Help Us Explore Findability Through Tagging!
Free Government Information is investigating the usefulness of tagging government documents that do not receive traditional cataloging and needs your help! We've posted 32 documents that the Government Printing Office (GPO) harvested from the EPA web site and posted them to the Internet Archive. Over the next three months, we'd like to see as many people as possible tag and describe these documents using the del.icio.us bookmarking service. For a full project description and instructions on how to participate, please visit http://freegovinfo.info/epatagging. We'd like to thank GPO for posting a sample of their harvested EPA documents that made this project possible.
This project got its inspiration from Galaxy Zoo (http://www.galaxyzoo.org), an astronomy project which has a database of 1 million galaxies that researchers asked regular folks to classify as ellipical, clockwise spiral, or anticlockwise spiral. They aimed for and got at least 20 classifications per galaxy. If a particular galaxy was classified a certain way by 80% of users who assigned a classification to that galaxy, that classification was accepted. This "person on the street" data was compared with a small subset (50,000) of galaxies that professional astronomers had managed to classify on their own. The researchers found that there was pretty much total agreement between the professional and amateur assessments. Documents are more complex than galaxies. :-) , but if 9 out of 10 people tag an epa document as air quality, then it's probably about air quality.
So please visit http://freegovinfo.info/epatagging and get started. And tell your friends, coworkers and especially any environmental professionals that you know to get involved. Also, if you have a network in del.icio.us, we'd appreciate you putting on a "for:[friend name]" tag for every member of your del.icio.us network.
UPDATE 1/25/2008 Forgive my overzealousness with the above suggestion to tag every person in your del.icio.us network. I should never advocate spam. BUT, if there are people in your network interested in the environment or government documents, please consider sharing our project page with them.
The more people involved with this project, the better the descriptions and the more robust the subject access provided by the tagging will be. At least that's our hope.
We are going to run this project for three months, then the FGI volunteers will compile data on the following:
A) How many people participated in the project.
B) How many documents were tagged.
C) How many documents were described.
D) The average number of tags per document.
We will also examine how much agreement on tags exist for a given document. We will make our compilations publicly available along with any analysis we have.
Hope to see you on del.icio.us soon making environmental documents easier to find and easier to digest!
LOCKSS Group on Facebook
If you're a member of Facebook and a fan of Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS), then you should join the LOCKSS group on Facebook. If you're not on Facebook, then check out the main LOCKSS web site at http://www.lockss.org or read some of our coverage about LOCKSS.
So far the Facebook group has 31 members, including some members of the LOCKSS team. Check it out if you can, if only to get your friends intrigued by LOCKSS.
Continue readingFGI Research: Projects and Ideas
Since its inception in 2005, we at Free Government Information have envisioned this group conducting and promoting research of various types into government information. This page is dedicated to that goal.
This page is divided into two sections: 1) The research that the FGI volunteers themselves are conducting or have completed and 2) Ideas that we do not currently have the resources to carry out but which we hope will inspire others.
Current and past FGI conducted projects
- EPA Document Tagging Project (started 1/18/2008) - Can document users and others improve the findability of government documents and add value via del.icio.us? Join us in finding out! We are planning to compile results on this project in early May 2008.
Ideas for Research
These are for anybody, but especially for LIS students looking to improve knowledge in the field of government information. If you know of a project that already covers an idea below, please let us know!
- Calculate the storage space for a year's worth of FDLP documents
- Analyze agency robot.txt files to see which agencies exclude search engines from all or part of their web sites.
- Estimate the percentage of an agency's PDF files that have keyword and description metadata.
- Estimate amount of agency documents in older formats (wordperfect, etc)
- Survey non-internet users on how (or whether) they access government information.
If you've got other government information research oriented ideas, please send them our way, either in comments or by e-mail admin AT freegovinfo DOT info.
Continue readingEPA Pilot Project Tagging Project
Note: The project period was January 18, 2008 through April 18, 2008. The participation period for this project has closed Please see below for unique tags assigned to documents. To view the tagging directly on del.icio.us, please see http://del.icio.us/tag/epapilotproject Update 4/23/2008 - Data has been compiled into a spreadsheet available at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pybymZBlZ80PVat2ggty2GA Interpretation to follow. Update 5/7/2008 - The results report is finished and may be read and commented on at http://freegovinfo.info/node/1825. Below is the original project announcement: ============================
Free Government Information needs your help to investigate whether social tagging of government documents is a viable idea.
We have stashed 32 documents from the Government Printing Office's EPA Web Harvesting Pilot Project in the Internet Archive. We would like as many people as possible to bookmark, tag and provide brief descriptions of all 32 of these test documents using the del.icio.us bookmarking service.
If you would like to join this effort and have a del.icio.us account, please follow this proceedure:
1) Visit http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=epapilotproject and go to a document on the list. Open the pdf file in a separate browser window.
2) In del.icio.us, tag the page for the Internet Archive record (i.e. not the PDF file) after examining the PDF file.
3) In the del.icio.us "notes" field, write a one or two sentence description of what the document is about.
4) In the tags field, please use epapilotproject, for:freegovinfo and then any tags that you feel describe this document.
Please do steps 2-4 for as many documents as you can, ideally all 32.
We are going to run this project for three months, then the FGI volunteers will compile data on the following:
A) How many people participated in the project.
B) How many documents were tagged.
C) How many documents were described.
D) The average number of tags per document.
We will also examine how much agreement on tags exist for a given document.
We have a belief, based on projects like NASA Clickworkers, GalaxyZoo and the Library of Congress' Flickr project, that the community of government documents users can improve the findability of government information and provide a valuable adjunct to traditional cataloging. We also believe that a successful tagging environment will provide better access than GPO's newly declared brief bibliographic records process. Time will tell. Help us find out!
=====================================================
List of harvested EPA test titles for this project:
Aerosol Test Facility at Research Triangle Park - Aerosol-propellants, Environmental-health-Research, Research-Triangle-North-Carolina, Terrorism-Prevention
Air Quality Data Analysis Technical Support Document for the Proposed Interstate Air Quality Rule - air, pollution, quality, data, ambient, monitoring
Air Sealing: Building Envelope Improvements - Air, air-sealing, airsealing, building-insulation, efficient, energy, energy-efficiency, Energy-Star-Branding, energyconservation, energystar, epa, EPA-advertising, globalwarming, greenhousegases, home-building, home-building-techniques, home-construction, home-improvement, homes, hvac, indoor, leakage, money-saving, quality, sealing, ventilation
Analysis of Atmospheric Deposition of Mercury to the Savannah River Watershed - water-quality, mercury-levels, water-pollutants, Clean-Water-Act, water-testing-results
Approval of Urban Bus Retrofit/ Rebuild Equipment - Air, Air-quality, Air-toxins, buses, emissions, engine, engines, engines-retrofit-and-rebuild-equipment, matter, particulate, pollution, retrofit, transit-buses-emissions, Urban-transportation
Approval of Urban Bus Retrofit/ Rebuild Equipment (Oct 1997) - Air, buses, Clean-Air-Act, emissions, engine, engine-retrofit-rebuild-kits, engines, matter, Particulate, particulate-matter, pollution, retrofit, transportation, Urban-transit
Are You One of the Top 20? - 2005, benefits, Best-Workplaces-For-Commuters, business, commuters, commuting, companies, emission, employers, epa, flexible-scheduling, fortune500, govdocs, incentives, misspellings, private-transportation, public-transportation, reduction, telecommuting
Are You Ready to Take Advantage of the New Commercial Tax Incentives - Energy-Star, Energy-saving-tax-decuction, Commercial-buildings, Commercial-building-improvements
Arsenic Rule Benefits Analysis: an SAB Review - Arsenic, Arsenic-levels, Cancer-causing-agents, costbenefitanalysis, drinking, environment, Environmental-health-Research, exposure, exposurelevels, Freegovinfo, health, public, standards, water, Water-quality, Water-treatment-costs
Best Workplaces for Commuters Application Form - Applicationforms, applications, audience:hr, benefits, bestworkplaces, carpool, carpools, communting, commuter, commuter.benefits, commuters, commutersepa, commuting, employerincentives, employers, environment, environmental, environmentalimpactofcommuting, epa, etc., forms, impact, incentives, program, publictransportation, telecommuting, telework, transportation, vanpool, vanpools
Best Workplaces for Commuters Graphic Standards and Usage Guide - EPA-branding, Best-Workplaces-For-Commuters, Government-agencies-public-relations
Boxed In? - 2004, airpollution, cleanair, emissions, environmentally-friendly-shipping, epa, fleet, gases, global, globalwarming, govdocs, greenhouse, greenhousegases, management, money-saving, posters, shipping, smartway, transportation, vehicle, warming
Business Case for Information Services: EPA's Regional Libraries and Centers - Environmental-libraries-United-States, Environmental-libraries-United-States-Costs-and-benefits
Calculation and Use of First-Order Rate Constants for Monitored Natural Attenuation Studies - attenuation, attenuation-rates, biodegration-rates, contaminants, contamination, epa, govdocs, ground, groundwater, mna, monitored, natural, plume-concentrations, remediation, research, water
Carpool Incentive Programs: Implementing Commuter Benefits as One of the Nation's Best Workplaces - air, carpools, commuters, commuting, employers, Employers-and-employees, EPA-advertising, EPA-branding, incentives, pollution, transportation, Workplace-conditions
Chloroneb - Chloroneb, pesticides, pesticides-safety, Cotton-crop-management-and-control, ornamental-plants-and-grasses-pesticide-treatment
Community Involvement Plan for the Copper Basin Mining District Site, Polk County, Tennessee - Freegovinfo, Copper, Basin, mining, community, involvement, cleanup, environmental-cleanup, community-involvement-in-environmental-programs-details
Conformity SIP guidance - transportation-regulations-states, Conformity-state-improvement-plans-SIPs, transportation-federal-regulation, transportation, conformity, SIP, air, quality, standards
Development of a Performance-based Industrial Energy Efficiency Indicator for Automobile Assembly Plants - vehicle-assembly-plants-energy-use, assembly-plants-energy-efficiency, automobile-assembly-energy-use-studies, manufacturing-process-energy-used
Diclofop-Methyl - 2000, bioaccumulation, cancer, carcinogens, Commercial-use-of-pesticides, golf-courses, diclofop-methyl, epa, Freegovinfo, golf, govdocs, herbicides, pesticides, reregistration, toxicity, toxicology,
wild-oats-control
Diesel Retrofits: Quantifying and Using Their Benefits in SIPs and Conformity - emissions, Diesel-engines, engines, engine-rebuild-retrofit-kits, environmental-state-implementation-plans-SIPs, environmental-regulation-states environmental-regulation-federal
Difenzoquat - Difenzoquat, pesticides, wild-oats-control, barley-crop-yields, wheat-crop-yields, agriculture-crops-and-yields, difenzoquat, herbicides, pesticides
Energy Star Wins the Bid - 2006, bottled_water, efficiency, electricity, energy, energy_star, energy-efficiency, energy-efficient-water-coolers, energy.conservation, energy.efficiency, energy.star, energyconservation, energystar, environmental-benefits, epa, EPA-branding, Energy-Star, freegovinfo, govdocs, money-saving, pressreleases, purchasing, umaine, water
ENERGYSTAR Building Upgrade Manual - Energy-Star, Buildings-energy-saving-improvements, Energy-savings-plans, Energy-costs
Environmental Economics Research Strategy - Environmental-economics-influences, Behavioral-science-economic-impacts, Behavioral-science-effect-on-policy-development, Business-and-human-behavior
Environmental Results Under EPA Assistance Agreements - Tagged with (gmp), 2005, assistance.agreements, assistance, agreements, compliance, environment, environmental, environmental.protection, epa, epa.policy, epa.strategic.plan, evidence-based, funding, goals, objectives, governmentagreements, grant, grantee, grants, management, outcome-based, plan, policies, programs, regulations, research, results, results-oriented, strategic
EPA's Diesel Retrofit SIP and Conformity Guidance - emissions, Diesel-engines, engines, engine-rebuild-retrofit-kits, environmental-state-implementation-plans-SIPs, environmental-regulation-states, environmental-regulation-federal
Final Emission Standards for 2004 and Later Model Year Highway Heavy-Duty Vehicles and Engines
Guidance for Quality Assurance Project Plans - Quality, assurance, environmental, data, EPA-quality-assurance-project-plans, EPA-QA-project-plans, Organizational-quality product-quality
Guide to Technology Commercialization Assistance for EPA Small Business Innovation Research - Small-Business-Innovation-Research, Small-business-finances, small, business, innovation, technology, commercialization
Heavy-Duty Engine Emission Standards for Highway Trucks and Buses - trucks, transportation, Air-quality-history, trucking-industry, emissions, NOx-standard, Nitrogen-oxides, Global-warming greenhouse-effect
Preliminary Risk-Based Screening Approach for Air Toxics Monitoring Data Sets - Air, Air-quality, air-toxics, Air-toxins, assessments, Clean-Air-Act, data, Data-analysis, data-screening, dqo, freegovinfo, methodology, monitoring, pollution, r4-slt, risk-based, Screening, sets, toxics, Biomarkers
Latest Comments