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Authority 3.0
Taking on the challenges of academic publishing in the age of Web 3.0, Michael Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for the National Academies, describes what he calls "Authority 3.0".
- The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority, [subscription required] by Michael Jensen, The Chronicle of Higher Education "The Chronicle Review" Volume 53, Issue 41, Page B6 (June 15, 2007). Also available for a few days without subscripion
What he describes is very relevant to government information. He says that the old models we've used in the past to regulate, authenticate, and authorize information don't work in a world of digital information abundance. Publishers (and I would include government agencies in this assessment) need to work with "repositories" and allow the public "to interact with material."
I also don't know whether many, or most, scholarly publishers will be able to adapt to the challenge. But I think that those who completely lock their material behind subscription walls risk marginalizing themselves over the long term. They simply won't be counted in the new authority measures. They need to cooperate with some of the new search sites and online repositories, share their data with outside computing systems. They need to play a role in deciding not just what material will be made available online, but also how the public will be allowed to interact with the material. That requires a whole new mind-set.Continue reading
WorldWideScience.org
"A new portal, WorldWideScience.org, opened today to people interested in international scientific sources, many of which had been unavailable through commercial search engines such as Google.com. "The portal was developed by the Energy Department and the British Library, along with science and technology organizations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. It employs federated search technology..." DOE builds portal to global science data, By Trudy Walsh, GCN, 6/22/07. Continue reading
C.I.A to Declassify Documents Detailing Illegal Abuses
From SFGate.com:
The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael Hayden said Thursday.
The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs. more...
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Patrice McDermott notes politics of putting information online
Panelist notes politics of putting agency information online, by Aliya Sternstein, National Journal's Technology Daily, June 19, 2007 PM edition. (reprinted in GovExec and available without subscription)
Patrice McDermott, executive director of OpenTheGovernment.org, chose to participate in a Tuesday workshop sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Web Science Research Initiative because she wants to convince techies that the government's underutilization of the Internet has a lot to do with politics. ...She said that at the workshop, attendees told her that government agencies just need to make their databases available on the Internet, and others in the online community will reformat the contents so the information is compatible with new technologies. "Others will create the [topical] tags" that allow the content to be integrated into advanced Web technologies, they said. McDermott's reply: The policy is already there to do that. "It's been there for years. It's just not being enforced. It takes leadership from the White House."Continue reading
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