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House To Be More Open
The House of Representatives has adopted new "Standards for the Electronic Posting of House and Committee Documents & Data." The rules affect bills, resolutions, amendments, and conference reports of the House and for committees: rules, bills, resolutions, committee prints, meeting notices, witness lists and testimony, public notices, amendments, and committee record of votes. In addition, video of committee hearings and markups will be stored by the House to meet requirements for archiving, access, searchability, and authenticity.
- House To Be More Open: OKs Online Publication Standard, by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation, (Dec. 16, 2011). Taking effect on January 1, 2012, the resolution instructs the Clerk of the House to maintain a single website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, and resolutions for floor consideration in XML. In addition, committees will be encouraged to post their documents on that site in XML whenever possible -- and searchable PDFs when not -- with the expectation that mandatory publication requirements in XML will soon be imposed.
- Standards for the Electronic Posting of House and Committee Documents & Data, "Committee Resolution," Committee On House Administration.
Federal Register wins award
Walter Gellhorn Innovation Award Winner: Office of the Federal Register, Administrative Conference of the United States (December 9, 2011).
The Office of the Federal Register, in cooperation with the Government Printing Office, provides bulk access to the source code of the Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations. The value in this effort includes making data available in bulk so others may use it, working collaboratively with the community and encouraging innovation, and making source code for a government website available so other agencies and non-governmental organizations can make customized versions.Success Story: federalregister.gov: The daily newspaper for the government. GPO press release [PDF]. Continue reading
The Purpose and Legitimacy of Presidential Libraries
The excellent magazine Miller-McCune has a fascinating article on control of Presidential Libraries:
- Nixon's Presidential Library: The Last Battle of Watergate, By Andrew Gumbel, Miller-McCune (December 8, 2011). Should the National Archives be in the business of presenting objective public history at the nation’s presidential libraries? Or should the private organizations that fund many of these institutions be able to lionize their man in the White House? In an exclusive from the upcoming issue of Miller-McCune magazine, learn how the fractious new partnership between the Archives and the foundation intent on rehabilitating Richard Nixon's legacy has become the issue's bellwether.
The Future of the FDLP: From Conversation to Confrontation. link and comments
The Future of the FDLP: From Conversation to Confrontation, By Jim Jacobs and Melody Kelly Library Journal "Backtalk" (Dec 13, 2011).
Recent discussions about the state of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the responsibilities of regional depository libraries have morphed from a conversation into a politicized confrontation. Sadly, this threatens to negatively affect not just depository libraries but all libraries and users who rely on a robust FDLP for long-term free access to government information....Continue reading
Achieving a collaborative FDLP future (#FDLP)
December 23, 2011 / 1 Comment on Achieving a collaborative FDLP future (#FDLP)
Note: This post is a longer response to a recent comments left on the LJ article written by Jim A. Jacobs and Melody Kelly.
Recently, Library Journal published a short article that Melody Kelly and I wrote (The Future of the FDLP: From Conversation to Confrontation). In such a short opinion piece, we did not have the space to document our arguments and expand on our reasoning. Since the article was posted, it has received a few comments. So we are using this post to expand on our LJ piece a bit and re-post here our replies to those comments.
As we said in LJ, the discussions about shared regional depositories have morphed from a conversation into a confrontation. This was our main point. As Daniel Cornwall said here recently, just as GPO needs to work with FDLP, so all FDLP libraries should be working with GPO, not working against it. We are concerned that the tactics adopted by ARL and many of the association's prominent members are more confrontational than cooperative and that such tactics may harm GPO at a time when it needs our support.
Some of the issues involved are complex and confusing and we imagine that many non-FDLP librarians -- and even some in the FDLP community -- find it difficult to follow the sometimes arcane, legal details of the arguments on both sides. This is particularly true when attempts are made outside the current GPO rules to redefine the scope or procedures of an existing Regional.
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