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NARA releases a coloring book of weird and wonderful patents
The National Archives (NARA) has just put out a coloring book of patents from their archives. And they’re pretty awesome! I would totally buy the public transit hammock! It’s a reminder that most patents are either contraptions for supremely lazy people (the saluting device!) or for inventions of the unnecessary (eye protectors for chickens?!). Check […]
USGS releases plan to increase public access to scientific research
This is welcome news indeed! According to a press release yesterday, the US Geological Service (USGS) has just released its plan “Public Access to Results of Federally Funded Research at the U.S. Geological Survey: Scholarly Publications and Digital Data.” The USGS open access plan is in response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy […]
Oyez Supreme Court Archive up for sale
This is a sad state of affairs IMHO. The gentleman who runs Oyez, the privately-run US Supreme Court audio archive, is set to retire. But it seems that he wants to sell the database for $1million dollars! He unironically doesn’t want to sell it to a private company because “They’ll put it behind a paywall […]
Govdocs are hard mkay?
I thought I’d recount an interesting little research question I had yesterday that took me down a rabbit hole trying to answer. This student was looking for an edition of a 1913 publication called the “Immigration Laws and Rules” (WorldCat helpfully notes the uniform titles of “Laws, etc.” and “Immigration Laws”!) but couldn’t find the […]
PACER’s bad math overcharges users. US Courts Administrative Office sued
The Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) document system of the US Courts provides online access to US Appellate, District and Bankruptcy court records. But this access is not free; PACER charges users $.10/page to access and download court documents. For years, many have pointed out both the technical and philosophical problems with the […]
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