don't forget to register for the GODORT preconference at ALA Annual '08 entitled, Docs2.0: emerging web technologies for the government documents community. FGI will be there with Jim Jacobs presenting about RSS and James Jacobs moderating and presenting about del.icio.us.

All governments manipulate the media to garner favorable news coverage and spin the flow of information to put their actions in a positive light. But in a story in Sunday's NY Times (April 20, 2008) entitled "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand," David Barstow describes a concerted effort by the Bush Administration who used ostensibly objective military analysts to spread propaganda and dupe the American public in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance in Iraq. It turns out that those "independent military experts" consisted of “more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.”

Once again, John Stewart describes this event with wit so that we'll laugh rather than scream. So I'll let him have the last word. And he mentions a GAO report called "Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas" that you can now get your hands on via the Internet Archive.

Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”...

...Over time, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired officers, although some participated only briefly or sporadically. The largest contingent was affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the other networks with 24-hour cable outlets. But analysts from CBS and ABC were included, too. Some recruits, though not on any network payroll, were influential in other ways — either because they were sought out by radio hosts, or because they often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, Web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for The Times.