Towson University library *joins* the FDLP!
Here's some good news for the FDLP! After years of hearing about how the FDLP is bleeding member libraries -- despite the reality that 99% of FDLP libraries planned to stay in the program as of the 2009 FDLP Biennial Survey! -- the FDLP welcomes new member Albert S. Cook library at Towson University. Congressman Sarbanes and Public Printer Boarman To Speak at Towson University Event (PDF)
WHO: Rep. John P. Sarbanes (MD-3) Public Printer William J. Boarman Towson University Interim President Dr. Marcia Welsh Dean of University Libraries Deborah A. Nolan WHAT: Rep. John P. Sarbanes and Public Printer William J. Boarman will speak at an event at Towson University welcoming the university's Albert S. Cook Library into the U.S. Government Printing Office's (GPO) Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Through the FDLP, GPO partners with 1,220 libraries nationwide to provide free public access to published information of all three branches of the Government. The university will have access to thousands of documents of Federal Government information to share with the public, faculty, students, and staff of Towson University. Some of those documents include: the U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents. This event will kick-off Towson University's Constitution Week celebration. WHEN: September 19, 2011 11:00am WHERE: Albert S. Cook Library Towson University 8000 York Road Towson, Maryland 21252Continue reading
PACER Fee (and Exemption) Increase
[Update: 9/15/11: One of my colleagues, who is preparing to teach a class on PACER, called the PACER Service Center to verify the date of the fee increase. She was told "April 2012." I then called and was told "the spring billing cycle." I suggested that information be posted on the web site, since the press release implies a much earlier date. -prj] The Judicial Conference of the United States today
authorized an increase in the Judiciary's electronic public access fee in response to increasing costs for maintaining and enhancing the electronic public access system. The increase in the electronic public access (EPA) fee, from $.08 to $.10 per, is needed to continue to support and improve the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, and to develop and implement the next generation of the Judiciary's Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system.but
The Conference was mindful of the impact such an increase could have on other public entities and on public users accessing the system to obtain information on a particular case. For this reason, local, state, and federal government agencies will be exempted from the increase for three years. Moreover, PACER users who do not accrue charges of more than $15 in a quarterly billing cycle would not be charged a fee. (The current exemption is $10 per quarter.) The expanded exemption means that 75 to 80 percent of all users will still pay no fees.The fee increase is effective November 1, 2011. FGI readers might also be interested in the first part of the press release - the approval of standards and procedures for sealing civil case files. For more, see The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times, "Judicial Conference Urges Restraint in Sealing Civil Cases." Thanks to my colleague, Mary Whisner, for the tip. Continue reading
Nearly a quarter of dot-gov domains don’t work, analysis finds
A new study found many government web sites unreachable. It also discovered that more than one-tenth of the sites are unreachable without the "www" prefix.
- Nearly a quarter of dot-gov domains don't work, analysis finds, By Joseph Marks, NextGov (09/09/2011). An unofficial analysis of the roughly 1,800 top-level federal Web domains shows nearly a quarter of them are now unreachable. That may mean those sites have been shut down or that their content has been consolidated into larger sites in accordance with a White House plan to drastically cut the federal Web presence over the coming year, said Benjamin Balter, a new technology fellow at the Federal Communications Commission and graduate student at The George Washington University who designed the analysis tool as a personal project. ...For simple, run-of-the-mill websites, requiring the "www" prefix typically means the sites are extremely old or unsophisticated. In the case of higher traffic sites such as NASA.gov and FAA.gov it may mean the sites are a complex mesh of public and private information, which makes modernizing the addresses more complicated, Balter said.
Lost Docs Blog Report on Department and Agency Receipt Postings
Report In addition to the Lost Docs monthly report we at the Lost Docs Blog will also frequently issue different reports and updates. The report that follows focuses on the departments and agencies which are represented by the GPO receipts collected thus far. For future reports we hope to provide more in depth analysis including that of cataloging times. Of the 696 fugitive document receipts ( “false positives” excluded, those with records in the CGP at the time they were reported) the top five departments and agencies, ranked according to the number of receipts received, are as follows, with the department listed and then any agencies within that department for which we received a sizable number of receipts. Please remember that the reporting here is based only on those GPO receipts forwarded to the Lost Docs Project Blog. Our numbers are not based on the total number of fugitive documents reported to GPO.
- Department of Health and Human Services.....194 (28% of total receipts) National Institutes of Health 151 (78% of total HHS receipts,including NCI) National Cancer Institute (NCI) 112 Other agencies and offices within the department 43
- Department of Justice.........125 (18% of total receipts) Bureau of Justice Statistics 13 Office of Justice Programs 10 FBI 7 Other agencies and offices within the department 93
- Department of Interior.....80 (11% of total receipts) Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (formerly MMS) 29 (36% of total Dept. of Interior receipts) National Parks Service 23 Bureau of Land Management 22 USGS 6
- USDA.......43 (6% of total receipts) US Forest Service 7 Other agencies 36
- Department of Commerce.....37 (5% of total receipts) NOAA 34 (92% of total Dept. of Commerce receipts) Census Bureau 3
- If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
- Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
- Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
- Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/ or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.
Privacy then and now: Some history of the “Patriot” Act
Declan McCullagh describes how the pre-2001 "Enhancement of Privacy and Public Safety in Cyberspace Act," which was unacceptable to Congress, morphed into the "Combating Terrorism Act of 2001" and then into the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001," which was rushed through Congress and passed without giving members time time to read the changes that had been incorporated in it.
- How 9/11 attacks reshaped U.S. privacy debate, by Declan McCullagh, cnet, (September 9, 2011). After the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, however, the sentiment in political circles quickly shifted from protecting electronic privacy to facilitating government surveillance. The privacy bill approved by the committee by such a lopsided margin disappeared. ..."Perhaps the biggest systemic change in the way the government conducts investigations since 9/11 is the transition from targeted surveillance--where the government picks a target and spies on that person--to untargeted wholesale surveillance, where masses of people are surveilled," says Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "And then the government decides who it wants to focus on."
- Poll: OK to trade some freedoms to fight terrorism, By Jennifer Agiesta, Associated Press (Sept 6, 2011). Ten years after the 9/11 attacks led to amped-up government surveillance efforts, two-thirds of Americans say it's fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. ...A slim majority -- 54 percent -- say that if they had to choose between preserving their rights and freedoms and protecting people from terrorists, they'd come down on the side of civil liberties. The public is particularly protective of the privacy of U.S. citizens, voicing sharp opposition to government surveillance of Americans' emails and phone calls.