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Univ. of Pittsburgh to Digitize EU Delegation Collection
The following message was sent to the EURODOC listserv by Phil Wilkin, Social Sciences Bibliographer and Editor of the Archive of European Integration at the University of Pittsburgh. Very good news!
The Delegation of the European Commission to the US, Washington, DC, recently decided to divulge itself of its entire depository collection and award it to 1 of the existing depository libraries in North America. The Delegation awarded this collection to the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, currently the home of the Archive of European Integration (AEI). This depository collection begins in the early 1950s and is easily the largest EU collection in the Western Hemisphere. Over the next several years, the AEI will digitize many documents from this collection and upload them.Continue reading
Recommend Changes to THOMAS
Let Rob know what changes you would like in THOMAS, today!
What changes would you like to be seen in the next version of Thomas (the publicly available website of federal legislation)? LIS (Legislative Information System, which is a more powerful version only available for hill staffers) is in the process of adding several new features, including RSS feeds, an XML database for all bills, and they plan on developing web services (an API, from what I understand). Thomas has a nice looking site, but they have lagged behind LIS for several years. I am meeting with the folks in charge of Thomas tomorrow afternoon [June 4] to urge the implementation of changes below.Read Rob's suggestions and comments from OpenHouseProject members :
- Thomas Feature Requests? by Rob Pierson, OpenHouseProject group, Jun 3, 2007.
Secret Senate Block of Senate Transparency Bill
The Senate Campaign Disparity Act (S. 223), which would require senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically, has been blocked twice by an anonymous Republican senator. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is hiding the identity of that senator.
The Sunlight Foundation has launched a campaign to reveal which senator is blocking passage of the bill. See:
- What’s McConnell Hiding? by Paul Blumenthal, Sunlight Foundation, June 1, 2007.
The website for the campaign is: What’s McConnell Hiding?
The irony in this situation is that there is a secret objection to legislation that would generate more transparency for senators. Now is your chance to put the pressure on to move the transparency bill forward.Continue reading
OpenHouse Project Op-Ed on House Committee information
John Wonderlich, the program director for the Sunlight Foundation, has written an Op-Ed in The Hill about making House committee information more available:
- More access to committees, by John Wonderlich, The Hill, May 22, 2007.
Wonderlich highlights reforms that the House can take including: requiring committees to post transcripts of their open meetings online within 14 days, requiring committees to post substantially verbatim transcripts of their proceedings online, making use of RSS feeds to provide updates on committee events, publishing documents in XML, and suggesting that committees stream and archive video content.
This is one of a series of Op-Eds written by contributors to the OpenHouse Project's recent report on congressional information. The complete report is available as a pdf document: Congressional Information & the Internet (The OpenHouse Project, May 8, 2007). The earlier Op-Eds are:
- Give bloggers Capitol access, by Robert B. Bluey, April 30, 2007.
- No light in basement, [campaign finance documents] by Tim La Pira, May 08, 2007.
- Inexplicable anomaly [CRS Reports], by Leslie Harris and Matt Stoller, May 15, 2007.
Turkle on Privacy
I'm always struck when I hear people say that privacy doesn't matter anymore and that "we're all being observed all the time anyway, so who needs privacy?" and "As long as I'm not doing anything wrong, who cares who's watching me?" I believe privacy does matter and that it is very important and that libraries have an essential role in ensuring privacy.
Sherry Turkle, sociologist, psychologist, professor at MIT, and author of Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet and How Computers Change the Way We Think (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2004), addresses this very issue of privacy in her fascinating new article in Forbes:
- Can You Hear Me Now?, Special Report by Sherry Turkle, Forbes, May 7, 2007.
Here is a sample:
When the question of illegal eavesdropping came up, a common reaction among the gathered Weberati was to turn the issue into a nonissue. We heard, "All information is good information" and "Information wants to be free" and "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." At a pre-awards cocktail party one Web luminary spoke animatedly about Michel Foucault's idea of the panopticon, an architectural structure of spokes of a wheel built out from a hub, used as a metaphor for how the modern state disciplines its citizens.... By analogy, said my conversation partner ... on the Internet someone might always be watching; it doesn't matter if from time to time someone is. Foucault's discussion of the panopticon had been a critical take on disciplinary society. Here it had become a justification for the U.S. government to spy on its citizens. All around me there were nods of assent. High school and college students give up their privacy on MySpace about everything from musical preferences to sexual hang-ups. They are not likely to be troubled by an anonymous government agency knowing whom they call or what Web sites they frequent. People become gratified by a certain public exposure; it is more validation than violation.
Thanks to Library Juice!
See also:
- Issues: Privacy
- Privacy and the "Terrorist Surveillance Act" (It doesn't authorize the government to spy on terrorists, it authorizes the government to spy on everyone hoping that it can find terrorists.)
- Will GPO guarantee user privacy? Can it?
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