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More on GPO’s “public-private partnership RFI”
The questions I have about the current RFI relate less to how GPO and FDLP and the bookstores and sales program worked and interacted in the past and more to how new partnerships and plans might affect free, fully-functional, permanent access to government information in the future. I am concerned that GPO's business strategies and its new "Strategic Vision" will affect free public access to digital publications as well as to paper-and-ink documents. In terms of paper-and-ink documents, it is possible that a robust, successful paper-and-ink sales program would benefit FDLP by getting more publications into the FDLP distribution stream. On the other hand, it is possible that successful sales will lead to the removal from FDLP of publications that can earn a profit as they migrate into the private sector. And, as Scott Matheson pointed out here recently, it is also possible that less profitable documents would not be ordered for the sales program, and if not very popular, not ordered for depository distribution. Continue reading
Digital Preservation Costs – Migration vs. Emulation
The current issue of RLG DigiNews discusses two possible approaches to preserving digital objects: migration and emulation in terms of costs over the life of the objects.
Migration is moving electronic files from one application to another - say from WordPerfect to the latest edition of word. Emulation is designing software and sometimes hardware that will mimic a desired operating system - say a Macintosh with SoftWindows. Both approaches have merit, and both have problems. Some of the problems arise from proprietary formats protected by trade secrets. If you can't describe the specifications of a WordPerfect file exactly, you'll have trouble rendering it in Word or future word processors (the pink-strikethrough effect).
Another thing that the two approaches have is ongoing costs, discussed in the RLG Diginews article. You can put a box of microfilm in storage for 40 years and have it come out readable with no further investment. But if you did the same thing with WordStar disks even 15 years ago, you are out of luck today.
Any preservation initiative for government information must take the CHRONIC lack of funding resources of federal information agencies. That's why we at FGI believe in a distributed electronic future and not the mostly centralized model currently favored by the government. It's also why many in the documents community, myself included believe in a multiformat model (i.e. print, electronic, microfilm) as well. Continue reading
Privacy
*Update October 21,2005: James R. Jacobs, Shinjoung Yeo, and Danial Cornwall were invited to speak at the Nevada Library Association Annual Conference. Here's James' panel presentation about privacy and government information.
What you read about your government (or about anything) should be your business. But how well is your privacy protected? There is a great difference in privacy between the analog world of government publications and the Internet. In the analog world you decide the amount of privacy you have; in the digital world the servers of the information decide how much privacy they'll let you have.
Let's look at three examples: walking into a federal depository library; viewing information on a library's web site; and downloading a document from Federal Agency X's web site.
The Physical Depository Library - You can usually walk right into a Federal Depository Library. There are a few that may ask for identification, but even these libraries do not track your browsing. Once you walk in, you can browse all you like without being tracked. You can take books off the shelves and look through them and if you put them back on the shelves, no one will know what titles you looked through. If you decide to check some reports out of the depository, you'll be protected by the confidentiality statutes of the state where the library is. Since October 2001, it's been possible for your reading records to be turned over to federal authorities, but most libraries erase the record of any books you've checked out once you turn them in.
Viewing information on a library web site - Most libraries have websites these days. Many have explicit privacy policies that limit the information that the library collects. Some of the information they could collect include:
- The address (IP) of your computer or Internet provider.
- The date and time you accessed their site.
- The Internet address of the web site that referred you to their site.
- Tracking information via cookies. Most libraries won't put cookies on your computer.
Downloading Files from the website of Federal Agency X - When you go to http://www.fedagencyx.gov; the agency is able to collect the same kinds of information that the library can. According to M-03-22, OMB Guidance for Implementing the Privacy Provisions of the E-Government Act of 2002, federal sites may use cookies if there is a compelling need. According to the same memo, federal agencies must have a policy. We at Free Government Information are unaware of federal statutes protecting federal web browsing.
Does this mean we cannot have Internet access to government information without Uncle Sam looking over our shoulder? No. One solution would be to deposit electronic copies of government information with libraries and let the libraries serve the information on their own servers. That way, electronic government documents would be accessed from privacy minded librarians. Even if the government used its new powers under the PATRIOT act, it would have to make literally thousands of requests to find out who has handled a given document. This is unlike the current system, where the gov't can ask its own webmasters for as much data as they like without anyone knowing.
For further exploration try...
Web resources
- White House IT Policies
- Electronic Frontier Foundation Privacy Page
- Electronic Privacy Information Center Privacy Page
Articles
- Huff, James. Patron Confidentiality, Millennium Style. American Libraries, Jun/Jul99, Vol. 30 Issue 6, p86, 2p,
- Martin, Shannon; Chamberlin, Bill F.; Dmitrieva, Irina. State Laws Requiring World Wide Web Dissemination of Information: A Review of State Government Mandates for Documents Online. Information & Communications Technology Law, Jun2001, Vol. 10 Issue 2, p167, 12p,
- Murphy, Bernadette. Privacy and government information issues: Looking forward, looking back. College & Research Libraries News, Feb2005, Vol. 66 Issue 2, p132, 1p;
Books
- General Accounting Office. (2000). Internet privacy: comparison of federal agency practices with FTC's fair information principles . Washington DC: General Accounting Office.
- Hernon, Peter. (2002). United States government information : policies and sources. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
- Podesta, John and Shane, Peter M. (2004). A little knowledge : privacy, security, and public information after September 11th. New York: Century Foundation Press.
Please post suggestions for this bibliography in the comments section. Continue reading
Preservation
*Update October 21,2005: James R. Jacobs, Shinjoung Yeo, and Danial Cornwall were invited to speak at the Nevada Library Association Annual Conference. Here's Daniel's panel presentation about preservation and government information.
Preserving government information is key to our survival as a nation. If we don't remember what we've done and why we've done it, repeating history may be the least of our worries.
In the analog world, preservation is a relative simple matter of caring for a physical object. Millions of people can visit the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because the National Archives has taken care of the paper these documents are written on. Since the words of these important documents are human readable, no machinery is needed to make the words understandable. Given the proper conditions, citizens celebrating our nation's 500th anniversary in 2276 will be able to read these core documents of history.
By contrast, digital publications and data are fragile. The main enemies of the successful preservation of digital materials are the media and the file format the data is in.
Currently there are two types of media for storing digital data - magnetic and optical. Magnetic encompasses audio and video tapes, floppy drives, removable hard drives, flash drives and magnetic tape. Optical media includes the various flavors of CDs and DVDs. Magnetic media has a proven poor track record as a durable storage format. Most magnetic media may last from 10-20 years. If material isn't copied onto new magnetic media, it can be lost. Optical media fares better in terms of holding data without decay. The National Institute of Standards and Technology estimates that CD-R's and DVD-Rs may last several tens of years. Some people estimate the lifetime of the highest quality of optical media to be close to a century. Still, this is only a fraction of the lifetime of quality paper or the estimated lifetime of microfilm.
However, length of media is really the least of our worries. A much greater problem is technological obsolescence. Have you tried to read a 5 1/4" disk or pull up a Wordstar document lately? There are many examples of lost data because no equipment or software exists to read it. Data could be lost to technological obsolescence within ten years if it's not migrated into new formats.
So, how can we preserve digital information? Currently, no one knows how to best preserve digital information in a digital format, though there are some promising approaches. So far the safest approach is the "analog backup"; otherwise known as making tangible copies.
There are several groups studying the preservation of digital government information, including the Government Printing Office, the National Archives, the ALA Government Documents Roundtable and the LOCKSS group at Stanford University.
For further exploration try...
Web resources
Continue reading
Libraries and USAPA according to the National Review
May 1, 2005 / 1 Comment on Libraries and USAPA according to the National Review
The National Review's Deroy Murdock explains why libraries should be a key target of USAPA. Greg over at Open Stacks put me onto this article and has some very good comments on this completely insane argument. Does anyone else have a problem with being called "dangerously naïve or clandestinely seditious librarians"? Does anyone remember Cointelpro? Continue reading →
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