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Explaining “Born Digital” Gov Docs to Patrons & Professors
I had to explain to a student patron and their Professor today what is meant by "born digital" and how digital government documents are wonderful resources for a paper if we do not have the print version or when the print version doesn't exist (or is horribly out of date). Have any of you had to explain this a lot? It all started when the student patron told me she could only have three web sources for her Nursing research paper after I had shown her the wonderful world of digital documents online. She had found an eleven year old version of a government print source in our catalog but I cringed...born digital documents online via NIH or the U.S. Dept. of Health had more up to date medical information on her topic! I told her to use both the print and online sources. She would be able to see if there were any noticeable differences from the 1997 print version and the 2007/2008 online information on her topic. I contacted the Professor and explained this too. All is well and she will allow for the use of online government information. She was just hoping to avoid the use of too many general (i.e. crappy) websites. I understand that but I wanted to make sure that the student would not be punished for using several good government online documents and websites for her paper. I didn't get into the nitty gritty digital authentication of government documents, but with some Professors who require legislative research, I tell them about the digitally authenticated documents that currently exist from GPO. I have a feeling we government document librarians are going to have to explain this concept of "born digital" gov docs and digital authentication more often...especially now that more and more gov docs are being born digitally. Continue reading
Tell Change.gov to…change
You may have noticed some of our recent blog posts that discuss the copyright status of the President-elect's website, Change.gov, as well as the vanishing contents of the website, among other concerns. We here at FGI created a standard letter for you to use (see below) if you wish to contact Change.gov and let them know your concerns. You can email the change.gov website by going to their Contact page at: http://www.change.gov/page/s/contact If you do contact them, let us know in the comments of this post so that we have an idea on how many emails have been sent. Thanks!
Hello, I strongly urge you to change the copyright statement on your site to clearly state that all information on the site is in the public domain. According to Copyright Law 17 U.S.C. § 105, "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government." Since the site is in the .gov domain, people expect the material on the site to have been produced by government employees and thus as being in the public domain. If the bulk of material at change.gov was not created by federal employees, then I suggest that you post a blog entry explaining why your material is under copyright. You should also explore moving your content to a .org domain, which internet users understand can have copyrighted material. It would be ok to leave a redirect from change.gov to the new site as long as the new site was clearly labeled non-government. There has been much discussion over this matter at the Free Government Information website, which you can read about here: http://freegovinfo.info/taxonomy/term/876. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Sincerely, Rebecca Blakeley Government Documents LibrarianUPDATE: Removed the portion of this template letter that asked for them to return the missing "Agenda" pages of the website. They've been restored! Continue reading
ObamaCTO.org
Are you wondering who President-elect Barack Obama will appoint as the country's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO)? Want to voice your opinion on what their top priorities should be? Then check out ObamaCTO.org and have your say! The website enables you to create an account, post your idea, comment on other ideas, and vote up to 10 times to help rank the ideas posted. I've noticed some of the ideas posted may not relate to what a CTO might do or be in charge of, but maybe those will get ranked out! Or maybe they could be potential priorities in the future. Who knows? What are some responsibilities of this future CTO? Well, I wish I could tell you, but the "agenda" for Technology page, including information about a CTO, is "not available right now" according to the change.gov website. Oh, the irony! But the Obama/Biden campaign website has some information still up on this issue of technology and a CTO where they state that:
Obama will appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.Tip o' the hat to BoingBoing.net for posting about this new website. Continue reading
Obama’s Technological Promises
Ok, Mr. President...fulfill your technological promises! I am very excited about some of his proposals, especially in regards to government information transparency and access. Mashable.com posted "A Final Look at Presidential Technology Policy" earlier this week and they had this to say about Obama vs. McCain's plans:
Rather than focusing on anti-trust and and subsidies, as Barack Obama intends to do, what would be better would be focusing on creating an environment where corporate taxes were lowered, and other tax incentives were emphasized for start-ups who focus on better information infrastructure. Senator McCain’s tax plan is moderately favorable towards this theory, though it is likely simply a coincidence convenient to this argument rather than a well thought out technology policy. When it comes to the basics, both presidential candidates are generally on the right track, and are generally in agreement as well. I’ve outlined above where they differ, though, and I think history has shown that Barack Obama’s desired policy directions would be more detrimental to innovation and growth for the tech sector.Interesting that they believe Obama's desired policies may be detrimental to technology. I'm not well versed enough on the issues of Broadband/Anti-trust & subsidies to know whether or not I agree. What do you think? Mashable also has a great blog post on "Government 2.0: The Presidential Transition". I agree with the author's sentiment that the new President must look to the needs of the entire nation, and we need to giver our input too.
...citizens should be engaged in the transition process,...In an increasingly fragmented media and information society, that level of engagement requires more than a press release and newspaper coverage. It means full multimedia engagement using blogging, speeches, informal gatherings, mobile technologies, podcasts, online video, and widgets. The outreach should also use social tools that allow bidirectional conversation, increasing citizen participation and interest in government.Continue reading
Free E-Book on Copyright
Cory Doctorow, co-editor at boingboing.net, Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and contributor to Wired, Popular Science, the New York Times, etc., has published a book called Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future and it's available for download on his website...for free! Cory is an advocate of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licenses for his own books. Here is an excerpt:
Back in 1985, the Senate was ready to clobber the music industry for exposing America’s impressionable youngsters to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. Today, the Attorney General is proposing to give the RIAA legal tools to attack people who attempt infringement. Through most of America’s history, the U.S. government has been at odds with the entertainment giants, treating them as purveyors of filth. But not anymore: today, the U.S. Trade Rep is using America’s political clout to force Russia to institute police inspections of its CD presses. (Savor the irony: post-Soviet Russia forgoes its hard-won freedom of the press to protect Disney and Universal!) How did entertainment go from trenchcoat pervert to top trade priority? I blame the “Information Economy.” No one really knows what “Information Economy” means, but by the early ’90s, we knew it was coming...Continue reading
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