Reposted with Permission from INFOdocket.com

From NARA:

On November 4, 2010, President Obama signed Executive Order 13556, "Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)," and designated the National Archives and Records Administration as the Executive Agent "to implement this order and oversee agency actions to ensure compliance with this order."

On November 4, 2011, as required by this Executive Order, the National Archives Controlled Unclassified Information Office established a publically available registry reflecting the initial categories and subcategories of unclassified information that require dissemination or safeguarding controls consistent with and pursuant to law, regulation, and Government-wide policy. This registry is online.

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The CUI program will be implemented in phases based on compliance plans and target dates to be submitted by executive agencies and departments. When fully implemented, the CUI program will require executive departments and agencies to exclusively use these categories for controlling and marking such unclassified information. The National Archives will consult with the agencies and the Office of Management and Budget and then set implementation deadlines for CUI, to include for applying standardized CUI markings.

Currently, there are more than 100 different policies for such information across the Executive branch. This plethora of policies has created inefficiency and confusion, leading to a patchwork system that fails to adequately safeguard information requiring protection, and unnecessarily restricts information sharing by creating needless impediments.

Learn More ||| Access the Registry

Read the Complete Announcement

From the NARAtions Blog:

The National Archives just joined iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store giving users public access to thousands of free lectures, videos, books and podcasts from learning institutions all over the world. If you already have iTunes on your iPhone, iPad, iPod, or computer, you can search for “National Archives” on iTunes U to find our channel, or visit us at http://itunes.apple.com/us/institution/national-archives-and-records/id4.... Our initial collections feature selected archival documents, lesson plan materials, podcasts by the Presidential Libraries, videos from our “Inside the Vaults” series and more.

(Via INFOdocket.com)

Via INFOdocket:

From Computer Weekly:

The National Archives [UK] has made details of 11m records available through an application interface it published today as part of an ongoing programme to get more official records online.

The API allows anyone to search for and retrieve the metadata that describes records in the archive in XML format. The data can then be used without restriction or charge. But the archive, which is simultaneously an executive agency of the Department of Justice and a government department in its own right, continues to charge £3.50 per document to retrieve actual records online.

More Info on INFOdocket or Direct from Computer Weekly

Also from the National Archives (UK)

"UK government licensing policy extended to make more public sector information available"

Upheaval at the National Archives, by Barbie E. Keiser, Information Today, (March 10, 2011).

Who knew that libraries, records, and archives could be so controversial? It’s rare to find an archive as headline news, but the first quarter of 2011 has not ended and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has seen its name in lights for two seemingly independent issues: Suspended development of the Electronic Records Archive (ERA) and closure of the Archives Library and Information Center (ALIC).

[UPDATE 1/23/11 updated the link to ResearchBuzz post]

Research Buzz notes that "Footnote.com has announced that it has digitized the entire Project Blue Book, which is a collection of official records covering government investigations of UFOs, 1947-1969."

How about meta-data? "Footnote allows people to comment on and annotate interesting documents. So you can not only keyword search and browse the total collection, but also browse highlights. Scanned documents have a place to add comments about documents as well as annotations to the documents themselves."

• Footnote Making Project Blue Book Available, Research Buzz (August 10, 2007)
• Project Blue Book - UFO Investigations 1947-1969 Footnote.com (Source: The National Archives)