Home » Posts tagged 'ALA' (Page 4)
Tag Archives: ALA
Lunchtime Listen: Interview with Emily Sheketoff
Library Perspective. Interview with Emily Sheketoff, Executive Director of the Washington Office of the American Library Association, CSPAN, 11/06/2008. [30 minutes, Flash Video]. Sheketoff discusses federal copyright, privacy, and piracy policy and how those issues could be effected by President-Elect Barack Obama’s administration. Paul Sweeting, editor of Content Agenda was the guest host. Continue reading
ALA: public libraries critical to delivery of E-government
Yesterday, ALA submitted a statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing, "E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration, and Access", addressing the critical yet unacknowledged role public libraries play in delivering E-government services to the American people. Witnesses included:
- Karen S. Evans, Administrator, Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology , Office of Management and Budget (PDF)
- John Lewis Needham, Manager, Public Sector Content Partnerships , Google, Inc. (PDF)
- Ari Schwartz, Deputy Director , Center for Democracy and Technology (PDF)
- Jimmy Wales, Founder , Wikipedia (PDF)
"Libraries strongly support the E-government Act, since it has enhanced access to government information. However, since its enactment, public libraries are often the only organizations that can help individuals interact with government agencies and access E-government services... Libraries have a critical role in E-Government not only as portals to access, but also organizing and categorizing information and providing the necessary tools and expertise to provide community service. Librarians provide the front line reference service that informs the public how to access and evaluate government information through both physical and virtual collections and how to train people in the use of electronic resources. Libraries help the public become information literate... Public libraries are open to taking on the challenge of E-government initiatives, yet the library community has seen little collaboration or support from federal agencies for the significant increase in services public libraries provide on their behalf... -- Lynne Bradley, Director of ALA's Office of Government RelationsContinue reading
ALA GODORT Wants YOU to help build 50-State Database Registry
As part of their activities in the last ALA annual meeting, the GODORT State and Local Documents Task Force (SLDTF) approved the creation of a fifty-state registry of state government produced databases on the new GODORT wiki. SLDTF believes that there will be great value to librarians and end users alike in having the "invisible web" of state produced databases together in one place. You can find the home page for this project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases. Right now, only Alaska has a developed page which you can find at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Alaska as an example for what SLDTF hopes the other state pages will look like. Once this registry is complete, it will have a number of uses, not the least of which will be showing that documents librarians are tech savvy people who know where the information is buried even when Google can't find it. BUT, they need your help to make this happen. There are four ways you can help with this project: 1) Go to the wiki and start adding any databases you are familar with. Just click on the "edit" tab. Registering with the GODORT wiki is recommended but not required. 2) Agree to be a "documents specialist" for a particular state and post your contact information so people who are not comfortable with editing wikis can e-mail updates to you. 3) Recruit state agency department webmasters, other state employees or other subject specialists to contribute to the database listing. 4) As you become aware of a new state (or local) government database, e-mail Daniel Cornwall, project coordinator (dan DOT cornwall AT Alaska DOT gov) or the documents specialist for that state if you are not comfortable with editing a wiki. To me, this seems like a perfect collaboration project for the documents community. You WILL benefit from learning where your state's databases are and posting them to this annotated registry. The rest of us will benefit from having similar databases available from the fifty states and learning about your state's unique content. So, help ALA GODORT and yourselves by contributing to this project! If you adopt a state's page, would you leave a comment here so people can see how the registry is coming along? Continue reading
Iowa Publications Online – Thanks SDLTF!
As part of the ALA meeting: State & Local Documents Task Force, GODORT Annual Meeting: Washington D.C. Saturday, June 22, 2007; 8:00-10:00am Renaissance Hotel: Congressional A/B There will be an open forum that I hope all ALA-attending FGI readers will visit: "Preservation of born digital Iowa online state publications (technological aspects). Barbara Corson, Program Director for Library Services for the Iowa State Library, will be speaking about the technical nuts and bolts of the Iowa Publications Online Project. If you want to know how to preserve born digital State Publications you will want to come to this session. " Compliments to SLDTF for having a session on preserving born digital publications. We at FGI hope it is one of many to come out of ALA Godort meetings. If you attend, please send a write up to admin AT freegovinfo.info. If you're like me and not able to attend ALA this summer, check out the Iowa Publications Online Project and its associated FAQ. Continue reading
ALA Wiki on Federal Libraries Closures
Rory Litwin of Library Juice reports that ALA's Washington, DC office and Committee on Legislation have started a Federal Libraries Wiki to cover government library closures. It's just beginning, so it needs some beefing up, but sadly, I'm sure that content will be added frequently. Continue reading
Latest Comments