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One million e-mails per day
An article in National Journal's Tech Daily Dose says that Congress receives 1 million e-mails per day and that the volume is constantly increasing.
Celebrate Black History Month Online
The American Historical Association's AHA Today blog has a list of sites related to Black History Month: Celebrate Black History Month Online, By Jessica Pritchard, February 25, 2009.
Black History Month 2009 is particularly special because of this year’s historic inauguration. In the spirit of this month, many organizations have created digital spotlights dedicated to Black History Month, which include everything from biographies to games to trivia. Below are a variety of web sites offering informative and often fun resources that can be used throughout the year.Only one site listed is a .gov (the National Endowment for the Humanities "EDSITEment" February feature Black History Month). EDSITEment is described as offering "a treasure trove for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality material on the Internet in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies." Continue reading
FDLP: Services and Collections
Against the Grain has kindly permitted me to post this preprint of my new article.
- FDLP: Services and Collections [preprint] by James A. Jacobs, Against the Grain, 21(2) April/May 2009.
In the age of digital information, libraries and librarians are struggling to define their proper roles. In a time of financial uncertainty and economic crisis, many libraries are facing decisions that will have long-term implications and consequences. At a time like this it is particularly important that we have a clear vision of a sustainable role for libraries.And, don't forget Distributed Globally, Collected Locally: LOCKSS for Digital Government Information by Daniel Cornwall and James R. Jacobs. Against the Grain, 21(1) February, 2009. Continue reading
Tracking the mutable government web
ProPublica's ChangeTracker service has the potential for being very useful indeed. (See the FGI post about ChangeTracker by Rebecca Blakeley for more information about the service and ChangeTracker itself at ProPublica.)
The service tracks changes at the government web sites whitehouse.gov, recovery.gov and financialstability.gov. The service is similar to other change-tracking services that have been around for years (e.g., ChangeDetection) which automatically monitor changes on a web page and notify you anytime the page changes. In fact, it is built using Versionista (See Steal Our Code: How to Build Your Own Change-Tracking Feeds, by Brian Boyer, ProPublica, February 19, 2009.) See also, Steven Bell's A Librarian's Resource Center for Keeping Up for similar services. ProPublica goes one step further by setting up all the monitoring for you and doing side-by-side comparisons that highlight the changes.
Most changes are additions -- new blog postings, new announcements, and so forth. This is nothing that a good RSS feed from the monitored site couldn't provide just as well.
The potential for ChangeTracker, though, is its ability to automatically discover policy changes. For example, it discovered changes in wording about Hurricane Katrina on the "the "Additional Issues" portion of the White House web site's "Agenda" section. On this page, text that described the Bush Administration's response to Katrina as "unconscionable ineptitude" was deleted. See:
- an article about this: White House Site Un-Slams Bush on Katrina, by Paul Kiel, ProPublica, February 20, 2009.
- the side-by-side comparison.
This particular example may not be earth-shaking, but it highlights the mutable nature of government information on the web. Posting information on a web page is not the same as publishing (instantiating) information and depositing it in FDLP libraries. The current situation endangers the accuracy and completeness of the historical record.
Continue readingHillary Clinton blogs
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has posted her first message to Dipnote the Department of State blog: Secretary Clinton: U.S. Strengthens Pacific Partnerships, Posted by Hillary Rodham Clinton on Feb 16, 2009 - 12:33 PM. There is also a new Ask the Secretary site, desribed as an "online interactive forum that can allow you to connect with Secretary Clinton directly. While Secretary Clinton travels across the world, you can submit your questions for her using this form. Secretary Clinton will select various questions to answer and they will be posted to this website." Update by Daniel 2/23/2009 - Visitors questions will be displayed at: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/ask/secretary/117297.htm. Answers will also be available on that page. There will also be a link from the state.gov homepage. Thanks to the DipNote blogging staff for pointing this out. Continue reading
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