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70 Days to Government Information Liberation
Though my initial reasons to launch this blog conversation stemmed largely from last week's U.S national elections, there is still much to say about American state and local government information -- as well as government information in other countries and from international government and non-government organizations. With 70 days left on the game clock -- I can say something significant about all levels of government -- several times. Today, my focus is on the "local governments" perspective, specifically something near and dear to my bibliographic heart -- urban and metropolitan planning -- through a trip on the way back machine ... My point with this particular thread is that we can use "ancient" -- but digitized -- government information to keep those discussions going in our communities. This coming Friday I will be lead a book disussion about Plan of Chicago by Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett. I will be talking with urban planning and public administration students who are part of the University of Illiniois at Chicago's College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. A week later I talk about the Plan at panel discussion of the American Planning Association's Metro Chapter: APA-IL CMS Event: On the Eve of the Centennial: Daniel Burnham, Big Thinkers, and the Future of a Metropolis One can not over-emphasize how much the Chicago Plan, even a century after its publication, still holds sway over the imagination of local and regional government planning throughout the Chicago metropolitan area -- as well as enjoying a special place in the hearts and minds of urban planners in general. Burnham was no slouch when it came to public outreach and education. A couple of short years after it was published, it was adopted as the official blueprint (a government document) for Chicago, along with its own official bureaucracy: the Chicago Planning Commission. In fact, Chicago is sponsoring a year long celebration of the Plan. Check out the Burnham Centennial Plan website (and note how it is hosted at the University of Chicago's library server spaces.) What I find so delightful about organizing this kind of book discussion is that the digital copy of the Plan (courtesy of the google book project) makes it readily accessible to more students. It is also a useful way to think about how we can talk to the community about other digital resources from the government (I bet you were wondering when I would get back to the whole Government Information Liberation theme...) Oh, sure, you might say -- that is Chicago -- one of the urban planning hot spots in the world! What chance does my city or region will have it is ancient plan's digitized? Well, here is a short list of other major historic city plans to start your own book club discussion -- Minneapolis San Francisco San Diego Newark, N.J. Detroit St.Louis Seattle Pittsburgh Replanning Small Cities: Six Typical Studies -- here you get a package deal, which includes the city plans for Glen Ridge, NJ; San Diego, CA; Roanoke, VA; Montclair, NJ; Reading, PA and Madison, WI Go ahead, find an ancient city plan for your nearest big or little city, and get a conversation going about the importance of local government planning and the need for government information access. From another direction, consider the following series from the Green Channel that focused on the rebuilding of Greensburg KS after a devastating toronado back in 2007. All right, time to move on. See you all on Day 69. Continue reading
Comment on Government Information Liberation
John,
Thanks for this interesting thread about Government Information Liberation!
I hope I am not misreading your enthusiasm if I characterize it as part of a new optimism that so many of us are feeling after the election. I certainly feel more optimistic than I have for a long time!
I want to key in on two things you've mentioned in your first few posts in your thread. (I may be going off on a bit of a tangent from what you were saying, but I hope not.)
One is the idea of "weaving the political perspective with the policy perspective with the governmental structure perspective." The other is the "values" of libraries and librarians.
First: weaving.
A few of us at FGI had a conversation this week about the intersection of government information with non-government information. We discussed how the old model of separating government documents departments and collections in libraries was probably more of a library operational convenience than anything else. We certainly did the best we could with that model and the tools we had at the time to provide the best access we could to government information, but the model of separate collections was never ideal for users.
Now, in the digital age, the model of separate (ok, I'll even use the buzzword: "stovepipe") collections has become less necessary and even less fruitful than it was in the paper and ink world. Projects like govtrack.us and the many projects from the Sunlight Foundation and other remixes and Insanely Useful Web Sites demonstrate how technology can help us overcome a lot of limitations we faced in the past and create tools for civic engagement.
I would really like to see libraries creating similar projects and collaborating with projects like these! We have done it before when we created gateways to GPO Access and were so successful that GPO had to stop charging for access and start cooperating with this grass-roots effort.
We also really need to come to grips with the fact that government information is on YouTube, Twitter, Qik, Facebook, etc. We need to accept that the overlap is rapidly increasing between clearly-official government information, and unofficial-but-important information (think: Hormuz incident), and grey-area political information, and public-officials-in-the-public-arena information. We need to accept that more and more government agencies are going to have publicly accessible comments from the public as agencies attempt to engage the public directly with e-government initiatives. We need to face the fact that no algorithm or group of highly-trained bibliographers is going to always succeed is accurately parsing all this and coming up with a universally agreed upon set of information that we call "government information."
So we need ways of melding information that we get from different sources in ways that are useful and informative. And, we also need ways of selecting what to preserve and we need metadata so that users can understand provenance and make their own evaluations of authenticity, currency, and usefulness.
But I also think that libraries have a unique role to play in enabling mashups and remixes and that is the building of digital collections.
No other person or organization or group or institution is better positioned than libraries (and FDLP libraries in particular) to select, acquire, organize, and preserve digital information. No one is more committed than libraries to providing service and free access. And, let's face it, no one else will.
Values.
So that leads me to my second point: the values that librarians and libraries bring to the table. Whether we are talking about government information in the abstract, or civic engagement, or technological change, or long-term preservation and access, or "the future of libraries," libraries and librarians bring a unique combination of perspectives and values that transcend the interests of the many other valuable stakeholders of these issues.
Clifford Lynch made a similar point recently. Listen to his brief Summation and Closing Observations (Audio [MP3 19 min.]) at the Association of Research Libraries, Coalition for Networked Information Fall Forum, October 16-17, 2008 in Arlington, Virginia (Reinventing Science Librarianship: Models for the Future, October 2008). At around the 13-14 minute mark he begins to talk about the Values that librarians bring to the conversation.
Perhaps even more importantly, when we look at the challenges we all face under the current economic crisis, it is libraries that are better positioned than anyone else to act on these values and get them funded.
A long time ago, a faculty member told me that the library was everyone's second priority. Everyone values the library, but everyone values their own department, grant, job, mission first. But right after their own mission, everyone wants (and needs!) some institution to take responsibility for long-term preservation and free access to information. And this requires an institution for whom this mission is a first priority -- not a second priority or a secondary benefit of another priority. And, yes, I'm thinking of government agencies, including GPO. One can claim, as GPO does that "There has been a paradigm shift in preservation of depository materials" but you will look in vain in the GPO Access Act, for the words "preservation" or "long-term" or "permanent." And, yes, I am also thinking of Google, and the entire private sector. As much as we love their products, their mission is to make money; access is a secondary by-product of that mission.
I believe that society needs someone to select, acquire, organize, and preserve information. I believe that we will lose information if we rely on information producers to preserve information for the long term and we will lose free, open access if we rely on those who see their "content" as an "asset." I believe that we need an organization that will not just provide long term preservation and free access, but that will fight for it: fight against proprietary formats, restrictive licensing agreements, and DRM restrictions, and fight for open access, open formats, and Fair Use.
I tend to look at libraries and the FDLP this way: if someone does all of these things, what would we call that entity but "a library"?
And who is in a better position to be "a library" than ... libraries?
As I said earlier:
We read so often of libraries trying to "redefine" themselves in the digital age and trying to justify their existence to people who think that google is a library, that ad-hoc solutions to preservation are good enough, and that the government will provide free access to all of its information forever for free.Continue readingFor those librarians who don't believe all those myths, here is a simple way to reinvent your library: insist on digital deposit by the government and establish your library as a digital Federal DEPOSITORY Library.
71 Days to Government Information Liberation
Just picked up a story I haven't read in years -- "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" -- a remarkable meditation on endurance, choice, and ultimately freedom. If you can't find the book, published back in 1958, check out your local library and see if they have the 1962 movie version on DVD. But the story's underlying theme, a young man trapped in correction institution's web of obligations and limitations -- and he has to make choices -- got me thinking about the comparable net of choices and obligations we librarians take on when we decide to integrate government information services into our own organizations. Point taken in regards to J. Jacobs comments about my earlier blogs. He says in particular: "And perhaps that's what you meant by the high ground. It's nice to be reminded that libraries and librarians are working toward a higher goal of free and permanent access to government information. We've never left that conceptual high ground, but have to continually remind those that do not work with govt information on a daily basis of its inherent worth in the democratic process." In another comment by Blakeley, a similar point is made: "In regards to recapturing...perhaps you meant pushing for more civic engagement rather than just talking the talk and not walking the walk? I know I have been guilty of it. I need to be more of an advocate and participate in civic engagement rather than just spouting out what I believe in. I have become more brave in speaking out...contacting government officials, spreading the word about this "higher ground". FGI has certainly inspired me to do this..." The point I wanted to make is that yes we occupy this elavation -- as government information professionals -- but, imagine that as we stand there looking over the civic topography -- the clouds and mist drift away --and see the road continues on to the mountain top far above; we are not there yet after all (not to get all Thomas Merton on you or anything.) When I think about government information services in libraries I imagine the whole institution to be energized/transformed by these civic obligations. In my writings of the late 1990's, I argued that the changing dynamics of politics, policy, technology demands a new kind of librarianship -- something I called "civic librarinship." I imagined this librarianship transcended both format and distribution mechnanisms, and our professional obligations would become more directed toward putting together long knowledge narratives anchored with specific information sources. We would be the storytellers who would weave the political perspective with the policy perspective with the governmental structure perspective. And we would embroided it all with the heavy stichery of history. My inspiration for this vision, if truth be told, came from Ray Bradbury's short story "Farenheit 451." I think many librarians consider this to be a tale of information dystopia. But the story's last few paragraphs describe a community of people walking around reciting the books that were burned and lost -- I took this as a metaphor of hope and remembrance -- that knowledge and connections live beyond format and technology. In a very real way, the library and its readers become one during the closing scenes of the story. I think this point is driven home by the way change.gov was one thing on Thursday and Friday last week, and then entire parts of the web site were inexplicably changed or removed with no good explanation on Saturday. People noticed this, commented on it, and even captured what as lost. This is going to be the new price and reward of civic librarianship -- steady, deliberative, and engaged observation and remembrance. Another way to think about this -- what I do in my classes about policy and legislative history, is to remind the students that major programs and legislation often stretch back decades -- back into the paper universe. That if you really want to understand why Cheney happened and how he could argue for the resurgence of a dominant Presidency (much less a Vice-Presidency) -- you most go back and understand his service and political growth during the early to mid 1970s, and how he came to some sound conclusions about executive from the rise and fall of Richard Nixon. And don't get me started on what Richard Nixon's influence on all this might be.... And I don't mean to imply any particular partisan or political party perspective in my remarks. Democrats and Republican administration alike are equally likely to sacrifice the purpose of free speech and transperency in the name of political expediency or shameless pandering to patriotism. So, to put another spin on it -- we are all government information librarians now. I think a major goal of our community over the next few years should be to find ways to turn our bibliographic insitutions into the engines of democracy and civic discussion. See you on Day 70. Continue reading
72 Days to Government Information Liberation
Ok. It just hit me. I just set myself up with the goal of blogging for each of the next 72 days about government information that will court and spark, to steal a line from Joni Mitchell, in order to get people excited about their constitutional structures and the best values of civic information. What was I thinking? So, here is what caught my eye today, from the Nov. 9, 2008 "After the Imperial Presidency" article in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html.) But it wasn't just this article, there was another that, juxtaposed with the Presidency one -- Check Cashers, Redeemed -- that struck me there might be some lessons here about government information and neighborhood services. In a very real sense the constitutional functions work because it requires the president and congress to exhcange trust and information -- much like a bank's liquidity -- and either part of the relationship freezes up, or ignores the other -- then we have severe information dislocation. Libraries and other cultural institutions are like local branches in this national information exchange. The technology and social organization of these institutions should work hand in hand to keep the citizens constantly informed of what is happening inside their governing bodies. Again, the opportunities are out, if we can just risk and grab at the opportunity. Talk to you on Day 71 -- an hope we start getting some two-way traffic going.... Continue reading
73 Days to Government Information Liberation
You can imagine how much the Chicago metropolitan culture and political scene is just all abuzz at the realizationn that one of their own is about to move into the White House. Richard Daley is just beaming. Cook County pols look just a bit more polished and respectable -- and our governor, who enjoys a lower estimation among Illinois residents than President Bush, appears to savor the political opportunities during the next few weeks. Though I have only lived in the area for 15 years, there is much about Chicago politics that is visceral, atavastic, and so profoundly grounded in neighborhoods in a way that the old U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Tip O'Neil captured with his classic observation that "All politics is local." This elemental truth was hammered home again with an announcement from the Illinois Library Association that all nine library referendums and/or ballot mesaures voted on throughout the state Tuesday went down to defeat. National, even state level, politics may be charged by a renewed sense of energy or purpose, but in the local trenches, the struggle still wins or loses on voters deciding on "how much will it cost me?" Further, for many of other Illinois libraries (private and public academic, special, law, etc.)funds are being cut for collections, staff, and services. If a new season of government information services in libraries is to come about, these local institutions need to put their civic values back on top of the agenda. Here's a thought -- day three discussion point -- how about if each state wide library association makes a commitment to hold a "government information summit during the Spring or Fall of 2009 to discuss exactly this point. It can be separate meeting, or part of their annual state wide library association meetings. Further, each state, if not each region that crosses state lines, has a few government information librarians who were involved with earlier revolutionary changes in the how and why of government information services (changes in depository library practices, technology, public education, and teaching future government information professionals.) And what if they organizers of these statewide summits brought their deliberations and agendas to a nation wide meeting -- perhaps to Chicago at the ALA conference in July 2009? Something informal, I am sure, could be arranged that embraces the new technologies and be less bound by the rigidities of ALA scheduling. In a way, it would close the circle. What began to unravel in Chicago during the the Democratic National Convention, in Grant Park, during the summer of 1968 can be reclaimed... The hometown of Saul Alinsky and so many other community organizers would be an outstanding place to begin the next information revolution. So, as the Grahm Nash song goes: Won't you please come to Chicago For the help that we can bring. We can change the World. Rearrange the World. It's dying to get better. Continue reading
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