New Feature: Google Books/Fed Docs
FGI is pleased to announce a new occasional series that will examine how Google Books treats US Federal Documents. These posts will have titles that begin with "Google Books/Fed Docs".
We're very pleased to have a guest researcher putting up these posting. Please give a warm FGI welcome to Julia Tryon, Government Documents Librarian of the Phillips Memorial Library at Providence College. Julia has started to gather statistics and other information about the tens of thousands of government documents that have been scanned by the Google Books projects. We posted her first govdoc-l message on this subject.
Julia has agreed to start blogging on this subject for FGI. Unlike our "Blogger of the Month" series, Julia will post whenever she finds something interesting at the intersection of US Federal Documents and Google Books until she feels that she's exhausted the subject.
Take it away Julia!
Continue readingAnother Example of Access Bad, Ownership Good
Update 8/19/2007
It turns out that this story is both more complex and more unnerving than I present here. So while I am leaving up my original post as a historical record that I am falliable, I suggest you stop reading right now and go to my colleague Jim Jacob's very well researched pieces:
- What really happend with Google Premium Video -- Part one: DRM killed the files
- What really happend with Google Premium Video -- Part Two: Why Google Video story should scare you
But the best part about Jim's story is that it doesn't end with hopeless fear. He suggests concrete actions you can take to ensure the gov't will not "googlize" our info away. - Daniel
The BBC is reporting "Google is shutting down its premium video service, leaving users who have bought or rented content unable to view their videos in the future."
These people paid to access their content and now they not only can't have it, but according to the BBC, they won't be getting refunds, either.
If these same users had bought DVDs from a company that either went under or stopped selling them, these would be happy people watching their programs. But because they bought into an access model that assured them content would be available 24/7 on a third party server, they have nothing but their memories.
I'm positive Google didn't start up the service with the intention of shutting it down. They had every intention of being good to their users. But that was something that for whatever reason, they could not live up to.
Can you see where I'm going with this? The Government Printing Office wants us to accept a centralized model where we point to content housed in FDSys rather than depositing digital documents with the nation's Federal Depository Libraries. They assure us, just like Google assured their subscribers, that their servers will always be available to us on today's usage terms. But they can't really commit future generations of public servants any more than Google could keep its promise to its subscribers. And Google has WAY more money that GPO ever will.
Try to take some time this week to tell your Congress members that you want to see the decentralized depository system of the future, not another monolithic model that can be unplugged at will.
UPDATE: We have updated the information about this issue and its implications in a two part article:
Continue reading
GPO and OSU have likely hit on hands
Update 8/14/2007:
I was mistaken about the recruiting schedule. According to GPO, GPO and OSU are currently recruiting/adding new contributors from the federal depository library community. The goal is to have as many categories populated as possible for the public launch.
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Yesterday I viewed an OPAL Presentation on the beta version of the Oklahoma State University hosted tool Browse Topics. Browse Topics is a volunteer driven list of subject guides to federal information. It represents an area of genuine, broadbased collaboration between the Government Printing Office and Federal Depository Libraries.
The beta version was demoed by John Dowgiallo, Web Content Specialist at GPO. He said the new BT would go live in mid-October and I can't wait. You shouldn't either.
The new version will make it easier to discover and disseminate new federal information sources found by librarians. You'll be able to sign up for new additions by RSS feed; easily e-mail entries to others through a "recommend feature", easy broken link reporting and direct e-mail to guide authors.
The new Browse Topics is likely be more current because it will be much easier for volunteer contributers to contribute. Currently one has to update an entire page on one's own computer and mail that off to OSU who posts the new version. In the new system contributers can add/change/delete sites on their guides one at a time while online making corrections both easy and quick.
Want to help build this resource? Once the system goes live, GPO and OSU will be recruiting from federal depository library staffs to populate the new system. If you work in an FDL and are passionate about a particular subject, I urge you to apply. It is another way to work together and to show the value of librarian added information.
If you're not in a depository you could still help by waiting until the new Browse Topics goes live in mid-October and than mapping Browse Topics categories to appropriate pages on Wikipedia. That will inject some more authoritative content into Wikipedia and drive usage of Browse Topics. Not convinced? Tying appropriate entries into Wikipedia worked for UNT!
It seems clear that both the Government Printing Office and Oklahoma State University have put a huge effort into creating a user friendly/contributor friendly collaborative tool and FGI salutes them for their efforts.
Continue readingEstimates and observations about govdocs in Google Books
Julia Tryon, Government Documents Librarian of the Phillips Memorial Library at Providence College posted some interesting information about the intersection of Federal Publications and Google Books to govdoc-l this week. She is quoted here with permisssion:
My director has asked me to discover what I may about the amount of documents available in Google's digital projects. I've been looking at Google, partners' websites, articles, blogs, etc. I have found a lot of chit-chat but very little substantive information. Maybe I am just not looking for it the right way or in the right places.
It seems that there is a blackout on reporting statistics for these projects. Google and most of the partners give no statistical data at all. Stanford did have a page with statistics that was buried on their project's website but the information had not been updated since 2004.
To figure out the statistics on my own, I have tried searching Google Books, Stanford, and University of Michigan; but there is no way to limit a search to government documents. On Google I was able to search by publisher and, using various abbreviations for GPO that are used in
the publisher field, I came up with 187,522 (GPO-141,600; Gov't-2322; Government Printing Office-43,600). The university catalogs did not allow me to search by publisher.
When looking at the search results in Google for publisher field has GPO, I found 141,600 items, only 82,487 of which were available in the full view. And although it is nice to think that we have the full text for 82,487 documents, not all of them can be used. I randomly picked a title to see how it looked and chose the Statistical Abstract for 1954. The pages were clear enough to read easily but on every even numbered page part of the right hand column was chopped off.
Have you done your own study/poking around/etc with Google Books and Federal Documents? Share your findings with us!
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Tough Government Documents Make Librarians Tougher
A coworker tipped me off to a law-lib posting by Brent Johnson about a panel at the American Association of Law Librarians annual meeting that sounds like it was a riot: GD-SIS Program: Tough Librarians Rise to the Challenge with Tough Government Documents Andrew P. Evans gave a talk on Combative and Military Government Documents that offered these citizen benefits to reading military docs:
- The military’s ability to evolve combat techniques.
- Real world application
- Gun and knife safety.
- Question the techniques- it’s your civic duty
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