Author Archives: James A Jacobs

Paul Schaffer asked if we would post this comment by him to the list.

I hope FDLP has pondered the staffing implications of FDsys accomplishing its stated aims. If the FDSYS intake arrangements are effective, the number of digital documents crossing GPO's radar screen will have to be at least double what GPO was dealing with in the heyday of tangible publications. A decision will be needed, on each one, as to whether it is "within the scope of GPO's Federal Depository Library Program." Eventually some alogrithm will keep track of FDLP's thumbs-up and thumbs-down decisions, to spare human staffers from sifting through the obviously-yes and obviously-no digital documents logged by FDsys. But for two or three years, a huge number of eligibility decisions will have to be made by human staffers or contractors. If that phase of the effort is fumbled, the value of all that nifty software will be seriously compromised. The potential downsides are huge gaps in what gets catalogued, or letting the GPO Catalog become a random sample of what's in FDsys. Paul Schaffer pschaffr@rcn.com 646 274 6246

Thanks Paul! Coincidentally, I got a message from the head of a social science library recently and she made this comment about the recent announcment: GPO Takes Major Step Toward Creating Digital Information Management System: "who is paying for all this now and in the future???" - jim Continue reading →

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How Many and Where Were the Nukes? (18 Aug 2006) "What the U.S. Government No Longer Wants You to Know about Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War." National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 197 Edited by William Burr. The National Security Archive says:

The Pentagon and the Energy Department have now stamped as national security secrets the long-public numbers of U.S. nuclear missiles during the Cold War, including data from the public reports of the Secretaries of Defense in 1967 and 1971, according to government documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive .

Among the documents censored: U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1964 (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1966). Continue reading →

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Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat by Phil Bradley, Search Engine Watch, Jun. 14, 2006.

The Google blog 'Inside Google Book Search' announced ... that it is now possible to explore Shakespeare with Google - The complete plays of Shakespeare now at your fingertips. Well no, not exactly.... I could read 13 of the plays Google listed, but was unable to do so for another 24.

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Back in May of 2006 there were several messages on the govdoc-l mailing list under the topic "Anti-HTML bias in cataloguing and harvesting" that discussed the semantic web and its possible implications for government information on the web. A new article from O'Reilly posits that some of the biggest and best projects on the web today are based on Semantic Web principles.

• Why the World is ready for the Semantic Web by Dan Zambonini, O'Reilly XML.com, June 28, 2006

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We all know that the Congressional Record is not an exact transcript of what occurs in Congress. Members of Congress are allowed to change, alter, add, and delete information before the Record is published. But I've never heard before of members inserting into the Record such a lengthy "scripted colloquy that never actually took place" after legislation passed with the apparent attempt to construct a legislative history in retrospect. Senators Graham and Kyl filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in which they repeatedly cite this colloquy and claim it as "legislative history."

• Invisible Men: Did Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl mislead the Supreme Court? By Emily Bazelon, Slate, March 27, 2006
• Senators Kyl and Graham's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Scam: The Deceptive Amicus Brief They Filed in the Guantanamo Detainee Case, By John W. Dean, FindLaw, Jul. 05, 2006.

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