You may or may not have heard of "disaster capitalism." Well here's a case of "disaster web harvesting!" I just got an email from our friends at the Internet Archive. They're the ones that preserve the 85 billion+ web pages from 1996 to the present and make them all freely accessible in the Wayback Machine (WOW!!).

Well at 4:30 Pacific Time, they're going to set up an Archive-It collection to crawl sites regarding the crisis unfolding between Russia and Georgia. If you've got a favorite site that you've been using to track this crisis, please send urls to Molly Bragg (mbragg AT archive DOT org).

Thanks!

According to a press release, NASA and Internet Archive on Thursday "made available the most comprehensive compilation ever of NASA's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video.... [T]he Internet site combines for the first time 21 major NASA imagery collections into a single, searchable online resource."

• NASA and Internet Archive Launch Centralized Resource for Images, PRNewsWire, July 24, 2008.
• NASA Images

The Internet Archives says that it entered into an agreement with NASA in 2007 to create this service, but that the it receives no financial support from NASA. The project is currently funded through a grant from the Kahle-Austin Foundation and and IA is encouraging users of the site to help support this project.

Here's a special weekend edition of lunchtime listens! A couple of weeks ago, Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive made news by challenging the FBI's illegal national security letter against the archive. The archive was also in the news because of Microsoft's decision to discontinue their live book search and the funding of the archive's Open Content Alliance book scanning project.

Now you can hear exactly what happened direct from Brewster himself. Listen to his interview a few days ago on This Week in Tech (TWIT). Happy listening!

The CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence has posted the full text of one of its guidebooks, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis originally published in 1999. you can get it on the CIA site, but I also took the liberty of downloading it and then uploading it to the Internet Archive's government documents collection. That link is stable and would be appropriate for adding to the 856 field of your bib record. Wouldn't it be really cool if all of those 4412 govt documents in the IA's collection had downloadable MARC records?

Intelligence analysts, in seeking to make sound judgments, are always under challenge from the complexities of the issues they address and from the demands made on them for timeliness and volume of production…

How many times have we encountered situations in which completely plausible premises, based on solid expertise, have been used to construct a logically valid forecast–with virtually unanimous agreement–that turned out to be dead wrong?

A central focus of this book is to illuminate the role of the observer in determining what is observed and how it is interpreted. People construct their own version of “reality” on the basis of information provided by the senses, but this sensory input is mediated by complex mental processes that determine which information is attended to, how it is organized, and the meaning attributed to it. What people perceive, how readily they perceive it, and how they process this information after receiving it are all strongly influenced by past experience, education, cultural values, role requirements, and organizational norms, as well as by the specifics of the information received.

[Thanks BoingBoing!]

Erik Ringmar, professor of social and cultural studies at the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, wants others to join him in putting restricted government documents on the web.

I say this is awesome! There's certainly precedent for this kind of activism: Jared Benedict liberated a bunch of USGS maps and just last week, I uploaded the Iraqi Perspectives Report to the Internet Archive. Anyone else out there set free a government document? Leave us a comment.

So, I've taken it upon myself to start an organisation called MLOP, the "Movement for the Liberation of Old Papers". What I do is hack into restricted websites, download the documents I'm interested in, and then use my favourite open-source paint program to remove the copyright statements from each page. Next I assemble the pages into one single pdf file and upload it to the Internet Archive, where it will become universally available to both researchers and citizens. Yes, it does take a bit of time, but it's a very worthy cause (and I have a hardworking research assistant to help me).

I feel strongly about this, and I'm prepared to live with the legal consequences of my actions. This, after all, is the new frontier of civil rights - the right of access to information. How else can corruption be stopped and falsehoods exposed? How else can people in power be held accountable? I'd go to prison for the old parliamentary papers if I had to. Ever after I would proudly brag about having liberated an old House of Commons report from the clutches of market capitalism.

The Internet Archive has many fans here at FGI. If you're not familiar with this project, go check out the slide show at Wired magazine about the mechanics of the Internet Archive Book-Scanning project.

"While Google has made headlines over the last two years for scanning thousands of copyrighted works for its Book Search project, the Internet Archive is quietly digitizing around 1,000 public domain titles every day...the text collection on archive.org is the world's largest online collection of free books, with nearly 350,000 titles and growing."

I wrote about creating a digital government documents library with Google Books a few weeks ago, but the Internet Archive also has a plethora of digitized government publications, as pointed out to me in the comments. Since then, I've been happily "bookmarking" government documents of interest to my patrons and my depository. These bookmarked documents can be shared via a wiki subject guide or a social bookmarking tool of your choice.

However, unlike Google Books, there is no RSS feed for recently bookmarked documents, and your bookmarks are not arranged via topic or title order, but by the date you bookmarked them. Maybe these features could be suggested to them or brought up in the forum? You can also contribute or donate to the Internet Archive as well. Nevertheless, the satisfaction you get from using and marketing this non-profit, actual library should be rewarding enough!

I'm sure you've all heard of the $100 laptop right? Shinjoung and I were lucky enough to have one to demo on our Internet Archive bookmobile trip and can vouch for their coolness! Not only is the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) an admirable educational project (inspired by the likes of John Dewey and Paulo Freire) to get a laptop into the hands of every child in the 3rd world, it is a marvelous engineering  feat of building a low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, durable and WiFi-enabled machine built specifically for children and using only Linux and other free and open-source software. Check out the NY Times' David Pogue and his nice little video review.

You all are in luck. From now until November 26, 2007, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program where each person who donates $399 ($200 is tax-deductible) to buy a laptop for a 3rd world child will receive one as well. Please, please, please consider doing this. And perhaps if you get a group to do this (like we're trying to do at university that we work at), you can donate your laptops to children in your communities as well.

This is bookmobilistas in action. Please check it out.

On the way to Jeter Victorian Inn we drove past the Herbert Kraft Free Library (Library Journal Vol. 46 p. 216) which was the first public library in Red Bluff. The library looked exactly like a Carnegie library, but in front of the building was a sign - "House of Design." It turns out the Tehama County library outgrew the building and moved to the old Safeway building about 16 years ago.

The original library was funded by Mrs. Kraft in memory for her late husband under the condition that if the building was not used as a library it would be returned to her family's estate. When the library moved, the city lost the property and eventually it got sold to the current owner who turned it into a gift shop. The library was filled with fake decorative flowers, soaps, candles, etc, but we could imagine how the library would have looked in the past. The rotunda of the library is beautifully restored stained glass and the sunlight through the glass amplifies the church-like atmosphere.

While Kraft library maintains the elegance of the past, the current public library is eclectic for sure. It's in a circa 1960s Safeway building that converted to the library. The current library is not aesthetically pleasing from the outside -- however, the ceiling inside has 3 large wooden beams that look like waves; But we thought it's an interesting idea to convert commercial property to public space, especially since our public spaces are dwindling -- there are many towns and cities where the only "public space" is their shopping mall!

Red Bluff was not on our itinerary, but we decided to just go ahead and set up the bookmobile in front of the public library guerrilla-style. We showed up at the library around 2 without notice and asked a librarian if we could set up the bookmobile. After we described who we were and what we were doing, she said ok with no hesitation.This was our first guerrilla tactic and it worked ("no one expects the Spanish inquisition!"). Our backup plan was to set up right across the street from the library but this was *much* better because we were somewhat cooled under the large Safeway awning :-)

The library was the teen after-school hangout spot so we had a chance to talk to many young library users. One teenage boy was very interested in our music collection, especially heavy metal. So we searched and found a music file from the archive collection and turned on the music on our laptop. We hardly understood the lyrics, but he was obviously pleased and said "cool!" quite a few times. Another teenaged boy asked us to find Italian books because recently his grandma told him that he was of Italian decent. We found books on Italian grammar and Italian cooking for him and showed them to him on the spot. He was so excited to see the books and thrilled to take one book that we had just made for him. When we see young kids are interested and excited about our collection we get excited too.

The travel book was right. Ref Bluff is blazing hot in summer. While we were standing in front of the library for bookmobile, we dreamed that the building was still a Safeway and we could go to aisle 4 and get a drink; but then the delirium would wear off and we'd remember this is not a Safeway but a library and there are other types of sustenance inside.

In my previous post, I promised to tell you about our B&B owner, Mary. When Mary opened her house our eyes got big and our jaws opened. Her Victorian era house is decorated with a Victorian theme mixed with kitch, but it was literately full of stuff. There is not an empty space in her house where you can rest your eyes. Every inch of her house has something on it: the walls are filled with myriad paintings, cowboy boots, stirrups, the dressers, tables and shelves are filled with old hair brushes,wax cylinder records, porcelain nuns, birdcages, etc. There is no way that we can describe her house, so we really want you to see our photos. She gave us a tour of the house which I videotaped and hopefully will make available soon.

As much as we were impressed by her house we were so heartened by her hospitality. Mary is a small, feisty and sweet woman to whom you just want to talk all day long and find out about her exciting life. None of us expected anything like this in Red Bluff, but this was a sweet treat on our journey. We're heading to Arcada for our next stop but we know we will come back to Red Bluff to see Mary again in the future. And make sure to stop by if you're in Red Bluff and tell her Shinjoung, James and Sarah, the bookmobile crew, sent you!

Every time I travel around U.S.  without exception, I'm always in awe by the grandiosity of the land. It's just a big country especially compared to my native South Korea.

Yesterday we stayed in Weaverville, CA and spent time exploring the town. We didn't have a plan for the bookmobile but we visited the library anyway.  Sadly the library was closed on friday and only open 20/week because of budget cuts. (See the photos).

Weaverville is a small historical gold rush town with a population of @ 3500. A logging mill is the only industry that sustains the town today, but during the gold rush era, over 1000 Chinese gold miners lived there.  Now the miners and Chinese are largely gone but they left their stories and the glimpse of their lives behind. In Weaverville, there is a Daoist temple, Joss House, built by a chinese entreprenuers in 1874 (Also called "Cloud Forest Temple", 雲林廟, Yunlin Miao)  where the miners worshiped. The land was donated by the local Methodist Church, according to the State Park ranger. After 126 years, the temple is still standing firmly. Wandering around the ground of the Joss house, we all wondered about the lives of those intrepid Chinese miners. For more on the CA gold rush, see From Gold Rush to Golden State and Guld Rush Introduction

We left Weaverville this morning and drove to Redding where the temperature hit over 102 F. While we drove through downtown, we saw the library sign and, like hypnotized people, just followed the  sign and ended up in the parking lot of the library.

The Redding library's new building just opened this January so we could still smell the new furniture, fresh signage, and unfilled shelves. It was hard not to notice a "customer services" sign at the circulation desk -- a term that should *not* be used in any library IMHO. The Redding library is quite big and bright, and interestingly powered by solar power which we thought it is an great example of how library can be an example of green building design. The library has a small section of government documents tucked away in one corner of the 2nd floor (*not* the basement!) and according a reference librarian, they are in the process of cataloging and converting from dewey to Sudoc. It's always nice to see government documents in a public library.

We left the library without knowing where we would spend the night.  When we were just about to get into the car, James paused and looked at Sarah and me and said that he left his keys in the ignition of the bookmobile. According to AAA service person, James was the 4th "James" with car trouble that day.

While James was dealing with AAA (Thanks AAA!), Sarah and I looked through several California tour books in the library to find a place to stay.  Since Sarah has to be in Anderson on Monday morning (about 10 miles south of Redding) we couldn't drive too far afield and so Mt. Shasta unfortunately was out of the question.  There were nothing much around Redding except the same old franchised restaurants, hotels, walmart, home despot ( :-) ), strip malls, etc. So we decided to flip a coin -- heads we'd stay in Redding and tails in Red Bluff. One of the travel books noted that Red Bluff is blazing hot during the summer.  It turned up tails  so we drove to Red Bluff. We found a B&B called Jeter Victorian Inn from a travel book and  drove there to see the house before making the reservation. On the way to the B&B, we saw the main street of Ref Bluff and it looked like another declining small town in the U.S. So we had low expectations for the B&B.

Lo and behold, when we arrived at the B&B,s we saw a beautiful Victorian house with an amazing Garden. We rang the bell with curiosity. The proprietress (her name is Mary, and she turned out to be an extremely kind and gracious hostess) opened the door and we saw the inside of the house. Immediately we knew that we were going to stay. Mary and her house are full of stories that mesmerized us all. We will tell you all about them in our next posting.

We don't have great WIFI access so I won't be able to upload the photos today but more tomorrow.

It just occurred to Shinjoung and me that we never posted the schedule for our bookmobile trip. So, with 1000 mea culpae, here's our schedule :-) If you live in any of those areas, please come on down and see us, contact your local newspaper and let them know that we're coming, and tell all your friends. We'll be in Red Bluff, CA tomorrow, then over to the coast where we'll spend Thursday and Friday in Humboldt and Saturday in Mendocino (Willits and Ukiah).

And one more little bit of housekeeping, a big thanks to Jessamyn over at librarian.net for posting about our trip and getting the word out to a much larger library audience!

Day 4: Staying up until 2 am blogging, flickr-ing (here is Day 4 photos), and imovie-ing :-)  and waking up early morning to set up the bookmobile requires a little will power. However, once in a while for morale, bookmobilistas need a day when they can sleep in and start the day a little late. Today was one of those days.

We got into Orland yesterday and scoped out the town. When the railroad was built around the 1870s (we talked with the town historian!) Orland was a lively little crossroads town. However, today you can only faintly see the traces of Orland's past in its downtown buildings and marquees. So I wasn't quite sure what to expect from our day in Orland.

When we arrived at the library around 12:30pm, and met Margarita, one of 6 staff (they have 2 librarians) at the Orland Free Library -- and an artist whose beautiful self-portrait hangs on near the front door of the library. We asked Margarita where we should set up the boookmobile. With no hesitation, she said, "just  drive the car on the lawn and park in front of the library;" shortly we confirmed this with Marilyn, the head of library. Being able to park the bookmobile right in front of the library is always a good sign for bookmobilistas :-) .

As soon as we set up shop, Estelle, Margarita, and Marilyn  showed up and they were so eager to see the bookmobile. Of course we pulled out our best -- and only!  -- repertoire Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  and made a book for them. We heard oohs & ahs which meant that we had perfected our act.

Since today was the first friday that the library was scheduled to be open, there weren't many visitors to the library; but this turned out to be better for us. The Library staff was able to come out and hang out at the bookmobile with us, ask lots of questions and receive the full power of the public domain.

While we were talking about random stuff, I asked Magarita if she knew what a blog was. She said that she had heard about them but didn't know much more than that. We explained to her and asked her if she liked to have one for her. She said "sure" with a big simile in her face. Sitting next to the bookmobile with JRJ's laptop we helped Margarita create a worldpress blog account. While Magarita was thinking of her user name for her blog, Jody, the children's librarian, came and suggested that she create a library blog. Perfect timing! We changed course from a personal to collective blog and Orland Free Library blog was born. Jody and Magarita were so thrilled and started to talk about what they can do with it. And when Marilyn came out we told her that Orland Free library now had a blog. Oh my!! was her response. Jody posted her first blog post and Estelle posted her first comment. We could feel the pure excitement in the library with their new blog and meeting with the bookmobilistas. All of the staff are like a family and they were all very kind and beautiful.

Our next stop is Anderson which is not until monday. So we drove to the Trinity Mountains to explore the area. On the way to Weaverville, we passed Whiskeytown lake at sunset and the beauty was stunning and unfathomable. I was thinking of capturing nature with my digital camera but I decided against it because I knew it wouldn't do it justice. It was simply a beautiful and prefect day.

Day 3: If you're ever thinking of being a bookmobilista, I advise you to learn how to endure over 90 degree summer heat in Northern California. James and I were sitting outside of the Madelyn Helling County Library  in Nevada City  for 5 hours with very little shade. It was obviously too hot to be out because there were very few visitors to the library.

There were a couple of tricks that I used to alleviate heat. First, I tried to trick myself saying it's not that hot -- even though I wasn't able to think much because of the heat.  Second, I tried to be tough and stay focused. Neither of them worked.  Eventually James got sunburn on his ankles and I stopped thinking. A librarian came out later and was surprised by our endurance.

Despite of unbearable heat,  good bookmobilistas cann't ignore their duties - talking to library users about the importance of the public domain, questioning copyright, access to knowledge and supporting public libraries.

Many library staff came out throughout the day and asked about  the bookmobile, but overall it was a slow day. While we were talking up the public domain, a couple  of librarians asked about how to verify whether or not a book was in the public domain. We were so proud that we bookmobilistas made library staff think about public domain issues and why librarians have to advocate for the public domain.

Later on, a few elderly people asked if we had large format books to print out and also asked how they could get acces to the digital books if they have little or no access to the internet. For people who live "out in the boondocks" (as a couple of people put it!) the public library IS the place to connect to the net and the library is the closest thing to ubiquity for many of us. The digital divide is still alive and well even in the United States.

We are in Orland, CA tonight and will visit Orland Free Library tomorrow. As of the 2000 census, Orland had a total population of 6,281. Interestingly, while we are coming into the town from the south, we noticed a big sign saying "Want a laugh? See the Orland City Council on YouTube!" and shortly afterwards a sign for "Orland City Council recall petitions available here." While we haven't been able to verify what's happening on the City Council, we DID find their videos on youtube. This is a great example of how a small town city council can use internet technologies to get the word out and inform their community.

Day 2: We got welcomed by Bob, the tipsy owner of the Featherbed B&B in Quincy. He proundly told us they have great healthy and tasty breakfasts prepared by the same cook who cooks for the hospital and hospice. Hmmmm hospital food has never been known as tasty, but we'll see. James pointed out this morning that all the food was very soft. I will leave you to your imagination.

After the "heathy" breakfast we drove to the Plumas County Library and set up the bookmobile. It happened to be the day that all of the branch librarians were meeting, so we were able to meet up with all librarians from Plumas county. They all came out to see the bookmobile and our demo --  and were pretty impressed.

After demonstrating the bookmaking process we definitely got oohs and ahs all around when we brought out the $100 laptop. IMHO I think we are getting better every day as bookmobilistas! Rightly, librarians asked us how our demo is relevant to their libraries since they don't have  funds to purchase binder, printer, etc. We suggested they look through IA and other digitization projects and think of ways to incorporate digital books into their collections. For example, we suggested adding links in catalog records of any books that they own so that their users would be able to access the digital versions even if their physical copy was checked out. One librarian said this would be especially useful for helping out local high school students -- who have reading lists but the library is not able to keep enough copies for all of them. This day was a bit slower than yesterday, but Quincy is much smaller than Auburn. One memorable teen (who was being home-schooled) was really keen on the technology, and in helping us make a book, described the cutter (aka Bessie :-) ) as "smooth like butter!" It was great to see such an inquisitive young person.

Of course we can't pass a day without technical problems. After a lengthy interview with the head librarian, I found that my videotape was damaged and couldn't save any of the footage. Tonight we're in Nevada City and we'll be at the Madelyn Helling County Library doing our demo again. It's been really interesting to talk with people about the public domain, hearing their perspective on copyright etc. Check out more new photos here.

James Jacobs, Sarah Washburn from Techsoup and I (Shinjoung Yeo) are currently on a tour around CA driving the Internet Archive's bookmobile for 2 weeks and visiting 10 rural libraries in Northern California. Please stop back here or at Sarah's blog for pictures and updates of our adventures.

Our first stop today was the Placer County Library in Auburn, CA. After having breakfast at Awful annie's in Auburn's old town (it's not awful at all so you should check it out!) we drove to the library. Delightfully all the staff were excited and waiting  for us to see the  Bookmobile. Everyone was extremeley curious about the technology that we're carrrying to download, print, bind, cut and make books (especially satellite on the top of the bookmobile which is not quite working but is well-used for a prop :-) ) and how we're able to make books on a fly.

As any well-trained bookmobilista knows, the first thing you need is power, so we pulled up to the front of the library and finally found a plug by pulling our power cord through the bookdrop. You never know how book drop box can be used when the bookmobile's in town!

Despite being a little remote from Auburn's downtown area, the library was very lively and heavily-used by community members. As soon as we set up the table around 10am, there was a steady stream of people stopping by and asking us questions. Surprising (or *not* so surprising in living in capitialist society!) one of the most common questions that we were asked was what we were selling. We told them that we were not selling anything but promoting free public domain books which are freely available to everyone at archive.org. One person, obviously still a little confused about our intentions, asked again if we were selling machines ( referring to our heavy duty cutter, bookbinding machines we use to demonstrate how to make a book). We told the person no (kindly), but he persisted and asked if we were selling software. It was not just one person asking questions like this, but more than 50% who dropped by asked similar questions. Maybe we should have put a tip jar out; that may have alleviated their cognitive dissonence :-)

We noticed that some people couldn't grasp the concept of FREE. Just free with no "but" and no ginsu steak knives. It makes you wonder. I think we are all well-trained in our market-oriented society to think that there are producers and consumers and there seems to be no room for FREE between them.

While we were promoting FREE public domain books it might be our chance to educate our community about what should be "FREE" - free books, free library, free health care, free eductation, free government documents(!) ....

Here are some photos from our first day and you will see some government documents as well.

Tomorrow we will be setting up the bookmobile in the town of Quincy, California [pop.4,300, 90% White].

Please check back for progress reports and photos. We'll be on the road until September 15, 2007. We'd love to hear your comments on our trip.