Does it still cost libraries $4 bucks for every GPO dollar?
One of the ways we FGI volunteers try to keep up with the government information news is through the use of Google Alerts. Sometimes these "new alerts" dredge up old information that is still of interest. For example, today's alert looking for instances of "Free Government Information", brought out this interesting item from the new ERIC database: ERIC #: EJ491407 Title: Costing Out a Depository Library: What Free Government Information? Authors: Dugan, Robert E.; Dodsworth, Ellen M. Source: Government Information Quarterly, v11 n3 p261-84 1994 Back in 1994, the authors came to this somewhat startling conclusion in their abstract:
In 1993, the Georgetown University library spent over four dollars to support its depository program for every dollar the Government Printing Office spent to distribute the information. Methods used to calculate costs, cost-sharing issues, and suggested action are discussed. Appendixes include a summary of the cost-compilation model and a selective bibliography. (Contains 30 references.) (KRN)Anyone out know if this is still true? Although printed output of government is down drastically, people still need to discover, describe and provide access to government information resources. A quick browse of the first two screens of ERIC documents related to Depository Libraries took me back to 2001 without a similar study. Please let us know about more recent studies in the comments section. Continue reading
New Directory: Government Agencies in Virtual Worlds
Government agencies, like many businesses, are starting to explore Second Life and other "virtual worlds." FGI follows them in with a new directory of Government Agencies in Virtual Worlds. So far we've identified three federal agencies and three State Libraries in Second Life. Know about others? Leave a comment on the directory page or send an e-mail to admin AT freegovinfo dot info. Thanks! Continue reading
BPE 2007 – Why Care about OAI?
At Best Practices Exchange 2007, I listened to Todd Welch talk about the Colorado Plateau Digital Archives at http://www.nau.edu/library/speccoll in the context of his work with OAI (Open Archives Initiative) compliant data. I've heard about OAI, read articles about OAI and even had fellow FGI volunteers explain OAI to me but for some reason it didn't take. It kept being some technical standard that I probably know something about but made my eyes glaze over when it was mentioned. But Todd's talk changed that. I still don't know OAI well enough to try to explain here and my notes from his session are somewhat thin. But I now have a good grasp of WHY it's important. Designing databases and other applications to by OAI compliant allows other people to harvest data about about your project and reuse it in other applications. For example, OAIster gathers descriptive data (metadata) about collections around the world and makes them searchable in one place. There are benefits to narrower applications than OAIster. For example, Todd said that if other states in his area ran OAI compliant databases that could both generate and import data in OAI format, all of the states could build stronger collections about the Colorado Plateau because all the bordering states would have each others records to search. So now I get that part and hope I've communicated a little of the magic to you. It's enough that I'm now at least somewhat interested in finding a way to issue my state's depository shipping lists in an OAI compliant format, but I'm not sure where to begin. My list is generated by our SIRSI Unicorn system and then reformatted in Word for the print version and finally marked up in HTML for web access and LOCKSS harvesting. I'd need a solution that added very little work to what I'm already doing. Any ideas out there? Continue reading
Congratulations, Susan Nevelow on AALL Award
Susan Nevelow, author of the Library Law Blog recently wrote:
In the shameless self-promotion category, my article on FOIA and how to reclaim information disappearing from government web sites, Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet be Reclaimed?, 98 Law Library Journal 7 (2006), which was originally posted on this blog as a draft in June 2005, has been awarded the Law Library Journal article of the year award by the American Association of Law Libraries.We don't think that's shameless. We're happy to recommend your work to others. Especially when it is a timely reminder to our readers that if your library depends on pointing to third party servers instead of serving locally housed electronic collections through the Internet, you could lose access in the blink of eye with NO public process. There is another way. But you have to ask GPO and Congress for it. Continue reading
South Carolina
Here are South Carolina's virtual 3-D government spots that we know of. Know of something that isn't here? Let us know.
- South Carolina State Library - Looks like an experimental space so far. Blog Release | No Second Life link found, follow directions in "Blog Release."
Latest Comments