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Updated Guides to Government Info Access Laws
Catching up with some updates released in August:
CRS has updated its Access to Government Information in the United States report. The latest edition is dated August 31, 2009 (via OpenCRS.com).
The Justice Department released its 2009 edition of Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act on August 10. The announcement says the “2009 edition contains a newly updated and revised discussion of all aspects of the Freedom of Information Act, as amended by the OPEN Government Act, including the Act’s procedural requirements, its exemptions and exclusions, as well as considerations applicable to FOIA litigation.”
CRS Reports to the People! Part II
My earlier post, CRS Reports to the People!, dealt with which congressmen to contact and which congressmen sponsored what bills in the past, etc. But now I would like to offer some sample letters that you can emulate and send. I sent all of mine just after the inauguration of President Obama and will let you know what kinds of responses I get.
Here is a sample letter to send to those who have sponsored similar bills about publicly releasing all CRS Reports in the past (be sure to refer to my previous post that lists all these bills and their sponsors in your letter!):
The Honorable [full name]
[Room #] [Name] Senate [or] House Office Building
United States House of Representatives [or] United States Senate
Washington, DC 20515Dear Senator:
or
Dear Representative:Due to your [introduction/co-sponsorship] of BILL [X], I am writing to seek your support yet again in addressing the need for making Congressional Research Service Reports available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. American taxpayers spend nearly $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, yet it remains cumbersome to acquire these informative reports. Several libraries and non-profit organizations have sought to collect as many of the released reports as possible. Unfortunately, there is no feasible way to obtain all CRS reports, therefore, I believe that it would be best if Congress made all CRS Reports available to the public online.
President Obama has demonstrated and fosters the spirit of open access and transparency during his administration, as a Government Documents Librarian and contributor for the Free Government Information website [list your credentials, affiliations, etc. or simply say “as a tax paying citizen], I strongly believe that there is no greater time than now to address the need for the availability of these educational and beneficial reports to the public.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your official title/degree credentials]
[Contact Address and Email]
If the Congressmen you are writing to have not sponsored a bill related to the public release of all CRS Reports, then use this nearly identical form letter:
The Honorable [full name]
[Room #] [Name] Senate [or] House Office Building
United States House of Representatives [or] United States Senate
Washington, DC 20515Dear Senator:
or
Dear Representative:I am writing to seek your support in addressing the need for making Congressional Research Service Reports available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. Previous bills addressing this topic have been introduced by Congressmen, but were unsuccessful. Most recently, these included H.R. 2545 (2007) and S. Res. 401 (2007).
American taxpayers spend nearly $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, yet it remains cumbersome to acquire these informative reports. Several libraries and non-profit organizations have sought to collect as many of the released reports as possible. Unfortunately, there is no feasible way to obtain all CRS reports, therefore, I believe that it would be best if Congress made all CRS Reports available to the public.
President Obama has demonstrated and fosters the spirit of open access and transparency during his administration, as a Government Documents Librarian and contributor for the Free Government Information website [list your credentials, affiliations, etc. or simply say “as a tax paying citizen], I strongly believe that there is no greater time than now to address the need for the availability of these educational and beneficial reports to the public.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your official title/degree credentials]
[Contact Address and Email]
CRS Reports to the People!
Now that a new administration will be coming into office soon, it is more important than ever to encourage our Government to make Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports publicly accessible online. Here at FGI, the topic of CRS Reports has been written about often, but I was inspired to create this blog post and take action after seeing Starr Hoffman’s DLC conference presentation last week (click on “Search Document” and enter “Starr Hoffman”. Her PowerPoint, “Encouraging An Informed Citizenry” will come up as a PDF to download).
Starr is responsible for maintaining University of North Texas’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports Archive. In her presentation, she gives tips for writing to Congressmen and lists some past legislative efforts (Bills that never passed both houses of Congress) to make CRS Reports publicly accessible. I have gathered some other Bills, as well as all the contact information for the sponsoring Congressmen and have included them in my Delicious.com “CRS” tag as well as in this list:
1998 H.R. 3131, S. 1578
1999 H.R. 654, S. 393
2000 H.R. 4582
2001 S. Res. 21
2003 H.R. 3630, S. Res. 54
2007 H.R. 2545, S. Res. 401
Senator John McCain
Introduced S. 1578, S. 393, S.Res. 21, S. Res. 54, & co-sponsored S. Res. 401
Senator Mike Enzi
Co-sponsored S. 393
Senator Leahy
Co-sponsored S. 393, S. Res. 21, S. Res. 54, and S. Res. 401.
Senator Tom Coburn
H.R. 4582 co-sponsor when he was in the House.
Senator Jim DeMint
Introduced H.R. 4582 when he was in the House.
Senator Joe Lieberman
Introduced S. Res. 401 and co-sponsored S. Res. 21 and S. Res. 54
Senator Tom Harkin
Co-sponsored S. Res. 54 and S. Res. 401
Senator Susan M. Collins
Co-sponsored S. Res. 401
Senator John Cornyn
Co-sponsored S. Res. 401
Congressman David Price
Co-sponsor for H.R. 3131, H.R. 654, H.R. 3630, and H.R. 2545
Congressman John Campbell
Co-sponsored H.R. 654
Congressman Jay Inslee
Co-sponsored H.R. 3630 and H.R. 2545
And you can find and contact your local Senator and your Representatives too.
James A. Jacobs did a Google search this past June for “Received through the CRS Web” OR “CRS Report for Congress” combined with site:house.gov and then again for site:senate.gov and got around 600 hits with each. For example, here are some domains he found that you can search within for CRS Reports or to search for those in Congress who may support public access to CRS Reports: bartlett.house.gov, holt.house.gov, radanovich.house.gov, weldon.house.gov, bennelson.senate.gov, carper.senate.gov, lugar.senate.gov, murray.senate.gov, etc.
For more information on CRS Report legislation efforts, visit this site which contains a “Campaign for Online Access” section.
Spread the word about this post and good luck in writing to your Congressmen! If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments.
Digitizing History: NARA’s plans for the future
(cross posted on legalresearchplus.com)
Earlier this month the National Archives and Records Administration released their Strategy for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007-2016. This is a follow-up to a draft policy released in September of last year.
A fair amount of the report discusses the use of partner organizations in the digitization effort. The draft relased in September was open to public comment, and NARA has posted their responses to those comments here.
(Thanks to the American Association of Law Libraries Washington Office and their monthly E-Bulletin)
Technology and the GovDocs World
First, I would like to thank the folks at FreeGovInfo for this opportunity to serve as guest blogger. I have attempted many times to create blogs without much success. Usually, I only post a couple of things and then forget about it. This is an opportunity for me to do much better than my blog history has given me.
Writing what constitutes as an online journal that all may read is a little different from what the original purpose of a diary/journal was…to write down your own personal thoughts that were not meant to be shared with anyone else. The world of literature has given us some wonderful insights due to the publishing of diaries such as Pepys and Anne Franks just to name a couple. I wonder if they would’ve been bloggers? Would they have been so willing to share their thoughts online for the rest of the world to see?
The late 20th and early 21st century has allowed us to progress at an alarming rate technologically speaking. What once was science Fiction (Star Trek) became science fact in the past 30 years. Star Trek’s communicator is the present day cellular phone.
Star Trek’s PADD (Personal Access Display Device) is today’s Blackberry.
So, how can we make all this great technology work for us in the gov. docs. world? Is this technology helping us or working against us?
Already, libraries out there believe that they can find everything on the web including gov. docs. Last month’s blogger Barrett mentioned in his last post how he came in one day and realized he didn’t have a job any more. Everett Public Library in Everett, WA went through something similar, though now they are primarily an electronic depository.
Last week, I was checking some links on our extensive website when I went to the NASS website for the State of Washington. Our link was old and it was linked to the Washington Annual Statistical Bulletin from 1995/96 – Present. Well, the new link in the NASS’ recently redesigned page only had five years of it (2003 – Present). I sent an email to NASS about it and they told me they will only retain the current five years online. Trying to convince them to retain all issues will be a chore but I made sure that Robin Haun-Mohammed receive a copy to my response to their email. I don’t know if anything can be done or at the very least have GPO store the old ones on their server. I did find some of the old urls in the Internet Archive but most of the links on each page did not have the .pdf files.
Yes, the technology has made some things easier for us but at the same time it has also made it harder for us. Now, there is public perception that everything is online and that kind of attitude also comes from library administrators! How do we prove our worthiness when there aren’t any physical titles to checkout any more? How do we gather statistics for online only publications and let administrators know that they are being used? GPO’s PURL referral page is a good start but I would like to see OPAC companies do the same at the item level so we can have statistics that would show actual usage to library administrators.
I would like to know how many depositories are downloading online documents on their servers. What criteria are you using to do so? How are you meeting the challenges of accessibility to online documents?
Looking forward to your comments.
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