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2011 Report on Link Rot
How reliable are those URLs in your OPAC? The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive which harvests and preserves relevant digital information from the web, has been producing reports on "link rot" for several years. They define link rot as "a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL and currently preserved in the Chesapeake Project's digital archive." Their new report is now available:
- Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive's Examination of URL Stability, By Sarah Rhodes, LLRX (March 1, 2011).
The 2011 HHS Poverty Guidelines
[from The 2011 HHS Poverty Guidelines One Version of the [U.S.] Federal Poverty Measure]: There are two slightly different versions of the federal poverty measure: * The poverty thresholds, and * The poverty guidelines. The poverty thresholds are the original version of the federal poverty measure. They are updated each year by the Census Bureau (although they were originally developed by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration). The thresholds are used mainly for statistical purposes — for instance, preparing estimates of the number of Americans in poverty each year.... The poverty guidelines are the other version of the federal poverty measure. They are issued each year in the Federal Register by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The guidelines are a simplification of the poverty thresholds for use for administrative purposes — for instance, determining financial eligibility for certain federal programs. The Federal Register notice of the 2011 poverty guidelines is available. The poverty guidelines are sometimes loosely referred to as the “federal poverty level” (FPL), but that phrase is ambiguous and should be avoided, especially in situations (e.g., legislative or administrative) where precision is important.
- Federal Register Notice, January 20, 2011 — Full text (also: pdf version)
- Prior Poverty Guidelines and Federal Register References Since 1982
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Further Resources on Poverty Measurement, Poverty Lines, and Their History
- Computations for the 2011 Poverty Guidelines
Wikieaks, Rumsfeld, and Gawker
Amidst the spirited discussion here and elsewhere about Wikileaks, you might have missed the fact that Donald Rumsfeld set up a web site (rumsfeld.com) with hundreds of "declassified or previously unreleased documents" to accompany his new book. (Rumsfeld compared his "archive" to a sort of legitimate version of Wikileaks.) Rumsfeld didn't have to go through that pesky FOIA process to get or release those documents either. (See: Rumsfeld’s Snowflake, “Subject:Porpoises” and Rumsfeld Memoir Highlights VIP Access to Government Files). Now, here is more news:
John Cook at Gawker has posted a collection of documents that Donald Rumsfeld neglected to include in his archival Rumsfeld Papers website that accompanied the publication of his recent memoir. Cook and company obtained the documents by sending a FOIA request to the Defense Department for all the records that Rumsfeld had requested and previously obtained from DOD via FOIA. The result was many documents that did not make their way into Rumsfeld’s online collection. The documents (available in their entirety here) portray Rumsfeld “curious to know what the rush is” in bringing enemy combatant and U.S. Citizen John Walker Lindh to a speedy trial, interested in rationalizing why administration policies toward detainees was "perfectly legal, proper, and historically correct," and emphasizing that administration officials continued "referring to our 'plan'." --FRINFORMSUM: 2/24/2011, Unredacted, by Seth Maddox.Continue reading
Health Indicators from HHS Community Health Data Initiative
"The Health Indicators Warehouse (HIW) is a new resource serving as the data hub for the HHS Community Health Data Initiative. It contains standardized health outcome and health determinant indicators along with associated evidence-based interventions, which can be easily displayed, and will benefit a broad variety of users."
- Health Indicators Warehouse (healthindicators.gov). The HIW is a collaboration of many Agencies and Offices within the Department of Health and Human Services. The HIW is maintained by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. Data, support and funding are provided by the following: * Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services * Department of Health and Human Services: o Office of the Deputy Secretary o Office of Adolescent Health o Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion o Office of Minority Health o Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation * Health Resources and Services Administration. New partners are expected to be added over time.
- "Health Indicators Warehouse Provides Data Accessibility." In: COSSA Washington Update, Consortium of Social Science Associations, Volume 30, Issue 3 (February 7, 2011) [NHS's Linda] Bilheimer noted that the Health Indicator Warehouse includes Healthy People 2010, a new set of Medicare indicators, national and state indicators. She emphasized that this is the first time that these indicators have been put in the public domain. She noted that HIW has extensive metadata. HIW is oriented toward large scale developers who want to use the data. [NHS's Amy] Bernstein reported that there are 1,130 indicators listed from 170 data sources
A History of the Internet and the Digital Future
Interesting new book about The Internet:
- A History of the Internet and the Digital Future, by Johnny Ryan. A History of the Internet and the Digital Future tells the story of the development of the Internet from the 1950s to the present, and examines how the balance of power has shifted between the individual and the state in the areas of censorship, copyright infringement, intellectual freedom and terrorism and warfare. Johnny Ryan explains how the Internet has revolutionized political campaigns; how the development of the World Wide Web enfranchised a new online population of assertive, niche consumers; and how the dot-com bust taught smarter firms to capitalize on the power of digital artisans. In the coming years, platforms such as the iPhone and Android rise or fall depending on their treading the line between proprietary control and open innovation. The trends of the past may hold out hope for the record and newspaper industry. From the government-controlled systems of the ColdWar to today’s move towards cloud computing, user-driven content and the new global commons, this book reveals the trends that are shaping the businesses, politics, and media of the digital future.
- How the atom bomb helped give birth to the Internet, By Johnny Ryan, ars technica. Ars Technica is proud to present three chapters from the book, condensed and adapted for our readers. This first installment is adapted from Chapter 1, "A Concept Born in the Shadow of the Nuke," and it looks at the role that the prospect of nuclear war played in the technical and policy decisions that gave rise to the Internet.
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