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UK’s Conservative party deletes archive of speeches from internet
The Guardian wrote yesterday, "Conservative party deletes archive of speeches from internet." The Conservative Party has attempted to delete from their website -- as well as from the Internet Archive! -- all their speeches and press releases online from the past 10 years, including one in which David Cameron promises to use the Internet to make politicians 'more accountable'. This is troubling news, but something as old as politicians -- see for example ALA's long-running serial "Less access to less information by and about the US government" which ran from 1981 - 1998. But it should also come as yet another warning to librarians and archivists of the dire need to harvest and preserve government information and store content off of .gov servers.
The party has removed the archive from its public website, erasing records of speeches and press releases from 2000 until May 2010. The effect will be to remove any speeches and articles during the Tories' modernisation period, including its commitment to spend the same as a Labour government. The Labour MP Sheila Gilmore accused the party of a cynical stunt, adding: "It will take more than David Cameron pressing delete to make people forget about his broken promises and failure to stand up for anyone beyond a privileged few." In a remarkable step the party has also blocked access to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a US-based library that captures webpages for future generations, using a software robot that directs search engines not to access the pages. Continue reading
Government Shutdown: Status of federal websites
Update #2 10pm PST 10/2/13 : Our friends over at the Sunlight Foundation have an interesting post, "What Happens to .gov in a Shutdown?" They explained the .gov shutdown matrix:
...drawn on an agency-by-agency basis, and the specific determination is based on the importance of the function and how illegal ceasing to do it might be. But aside from some obvious ones--national parks would be closed; the CO2 scrubber on the International Space Station would stay plugged in--it'll be agency leadership that makes the determinations.(and love the unix joke!) UPDATE #1 3pm PST 10/2/13: Arstechnica, checked 56 .gov sites and found 10 that went dark. See "Shutdown of US government websites appears bafflingly arbitrary." A bunch of federal websites will shut down with the government, By Andrea Peterson, Washington Post, Published: September 30 at 5:28 pm. Continue reading
Canada set to digitize documents, but limit access
The Canadian government's Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announced more details of its digitization project. In a "digitization partnership" with Canadiana.org, a not-for-profit charitable organization, there will be a large scale digitization project that will involve about 60 million images from numerous collections, including the indexing and description of millions of personal, administrative and government documents, as well as land grants, war diaries and photographs and the transcription of millions of handwritten pages. This is a "10-year agreement."
- Library and Archives Canada and Canadiana.org partner on digitization, online publication of millions of images from archival microfilm collection. Library and Archives Canada (2013-08-29).
Presidential Policy Directives not on White House Website
Steven Aftergood describes Presidential Policy Directives and discusses how and why they are not usually posted to the White House website -- even when they are not classified and are available elsewhere.
- Presidential Directives Mostly Withheld by White House, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (July 12, 2013). The Obama Administration has issued more than 20 Presidential Policy Directives (PPDs), many of which are collected or listed on the Federation of American Scientists web site. But with few exceptions (PPD 14, PPD 19) most of these cannot be obtained from the White House.
Why we need digital deposit
August 13, 2013 / 1 Comment on Why we need digital deposit
David Rosenthal describes a change in the text of a speech that Attorney General Holder gave last October touting the governments Distressed Homeowner Initiative. The text of the speech as originally posted has been changed, apparently without notification or explanation. Continue reading →
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