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CRS Reports to the People! Part III
Even with this year's introduction of S.Res. 118 and H.R. 3762, it is still important to encourage our Government to make Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports publicly accessible online! Thus, I finally updated the latest list of Bills and contact information for the sponsoring Congressmen in the Delicious.com "CRS" tag Delicious.com "CRS" tag. See also: CRS Reports to the People! Part 1 and Part 2 for more information on how to contact/write to your Congressmen. Continue reading
CRS report on Congressional Printing
Congressional Printing: Background and Issues for Congress, by R. Eric Petersen, Congressional Research Service, R40897 (November 5, 2009).
This report, which will be updated as events warrant, provides an overview and analysis of issues related to the processing and distribution of congressional information by the Government Printing Office. Subsequent sections address several issues, including funding congressional printing, printing authorizations, current printing practices, and options for Congress. Finally, the report provides congressional printing appropriations, production, and distribution data in a number of tables.Continue reading
The Document Cloud
DocumentCloud is a new service being developed with startup funding from the James L. Knight Foundation. It sounds like an excellent service. It will be software, a Web site, and a set of open standards that will make original source documents easy to find, share, read and collaborate on, anywhere on the Web." I cannot help but wonder why libraries are not at the forefront of projects like this. Started by reporters at the New York Times and ProPublica, this service will give individuals and organizations involved in original reporting mechanisms for sharing the documents they obtain and discover and making those documents available to other for new reporting and new uses. Over two dozen organizations are working on the development of DocumentCloud, including traditional publications and news organizations such as The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Seattle Times, Thomson Reuters, Washington Post, and WNYC Radio, as well as organizations that collect and publish documents, such as The National Security Archive, ACLU National Security Project, OpenCRS, and the Sunlight Foundation,
Users will be able to search for documents by date, topic, person, location, etc. and will be able to do "document dives," collaboratively examining large sets of documents. Think of it as a card catalog for primary source documents. DocumentCloud is not meant to be a general document hosting service, like Scribd, Docstoc or Google Docs. Our goal is to build a service that makes source documents easier to find and share regardless of where they are hosted. It is a complement to these services, and not a competitor. the goal is to make documents even easier to find on search engines. DocumentCloud will have information about documents and relations between them, for example what locations, people, or organizations a group of documents have in common. Conceived of by journalists working at ProPublica and The New York Times, DocumentCloud will be managed as an independent nonprofit.Their FAQ notes: "Will there be an API? Hell yes." See also: Coming soon: Data mining made easier, By Alex Byers, Nieman Watchdog (July 11, 2009). Continue reading
NYTimes: Effort Renewed for Public Release of CRS Reports
In perfect timing with Lieberman's recent resolution, The New York Times published an article today about CRS Reports entitled "Group Seeks Public Access to Congressional Research" by Stephanie Strom (print version appears on page A20 on May 5, 2009). The article focuses on the efforts of the Center for Democracy and Technology and other non-profit organizations such as the Sunlight Foundation and OpenCRS, to fight for free public access to the CRS Reports. I wish the article had mentioned the efforts of the University of North Texas Library, but I'll give them kudos here to make up for the NY Times oversight. ;-) Continue reading
Lieberman’s Resolution for Access to CRS Reports
Senator Joe Lieberman, long time advocate of "CRS Reports to the People!" recently introduced S.Res.118 as seen in the Congressional Record, from April 29, 2009. You can read more about the resolution at PolicyBeta's post. The resolution would allow congressmen
to provide access to CRS Reports to the public on an official website. Rather than creating a new tool for public access, the resolution would let Members and Committees share reports with the public using the same online services that are available on Congress’ internal CRS website...the new resolution also requires that an index of CRS issue briefs and reports to be made public.Continue reading
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