Case Study in Historical Fact Checking
[Update 5/9/10: Thanks to Debbie Rabina for sending me a copy of her article and allowing us to post here (PDF). On a side note, how long will it be until ALA goes open access with all of their publications? Librarians should be walking the open access walk!] I'd like to briefly commend this article from the Spring 2010 issue of DttP: Documents to the People: Rabina, Debbie. "Ted Kennedy's Speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention: Researching Pre-digital government information in the Digital Age." DttP: Documents to the People (2010) v. 38, no. 1: 18-22. This article is notable for two reasons. It is a fine example of using current events to leverage interest in government information. The article also serves as a good "how-to" guide on evaluating factual claims past and present. Aside from these two main benefits the article demonstrates the continuing relevance of print resources while showing the usefulness of electronic resources. It rejects a "paper vs. electronic" version of the world in favor of a "both/and" approach. As far as I can tell, this article is not available electronically, but could be acquired through interlibrary loan at your local library. DttP: Documents to the People is aimed at government information librarians, but I believe it would be useful to transparency advocates and researchers of all stripes. Check it out if you can. I find it an important benefit of my membership in the Government Documents Roundtable of ALA. Continue reading
Please Use askGPO to Report Lost Docs
Several observers at the recently closed Spring 2010 Depository Library Council conference reported that GPO staff are asking people to use the askGPO form available at http://gpo.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/gpo.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php when reporting fugitive documents instead of the LostDocs form. The LostDocs form may be in the process of being revised. We at the LostDocs blog want to do whatever we can to ensure accurate reporting that gets to the right people at GPO. So we encourage people to use the askGPO form after first checking the Catalog of Government Publications. When you get to the askGPO form, be sure to select "Federal Depository Libraries" as a category, then select fugitive publications/lostdocs as a subcategory. Then provide as much as you know about the document like title, producing agency, URL if there is one, author contact if available and so forth. Give GPO everything you think you would need or want to know to locate a copy of the document on your own. askGPO also sends out e-mail receipts. So if you make a report through askGPO, we ask that you forward your askGPO receipt to lostdocs "AT" freegovinfo DOT info, so they can be posted to this blog. One particularly exciting piece of news that came out of the Spring 2010 DLC was that GPO may institute statistical reporting for fugitive documents/documents discovery. All of us at FGI hope that this is true. GPO could give out a more complete picture of what is happening to reported documents than we can. We're a flashlight in the dark that highlights some documents but not others. A fully transparent GPO reporting program on fugitive documents could be the full light of day that would benefit everyone. Continue reading
April 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal
REPORT For this first time since we started the Lost Docs Blog, we had no false positives. None of the 38 reports made to GPO and posted by us were in the Catalog of Government Publications at the time the report was made. The reports were sent to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info in late March and April. Some of the original reports to lostdocs@GPO were made in February, but not sent to us until late March. One of the 38 reported items that were posted to the blog in April has been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. This item was Tornado Protection: Selecting Refuge Areas in Buildings. You can find the report and cataloging date at http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/2010/04/tornado-protection-selecting-refuge-areas-in-buildings/. We are appreciative that this was cataloged. APPEAL If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:
- If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
- Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
- Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
- Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/ or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.
One Librarian’s LostDocs Experience: 10% Cataloging Rate
Vicki Tate is an active contributor to the Lost Docs Blog. She also independently tracks her own fugitive documents submissions to GPO. She recently sent me her summary and supporting spreadsheet for her 2009 reports. Vicki gave FGI permission to publish her disappointing results:
I finished my summary of Lost Docs for 2009 and checked their status. There are two sheets--monographs and serials. The summary information for monographs is: 78 Monograph/individual titles submitted 8 Titles with records in CGP 5 Titles with PURLs 32 Titles with NO cataloging in OCLC Serial titles fared even worse.
I have attached her spreadsheet to this blog post. Feel free to look it over and come to your own decisions. Although 8/78 titles is only a 10.2% cataloging rate for reported items, it is important to remember that this is one librarian's experience. Other librarians may have had better luck. Without full data from GPO, it's hard to say. We are trying to fill in the gaps with the lost docs blog, but our data is only as complete as you make it. Plus we're never sure of what proportion of documents reported to GPO we're made aware of. If you are treating your reports to GPO with the same level of tracking and supporting documentation, we'd like to hear from you. Please leave a comment or e-mail lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We at FGI salute Vicki Tate and other librarians like her trying their best to ensure a complete record of government publications. Continue reading
Public Domain Notices: A Good Idea?
May 9, 2010 / 5 Comments on Public Domain Notices: A Good Idea?
In the course of my work of maintaining the Lost Docs Blog, I came across the following publication:
I noticed it had this public domain notice that I've seen on some government publications: As a general rule, publications produced by the federal government are in the public domain and copyright free. There are exceptions that you can read about in our online library. It is a fact that not enough people realize the public domain nature of most government materials and so my reaction to this notice was initially very positive. I instinctively like the idea of labeling govdocs as public domain so that people and organizations (Google, I'm talking to you!) would feel free to reuse and remix without fear of consequences and not lock up content not meant to be locked up. On the other hand, if only a handful of agencies use such notices for public education, it is conceivable that an environment would be created where only govdocs with public domain notices would be treated as public domain. I'm not sure if that's a danger, but I worry. The possible danger would be less if a public domain notice was required governmentwide. What do you think? Are public domain notices on govdocs a good idea? Are they a good idea whether done governmentwide or by a few agencies? Would we be better off if there was a governmentwide policy to label the minority of copyrighted material in govdocs?Note: Thanks to Vicki Tate for reporting this document to GPO and sending a copy of her receipt to the Lost Docs blog. Continue reading →
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