Not the impact I hoped for
My apologies for anyone who relied on my post "Catloging Gets Results in Alaska." Revised data has forced me to retract my claim. Please see details at http://freegovinfo.info/node/1940. But don't be afraid to share information and new ideas. Sometimes we're going to be wrong. That's just the nature of the game. But we as a community are stronger when we share information and admit our mistakes as well as celebrate our successes. Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Declassified Documents
One of the harder to find classes of government documents are declassified documents. In many cases these are not within the scope of the Federal Depository Library Program, so there isn't a centralized place to find them. Sometimes they're not actual publications, but stuff like memos, celebrity FBI files and the like. If you're researching public policy, especially national security, stuff that might be helpful might be declassified or subject to declassification under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But before you start filing that FOIA request, check out today's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange, because what you want might already be out there: Declassified Government Documents (UC-Berkeley, 2004) CC Last updated 9/15/2006 I really like how this guide starts out. Because the Berkeley librarians understand that declassified documents are a misty topic to most people, they start with an introduction:
About Declassified Documents Documents may be classified for many reasons - issues of national security or privacy. A popular misconception is that when a document is declassified, it is somehow systematically made available to the public, for example, distributed to depository libraries. This is most often not the case. Exceptions to this might beAfter this intro, they have additional material about the declassification process and FOIA. Then they talk about resources including:As there are no clear patterns of publication for most declassified documents, it falls to the researcher interested in a document that is declassified to research which agency created the document, who may have researched the document originally, and where it might be now. The guides and resources shown below are intended to assist the research in finding federal records that have been declassified as part of the routine declassification, as well as records that are declassified through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests and other kinds of investigations.
- a highly-publicized document is published as a part of an investigation. E.g. The Munson Report, a report from the fall of 1941 stemming from an intelligence gathering investigation on the loyalty of Japanese Americans is one of these exceptions. It was declassified and published as one of the many appendices in the Hearings held by the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1946.
- a document series that is specifically published by the government for researchers (e.g. Foreign Relations of the U.S. or the Library of Congress Presidential Papers collections).
- The encyclopedia of American intelligence and espionage : from the Revolutionary War to the present. G.J.A. O'Toole. New York : Facts on File, c1988. UB271.U5 O85 1988 GREF References individuals, committees, and operations. Many of the entries have footnotes.
- Unlocking the files of the FBI : a guide to its records and classification system by Gerald K. Haines and David A. Langbart. Wilmington, Del. : Scholarly Resources, 1993. HV8144.F43 H35 1993 GREF
- OpenNet via Department of Energy OpenNet includes references to all documents declassified and made publicly available after October 1, 1994. New references are added periodically as they occur. These collections include citations to several types of documents. Some have been declassified in total, and are termed "declassified." Others have had classified or other restricted information removed to produce a "sanitized" copy. The term "redacted" is sometimes used to refer to these documents.
Guide of the Week: Forensic Science
Because I'm a fanatic CSI fan, I just had to highlight:
Government Documents in Forensic Science (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 2002) Last updated 3/10/2008for this week's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange. This guide brings us back to the hardworking and prolific Bert Chapman. Like most of his document guides, he opens his guide with an introductory paragraph.
Forensic science is used by government agencies for a variety of legal, investigative, and public policy purposes. These agencies are as diverse as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), other U.S. Dept. of Justice agencies, the Defense Department, and the U.S. Congress. Purdue Libraries serve as a depository of U.S. Government documents and Purdue's government documents collections are kept in many Purdue Libraries. Most government documents dealing with criminal justice are in the Humanities, Social Science, and Education (HSSE) Library.Then he moves on to providing tangible and internet resources on this subject from the state, federal and international levels. A tiny selection of what he highlights includes:
- Handbook of Forensic Services
- Managing Death Investigation HSSE DOC J 1.14/2:D 39/2
- A Guide for Explosion and Bombing Scene Investigation HSSE DOC J 28.24/3:EX 7
- Indiana State Police Laboratory
- Israel Police-Investigations & Crime Fighting Division
Using FOIA in book writing
I recently finished the book:
Theoharis, A. G. (2004). The FBI and American democracy: a brief critical history. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas.
While I won't offer a full book review here, this is a well-documented, must-read book for anyone who still believes that needless governmental surveillance of innocent citizens unconnected to criminal activities is either non-existent, an aberration of the 1960s or a creation of the Bush Administration. This sort of clearly illegal activity has been documented as going on since the 1910s, through Presidents of both parties and up to the current day. The justifications have changed. But secrecy combined with a view of dissent as treason is a solid, bipartisan tradition. It's just more obvious now.
The reason I'm highlighting this book on FGI and not my personal blog is three-fold. First, Mr. Theoharis makes note of another book he wrote that should be valuable to people researching the FBI. It is called The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide ed Athan Theoharis with Tony G. Poveda, Susan Rosenfield, and Richard Gid Powers (Phoenix: Oryx, 1999). An annotated bibliography on pages 385-396 of that book lists articles, congressional hearings, books and microfilmed collections. Second, on pages 176-178 of "FBI and American Democracy", Theoharis has provided brief biographies of all the directors of the FBI through the present.
Thirdly, in his "Note on Sources" Theoharis offers extensive notes on his use of the Freedom of Information Act to obtain materials for his history. Here is an excerpt that shows both the power and limitations of FOIA (p. 179-180):
First, researchers seeking FBI files must pay processing fees of ten cents per page. Given the volume of records created since the bureau's establishment in 1908, these costs effectively preclude any individual from being able to fund the acquisition of the millions of pages of relevant FBI records. Researching the history of the FBI requires a strategy of identifying the most important and representative files.Another challenge identified by Theoharis is the apparent capriciousness in releasing materials:
Second, while the FBI must release all records relating to a specific FOIA request, to make such records requests a researcher must know how FBI officials created and then maintained records. A requestor can identify the files of a named individual or organization but might not know the names of special code-named programs (COMPIC, COMRAP, ABSCAM). Furthermore all records pertaining to an identified individual or organization were not all filed and indexed under that individual's or organization's name. Some were maintained in the secret office files of senior FBI officials (and most of these office files have been destroyed). Others were maintained in other files, not all of which are cross-referenced in the FBI's index to its central file system. For example, the FBI's file on the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) does not contain all records relating to the FBI-HUAC relationship. Some are extant in the FBI's files on Alger Hiss, others in the code-named COMPIC file -- and conceivably still others are included in the FBI's files on Richard Nixon, Robert Stripling, or other unknown code-named programs. Furthermore, in my effort to understand the relationship between the FBI and the Justice Department, I requested all FBI files on named attorney's general, but the released files offer limited insights. Conceivably this relationship can be understood by researching the files on both proposed and rejected prosecutions of major cases or otherwise unidentifiable files in the FBI's 66 (Administrative Matters) classification.
"Having filed multiple FOIA requests, I have been struck by the variances in processing of the same report included in different files -- having information withheld in one case but not in another."It seems like it shouldn't be this difficult and expensive for citizens to learn about their government's activities. But at least we're able to chip away at government abuses with FOIA. Continue reading
Guides of the Week: Georgia and Russia
Because they've been in the news, I'm highlighting the Georgia and Russia country guides produced by the Government Publications Library at the University of Colorado at Boulder, that have just been posted to the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange. Both guides are broken down into the following sections:
- Government (direct from country) Information
- Country Profiles
- Articles & Databases
- Diplomatic Relations
- Health
- Peacekeeping & Military Information
- Resources in the Catalog
- Related Topics
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