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Doc of the day: or why we need robust cataloging standards
I was just filling in the GODORT notable documents form — and all of our readers should do so ASAP! — and the issue of cataloging raised its ugly head. I just submitted nomination for the title “Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2010” co-published by NOAA, WMO, UNEP, and EU. The document is important in […]
Doc in the news: Pike report on the CIA
I ran across a story in the Guardian on Friday that sent me on a document hunt. Congressman Alan Grayson wrote a piece in which he referenced the Pike Committee investigation of the CIA: "Congressional oversight of the NSA is a joke. I should know, I'm in Congress." Alan Grayson. The Guardian, Friday 25 October 2013.
In the 1970s, Congressman Otis Pike of New York chaired a special congressional committee to investigate abuses by the American so-called "intelligence community" – the spies. After the investigation, Pike commented: 'It took this investigation to convince me that I had always been told lies, to make me realize that I was tired of being told lies. I'm tired of the spies telling lies, too.' Pike's investigation initiated one of the first congressional oversight debates for the vast and hidden collective of espionage agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA). Before the Pike Commission, Congress was kept in the dark about them – a tactic designed to thwart congressional deterrence of the sometimes illegal and often shocking activities carried out by the "intelligence community". Today, we are seeing a repeat of this professional voyeurism by our nation's spies, on an unprecedented and pervasive scale.Continue reading
Document of the day. Or why a paper document may be better than a digitized version
I just received an old (historic NOT legacy) Department of Commerce publication off of the needs and offers list called "Commercial handbook of China" by Julean Arnold, commercial attaché (WorldCat record). It's actually a 1975 reprint of a 1919 publication. It's chock full of statistics relating to provinces, cities, and consular districts -- agriculture, minerals and mining, populations, exports and imports, revenues, transportation, ports and shipping facilities etc. In short, this is a gold mine of historic information and statistics from the Republic of China (pre-Communist China). The document was digitized and is available in HathiTrust as well as the Internet Archive (see book reader below). However, in comparing the digitized version with the paper version in hand, I came upon several issues:
- there are 3 foldout maps that were not digitized. These maps are critical information on railway lines and treaty ports in China. The bibliographic record has a physical description including "2 v. fronts., plates, fold. map, tables, diagrs., fold. charts" but no content note mentioning that the maps were not digitized.
- As I mentioned, the document is chock full of statistical tables. Have you ever tried copying and pasting tabular data from a PDF? It's even worse when the tables are displayed in landscape rather than portrait. I've verified that the OCR fails on those pages.
- Lots of readability/usability issues: The table of contents is partially obscured in one copy and the tables are often blurred or faint. also, HT is using a process of OCR now where you can search but not copy or paste.
- Lastly, I find it ... uh... interesting that this book says here "Copyright: Public Domain, Google-digitized." But, if you want to download the whole book, you have to be an HT partner.
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