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Census Bureau Research Data Products
The Census Bureau provides the Research Data Products page with links to new tools that make data more accessible and understandable. Bureau researchers also create new data products from existing data collections. There are some very interesting services here! Check out the innovative "synthetic data" projects: Synthetic Survey of Income and Program Participation (a Beta version of synthetic microdata on individuals) and the Synthetic Longitudinal Business Database (Beta version of synthetic microdata on all U.S. establishments) as well as the more traditional: Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates Interactive Map Tool and Quarterly Workforce Indicators and much more!
- Research Data Products
- Demographic - People and Households
- Economic - Businesses
- Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics - Workforce
State Government Digital Documents: Providing Access and Preservation
The Colorado State Publications Library Digital Repository collects and preserves born digital publications from Colorado state agencies. Its mission is to provide Colorado residents with permanent public access to information produced by state government. In a post to the Bestpractices mailing list today, Debbi MacLeod, the Director of the Colorado State Publications Library, says that library joined The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries' Digital Repository (ADR) in 2008. There are now more than 9,500 documents in the ADR. One of the benefits of this was increased exposure of the collection because ADR content is exposed to search engines. The collection went from an average of 1,000 to 10-15,000 hits per month. Another benefit is shared preservation responsibility. MacLeod says:
[W]e no longer have to worry about a local catastrophic server failure. ADR staff keep track of the latest developments in digital preservation. They keep on top of server maintenance and periodic testing to ensure that files deposited in the system have not been corrupted. Also, there is an ongoing pilot with DuraCloud to test the pros and cons of a distributed back-up system using cloud technology.This seems to be a successful example of building and sharing infrastructure and responsibilities in a way that leverages the strengths of cooperating organizations to accomplish more than any one could on its own. Even better, MacLeod notes that ADR is willing to work with other states!
While The Alliance is located in Colorado, they are interested in expanding their base and having other state collections of documents or special collections join their consortium. Much of the ground work for the particulars to state documents has now been done and can be applied to other states. Robin Dean is the Director, of the Alliance Digital Repository. She can be reached at 303-759-3399 x110 or robin at coalliance.org to start a conversation.Continue reading
Data from city governments on data.gov
The federal government's data portal data.gov has a space for American cities to make their data available: cities.data.gov. Data from four cities, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, are available so far.
- Cities.Data.gov Showcasing the applications and opportunities for harnessing the power of open data across the nation. City officials and developers working together to help improve the information available to city residents. Data in Cities.Data.Gov is not federal data.
- We Want You: City Data Edition, by Nate Berg, The Atlantic Cities (Aug 02, 2012). The new clearinghouse features thousands of openly accessible data streams, including information on building permits filed in these cities, a regularly updated feed of Seattle Fire Department 911 dispatches, budget documents and tons of maps of things like parks, film locations and building footprints. Chicago has 1,826 data feeds on the site, New York has 1,087, Seattle has 711, and San Francisco has 310. The federal government has made 6,560 of their own available.
FCC’s digital outreach
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) posted a summary of its "digital firsts" over the last few years on its blog yesterday. This short piece gives a sense of the digital shift in government in a very short time. Two thousand tweets, Facebook, Flickr, online datasets, online maps, broadcast inspection files (!), APIs, LinkedIn, blogs, RSS feeds, etc.
- Digital Firsts, by David Robbins, Managing Director, Official FCC Blog (August 15th, 2012).
DMCA overkill: NASA video of Mars removed from YouTube
Hours after NASA's successful landing on Mars of its Mars rover, one of NASA's official clips from the mission was pulled from YouTube, and replaced with a notice from the video site indicating that the "video contains content from Scripps Local News, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." The video was replaced and Scripps apologized, but it is an example of how the scale are tipped in favor of the "content industry" and even obvious, public-domain content gets caught in the privatization of information trap. EFF has the background on the technology and how it works:
- Mars Landing Videos, and Other Casualties of the Robot Wars, by Parker Higgins, Electronic Frontier Foundation (Aug 8, 2012). [T]he problem likely lies not with the DMCA itself, but with the additional (and voluntary) automated Content ID system YouTube has developed. Content ID uses digital fingerprinting technology to identify duplicate audio and video on YouTube and, depending on the "business rules" configuration of the designated rightsholder, blocks or places ads next to videos. Unfortunately, the robots behind that copyright enforcement machine have the tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, even when it ends up silencing real -- human -- speech. Continue reading
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