Home » Articles posted by James A Jacobs (Page 191)
Author Archives: James A Jacobs
The Document Cloud
DocumentCloud is a new service being developed with startup funding from the James L. Knight Foundation. It sounds like an excellent service. It will be software, a Web site, and a set of open standards that will make original source documents easy to find, share, read and collaborate on, anywhere on the Web." I cannot help but wonder why libraries are not at the forefront of projects like this. Started by reporters at the New York Times and ProPublica, this service will give individuals and organizations involved in original reporting mechanisms for sharing the documents they obtain and discover and making those documents available to other for new reporting and new uses. Over two dozen organizations are working on the development of DocumentCloud, including traditional publications and news organizations such as The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Seattle Times, Thomson Reuters, Washington Post, and WNYC Radio, as well as organizations that collect and publish documents, such as The National Security Archive, ACLU National Security Project, OpenCRS, and the Sunlight Foundation,
Users will be able to search for documents by date, topic, person, location, etc. and will be able to do "document dives," collaboratively examining large sets of documents. Think of it as a card catalog for primary source documents. DocumentCloud is not meant to be a general document hosting service, like Scribd, Docstoc or Google Docs. Our goal is to build a service that makes source documents easier to find and share regardless of where they are hosted. It is a complement to these services, and not a competitor. the goal is to make documents even easier to find on search engines. DocumentCloud will have information about documents and relations between them, for example what locations, people, or organizations a group of documents have in common. Conceived of by journalists working at ProPublica and The New York Times, DocumentCloud will be managed as an independent nonprofit.Their FAQ notes: "Will there be an API? Hell yes." See also: Coming soon: Data mining made easier, By Alex Byers, Nieman Watchdog (July 11, 2009). Continue reading
The good and the bad of PDFs
Following up on Can Proprietary Formats make Government More Open? : Josh Tauberer of govtrack.us, points us to The good and the bad of PDFs (OpenGovData.org wiki) in which Kevin Lyons, who works for the Nebraska legislature, wrote up some guidelines for PDF in government. Lyons reminds us that not all PDF files are equal and he enumerates some of the advantages and disadvantages of encapsulating government information in PDFs.
Given how popular the PDF standard itself is, it shouldn't be a surprise that the term PDF actually covers a wide variety of different types of files. While all PDF files fit the PDF standard, there are several different subtypes of PDF that are helpful in the government world.Continue reading
Plain Language
PlainLanguage.gov. World Usability Day. Thanks and a tip of the hat to Promoting Plain Language, By Melanie Bender (11/03/09). Continue reading
Digital City Governments
Each year the Center for Digital Government takes a survey of U.S. cities to evaluate how municipalities are integrating information technology into operations to better serve their citizens.
- Digital Cities Survey.
- Top Digital Cities Announced for 2009, By Casey Mayville, Digital Communities (Nov 3, 2009).
Public Data on Private Schools
The Washington Post has a story today about "a little-known database on the Department of Education's Web site" -- the Private School Universe Survey (PSS):
- Mining the Web for public data on private schools, by Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post (November 2, 2009).
Private schools have a reputation for being, well, private. Private about their size, private about their students, private about rates of college-bound students. The information on their Web sites, which is sometimes meager, and the material that a pesky parent can wrangle from an admissions director sometimes seem to be all that is available to interested families. But a little-known database on the Department of Education's Web site has a surprisingly comprehensive profile of the nation's private schools. The Private School Universe Survey, part of the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, is a biennial roundup of private schools with information on enrollment, demographics, college attendance rates and number of days in the school year.Continue reading
Latest Comments