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Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

“Self-sustaining” competes with public good

Berandine has an excellent comment this week on the govdoc-l mailing list and I encourage you to read it in case you missed it.

Her comments relate specifically to the Library of Congress's "divided loyalties between making money and promoting the library community and complete cataloging" but notes that this is a general problem of title 44. The issue at hand "illustrates the slippery slope of title 44 when it allows LC and others an exception to chapter 19 in order to be self sustaining." Continue reading

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Expanding FDsys to make it better

Based on James' post (Article outlines bottom-up standards for digital preservation systems) and the article by the LOCKSS team he cites, I posted a comment with questions for GPO to the FDsys blog. Continue reading

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Government crackdown on copyrighted government information

Dan Gillmor has a short comment and a discussion going on his blog about the brew-ha-ha over government crack down on subway map re-distribution.

The orginal story about this is:
  • IPod Maps Draw Legal Threats, By Matt Reed, Sep. 26, 2005, Wired.
  • "Transit officials in New York and San Francisco have launched a copyright crackdown on a website offering free downloadable subway maps designed to be viewed on the iPod."
While some of the discussion ranges over whether or not the maps in question are or are not copyrighted and how to work around it if they are, Gillmor calls it an "outrageous abuse of governmental power." Others point out the increasing privatization of this kind of information provided by governments. Continue reading

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Comments on DLC Vision Draft

We think Daniel Cornwall's recent comments regarding the DLC Vision statement were thoughtful and thorough. We'd like to add a few additions and stress some of his more important points. We thank the DLC for opening the discussion on the future of the FDLP and offer this constructive criticism in the hope that the DLC will find some information of use to the final draft. We feel that there are strong reasons for having an FDLP into the future. Click here for the printer-friendly version of this post We believe that the draft could be greatly improved by changing its tone in Part I from a negative focus ("no longer exclusive...," "superseded FDLs," "curtain call for FDLP") to a positive vision of the role of libraries in the future. The tone of the current draft seems to imply that FDLP libraries need to recapture what was once a captive audience. Rather than focusing only on "access" (and thereby ignoring and diminishing the importance for libraries to select, acquire, organize, and preserve information for a constituency), Part I could describe both the effects and opportunities of digital information distribution including the provision of new and better services. We believe that the vision statement would be improved if it, instead, took a more positive and innovative approach to the future, rather than looking to the past. Continue reading

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Pentagon Pulls Nuke Document; Mirrors Available

The Memory Hole blog has this story with links: Pentagon Pulls Nuke Document; Mirrors Available, September 22, 2005, The MemoryBlog.

An unclassified draft of a US nuclear doctrine review that spells out conditions under which US commanders might seek approval to use nuclear weapons has been removed from a Pentagon website, a spokesman said Monday. Lawrence DiRita, the Pentagon spokesman, said the document was taken down "because even in an unclassified world this is not the kind of thing you want flying around the Internet."
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