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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.

LOC offers Subject Headings as bulk download

LOC Subject Headings is the first bulk-data download offered under Authorities and Vocabularies at new site: http://id.loc.gov ”

Again, a hat tip to John Wonderlich!

LCSH.info RIP

LCSH.info, RIP, December 22, 2008, Tim, LibraryThing.

I am not as up on or enthusiastic about Ed’s Semantic-Web intentions, but the open-data implications are clear: the Library of Congress just took down public data. I didn’t think things could get much worse after the recent OCLC moves, but this is worse.

The time has come to get serious. The library world is headed in the wrong direction. It’s wrong for patrons—and taxpayers. And it’s wrong for libraries.

See also (if it is still there):

uncool uris,
Posted on December 19, 2008, 10:32 pm, by Ed Summers.

On December 18th I was asked to shut off lcsh.info by the Library of Congress. As an LC employee I really did not have much choice other than to comply.

The lcsh.info domain was registered by me in order to demonstrate how the Library of Congress Subject Headings could be represented as a Semantic Web application using SKOS….

LC is still considering running a service like lcsh.info at loc.gov, but it’s not there for me to link to yet.

LCSH suggestion Blog-a-Thon

Is there a cataloger in the house?! The fine folks over at radical reference are having a Library of Congress Subject Heading Suggestion Blog-a-Thon. Between now and Sunday, April 27, you can suggest subject headings and/or cross-references which will then be compiled and sent to the Library of Congress. Uber-cataloger Sandy Berman has been doing this for years, so it’s great to see others taking on the challenge of collaborative subject description!

Some time between now and Sunday, April 27 at 6pm Eastern:

  1. Select one or more subject headings or cross-references to suggest
  2. Provide material to support your suggestion (in the form of a link and excerpted text/image)
  3. Blog it somewhere (your own site; Radical Reference–if you’re a registered and authenticated user on the site, you can create your own blog post, if not, just make it a comment to this post; an online file sharing service like Google Docs or Zoho)
  4. Tag it for del.icio.us: rr_lcsh2008 and for:radical_reference. If you don’t have a delicious account email me, and I’ll tag it for you.
  5. If you are suggesting a subject heading not previously submitted to LC (e.g. not on Sandy’s scorecard), also submit your proposal to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging.
  6. For discussion and help, join the Meebo and/or Skype chat,which will be active on Sunday from 4-6 ET for sure, and other times, as staffed.
  7. If you are in the NYC area, you can come to the ABC No Rio Computer Center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side for some in person collaboration.
  8. We will email a link to the tagged items to LC, print out a copy of each blog post and mail it to Sandy, and we’re kinda hoping that the members of the RADCAT (radical cataloging) discussion list will consider entering some of the suggested headings properly into the proposal form

LCSH heading change from “govt publications” to “govt “information”

My pal, Jenna Freedman, the Lower East Side Librarian started subscribing to the Library of Congress Subject Heading Weekly list (probably out of love for Libraries’ great good friend and cataloger extraordinaire Sandy Berman!). This week she came across a strange one that I hope our readers can expound on in the comments, especially since I’m not a cataloger.

150 Electronic government information [May Subd Geog]
* 450 UF Electronic government publications [EARLIER FORM OF HEADING]
* 550 BT Government publications

Is this LC’s documentation of a move away from government publications as the instantiation of our government’s work toward e-government and government information as transaction? Should we be worried about this change in the heading? Is this just semantics? Is there a cataloger in the house?

The other one that I found strange was:

(C) 150 Global cooling [Not Subd Geog]
450 UF Cooling, Global
550 BT Global temperature changes

Is that some sort of Newspeak?!?!

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