Who is Sprocket Man? the growing mystery surrounding a prominent public domain cultural icon
Recently while walking to the shuttle on Stanford campus, I saw a sign with the Superhero Sprocket Man, a much loved government document comic book character (Y 3.C 76/3:2 SP 8/994) -- it's listed on FGI's Best Titles Ever! page -- at a table being jointly run by Stanford Parking and Transportation Safety (P&TS) and the Stanford Medical School out promoting bike safety as they do every friday afternoon.
As a government information librarian at Green library, I was chuffed because Sprocket Man -- or so I thought -- comes from a 1994 government document published by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). However, the friendly folks at the table told me that Sprocket Man was actually drawn by a Stanford pre-med student named Louis Saekow in 1975 as was reported in the Stanford Report in 2002.
So now I'm wondering how a 1975 comic book copyrighted by Stanford becomes a 1994 government document? Did Mr Saekow give the comic to the CPSC? Did CPSC simply appropriate the comic for their own use without giving Mr Saekow credit? I'm intrigued because I've often seen public domain government information repackaged and sold, but this is the first instance I've seen of copyrighted content becoming a government document.
Check out both editions of Sprocket Man and see for yourself:
Scroogle shuts down, citing DDoS attacks and Google throttling
Scroogle, since 2003 my go-to search engine -- it queries Google search, but anonymizes search results, does not store cookies on users' computers, and strips out all the google ads on the search results page -- may have finally gone to the big search engine in the sky. Created by "privacy militant and self-appointed Wikipedia watchdog" Daniel Brandt, Scroogle had recently been enduring round-the-clock [w:distributed denial of service] (DDoS) attacks on its servers as well as throttling of its service by Google. For those that are interested, there are other options for privacy-protecting search engines. There IS a connection to and a concern for libraries here. Anyone building digital archives needs to be concerned about this type of action. The best way to thwart DDoS attacks is to host digital content on many servers and have built-in redundancy of content and infrastructure. Collaboration is key! [HT to /.] Continue reading
NARA, Sweden, ILO, Online Maps, Voting, Statistics, NASA, TOXNET, Transporation, DOT, Smithsonian, Federal Regulations, Energy
Another in our series of roundups of news and new resources via INFOdocket.com. 15 items in all. Federal Sources 1. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Releases Beta Versions of Several New Features 2. A Redesigned Regulations.gov Website Now Live With Many New Features 3. Smithsonian Launches New Website for Teaching African American Civil Rights Through American Art 4. Transportation: RITA Launches U.S. DOT Research Hub Searchable Database (Beta) 5. NLM Releases Mobile Interface to TOXNET Databases 6. A New Interactive Infographic From NASA Looks at The Future of American Human Space Flight 7. U.S. Census Releases Graphs on Historical Voting Trends 8. Archivist of the United States on the Competencies NARA Wants For Archives Specialists Additional Items That Might Be of Interest 9. More Than 10 Million Digitized Newspaper Pages Coming to Europeana 10. Create Custom Neighborhood Maps (Quickly Search/Locate/Visualize Neighborhoods Located In Any Zip Code) 11. Online Database: NORMLEX (Information System on International Labour Standards) From ILO 12. Foreign Affairs Releases Complete Online Archive, All Articles Back to Vol. 1, No. 1 (1922) Available 13. U.Va. Library’s New Streaming Oral History Project Tells the Legal Story of the Civil Rights Struggle 14. New Interactive Site/Database Features Info About Wyoming’s Electrical Generation Facilities 15. Legal Reasons: National Library of Sweden Will Not Archive Personal Blogs or Online Video Games Continue reading
State Agency Databases Activity Report 2/20/2012
The volunteers at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases remained busy this past week. VOLUNTEERS AND ORPHANS This week we officially welcome Susanne Caro to the ranks of our document specialist volunteers. She has taken on the Utah page and has begun fixing links. With Susanne's arrival, we are left with these three states in need of adoption:
- Maryland
- Minnesota
- Rhode Island
- Database of Environmental Remediation Sites and Spill Incidents
- Current Ambient Air Quality Forecasts and Data
- Oil and Gas Well Database
- Searchable On-line Mining Database
- DEC Permit Applications Search (DART)
- Water Well Contractor Search
- Docket Management System
- Certified Wastewater Facility Operators
- Issued Title V Air Permits
- Draft Title V Air Permits
- Issued State Facility Air Permits
- Draft State Facility Air Permits
- Breeding Bird Atlas Databases
The oxymoron of digital preservation
February 21, 2012 / 1 Comment on The oxymoron of digital preservation
This story is making it around the interwebs/twitterverse today. Brainpicker, a wonderful blog, posted a story today about digital preservation in the film industry -- "The future for digital storage is constant migration.". While focusing on independent filmmakers and nonprofit archives, it's worthwhile to do a find-and-replace "film" with "government documents" and "filmmakers" with "government information (nee documents) librarians." Digital preservation takes collaboration and long-term vision. period!
[HT to Brainpicker!] Continue reading →Continue Reading →