Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.
July 22, 2019 / Leave a comment
[Editor’s note 8/6/19: Andy Sherman, who was accused in this story, but who served admirably for 38 years at GPO in several administrative positions, sent me this Letter to Chairman Blunt that he sent in January, 2019. Andy explains that there was no misconduct, and gratefully allowed me to post the letter to FGI in […]
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March 3, 2019 / Leave a comment
The Government Publishing Office has a brief proposal to omit some metadata in the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP). As written in the announcement, the proposed change in policy seems simple and obvious. GPO says that, for publications in govinfo, “historic URLs” (the original, source URL) and PURLs (the Persistent Uniform Resource Locators) are “identical.” […]
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January 14, 2019 / 4 Comments on Government shutdown causing information access problems
Twitter and newspapers are buzzing with complaints about widespread problems with access to government information and data (see for example, Wall Street Journal (paywall 😐 ), ZDNet News, Pew Center, Washington Post, Scientific American, TheVerge, and FedScoop to name but a few). Maybe when/if the government opens again, we should scrape the NIST and CSRC […]
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January 3, 2019 / Leave a comment
2019 is not starting off on a good foot for the Government Publishing Office (GPO). NPR reports that in June 2018, GPO’s Office of Inspector General sent an interim report to the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP), the congressional committee that oversees the agency finding mismanagement, misuse of position, and disregard” for hiring and contracting […]
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December 27, 2018 / 2 Comments on Recommendations from the DLC to GPO – including Digital Deposit!
Happy holidays from FGI! Seeing as many are not at work or checking their email, you might have missed that Depository Library Council recently released their recommendations to GPO. Under the tree this year is a recommendation to create a digital deposit working group! We’ve been talking for over a decade about the need for […]
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Government shutdown causing information access problems
January 14, 2019 / 4 Comments on Government shutdown causing information access problems
Twitter and newspapers are buzzing with complaints about widespread problems with access to government information and data (see for example, Wall Street Journal (paywall 😐 ), ZDNet News, Pew Center, Washington Post, Scientific American, TheVerge, and FedScoop to name but a few). Maybe when/if the government opens again, we should scrape the NIST and CSRC […]
Continue Reading →