Hi everyone. We've got a special treat for you this month. Malcolm Byrne, Deputy Director and Director of Research at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, has agreed to take a round on the guest blogger dais. Malcolm's main areas of specialization are U.S.-Iran relations and the Superpower rivalry during the Cold War. His latest book is Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988 (with James G. Blight, et al) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012). Malcolm gave a fascinating keynote talk (audio) (+ powerpoint slides!) at the 2012 Six-State Virtual Government Information Conference. But if you missed that, you can catch his upcoming talk at the Fall 2012 Depository Library Conference on Tuesday October 16 from 4 - 5:30.

Take it away Malcolm!

[UPDATE 7/2/12: I've added all the names of the people blogging as "EOT archive". jrj]

It's been a while since we've had a guest blogger, but this month's turn at the podium will surely make up for it. Our guest bloggers for July, 2012 the members of the End of Term (EOT) Web Archiving project -- that's @eotarchive on twitter. Group members contributing blog posts include:

• Andrea Goethals: Digital Preservation and Repository Services Manager - Harvard Library
• Abbie Grotke: Web Archiving Team Lead - Library of Congress
• Cathy Hartman: Associate Dean - University of North Texas Libraries
• Michael Neubert: Supervisory Digital Projects Specialist – Library of Congress
• Kris Carpenter Negulescu: Director, Web Group - Internet Archive
• Tracy Seneca: Web Archiving Service Manager – California Digital Library

The EOT collaboration began in the summer of 2008, when the project partners, all members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) and partners in the National Digital Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), agreed to join forces to collaboratively archive the U.S. Government web at the end of the Bush administration. The goal of the project team was to execute a comprehensive harvest of the Federal Government domains (.gov, .mil, .org, etc.) in the final months of the Bush administration, and to document changes in the federal government websites as agencies transitioned to the Obama administration. The 2008-2009 Archive includes over 16 terabytes of data collected from Federal Government websites in the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of government and is available for public access. Partners for the 2008-2009 capture included the Internet Archive, the California Digital Library, the Library of Congress, the University of North Texas Libraries, and the U.S. Government Printing Office. Harvard Library has joined the partnership for the 2012-2013 work.

The partners are again beginning an End of Term capture for 2012-13. Additionally in 2012, a capture of elections-related websites began in January and will run through the November elections. For information about the 2012-2013 End of Term project, see an upcoming post on this blog. For an in-depth discussion of the 2008-2009 Webarchive, see the article “It Takes a Village to Save the Web: The End of Term Web Archive” recently published in DttP: Documents to the People, Spring 2012, Volume 40, no. 1, pages 16-23 (That issue is not yet online, but IS available in many libraries around the country).

Welcome End-of-term archive!

It's been a few months since we had our last blogger of the month. But I'd like to introduce Peggy Jarrett to the podium for the month of September. Peggy comes to us from the University of Washington's Gallagher Law Library. I was able to twist Peggy's arm even as she so kindly hosted me at the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) 2011 annual conference -- which I highly recommend our readers attend, especially those in the Boston area where the 2012 conference will be held. Take it away Peggy! And as always, if you're interested in taking a turn at the FGI podium, please contact us at freegovinfo AT gmail DOT com. That is all.

Peggy Jarrett is the Documents and Reference Librarian at the Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law. She’s been at Gallagher for 21 years, and before that, spent 7 years working as a law firm librarian in Seattle and Washington D.C.

Her interest in government information dates back to the summer of 1973, when as an impressionable youth, she spent the summer watching the Watergate hearings. She is particularly interested in public access to state legal information and the intersection of reference and collection development. Her favorite part of her job is talking to students from the Law Librarianship Program at the UW Information School about government documents. She is currently a member of the Depository Library Council.

Ric Davis, former acting Superintendent of Documents of the Govt Printing Office -- and FGI guest blogger :-) -- has just been named Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of GPO (PDF). Congratulations to Mr. Davis. I'm sure his prior work with the FDLP, FDsys, and GPO Library Services and Content Management (LSCM) will put him in good stead to do the ongoing technological work needed at the GPO.

We have a group of special guests on the FGI podium this month. Please welcome the Korean information activists from the Korean Progressive Network (Jinbonet) (for more, see Jinbonet's biography and the Jinbonet about page in English). Jinbonet is over twelve-year-old organization based in Seoul, South Korea that provides ICT services (web hosting, mailing list, webmail) to that country's progressive movement, civil society and workers unions. Jinbonet actively works to protect human rights in the information society such as the freedom of opinion and expression in cyber space, the right to access information, and the right of privacy. Welcome Jinbonet!

Shinjoung Yeo will be providing editing and translation help for this month's BOTM posts. Thanks Shinjoung!

Korean Progressive Network (Jinbonet) is a nine-year-old organization in Seoul, South Korea. Jinbonet is a network that provides ICT services (web hosting, mailing list, webmail) to that country's progressive movement, civil society and workers unions.

The activist/staff of Jinbonet include:

Oh, Byoungil (antiropy@gmail.com twitter: @antiropy): Staff (coordinator) of Korean Progressive Network 'Jinbonet' since 1998. member of IPLeft since 1999.

??? YK Chang (della.yk@gmail.com): Founding member and Staff of Korean Progressive Network Jinbonet since 1998. She works for advocating freedom of expression on the internet and privacy.

??? Jung, Minkyung (jmk6@jinbo.net): Staff of Korean Progressive Network Jinbonet since 2009

We've got a special treat for you this month. Several Pratt Library School students have volunteered to be FGI guest bloggers for the month of October. So welcome Johanna Blakely-Bourgeois, Krissa Corbett Cavouras, and Sara Medlicott to the FGI podium. Johanna, Kriss and Sara have agreed to take turns and put their names at the end of their posts so readers will be able to tell the difference between them. Take it away! And thanks also to SILS faculty member Debbie Rabina for helping to put this opportunity together for her students.

Many thanks also goes to Nathan Yang, our guest blogger for September!

Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science (SILS)
October 2010
FGI Guest Blogging Biographies

Johanna Blakely-Bourgeois started her career as an attorney, having worked in the real estate industry for 8 years in New York City and having litigated bankruptcy and foreclosure cases for 2 years in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey prior to that. She is currently a full-time graduate student at Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science, navigating the world of librarianship technology and terminology. Currently studying French and a former student of German, she seeks one day to steer her librarianship career into international waters.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras worked as a writer and editor before beginning her master's degree in Information and Library Science at Pratt SILS. Her focus is on issues of copyright and open access, and her concentration at Pratt has been in legal research and government documents. She has worked at the Bar Association of the City of New York in their Library, and for the Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University Libraries. She currently serves as Dr. Pattuelli's Graduate Assistant at Pratt SILS.

Sara Medlicott is a Masters Candidate at the Pratt School of Information and Library Science. She is currently working on a digitization project at the Pratt Center for Community Development and volunteering with Correctional Services at New York Public Library. This past summer, Sara served as visiting library faculty at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala City, where she taught a course on digital research.

August just flew by didn't it? And that means it's time to introduce our next blogger of the month. So welcome to the FGI podium Nathan Yang. Nathan is a Ph.D candidate in Economics at the University of Toronto. Although his thesis is about industry dynamics and social learning, he has recently done some research on why politicians adopt Twitter. Take it away Nathan.

And thanks also to Emily Keller, our August blogger from the University of Washington!!