Another Google Search Is Gone
Google Realtime Search Goes Missing, by Vanessa Fox. Search Engine Land (Jul 3, 2011).
As Deal With Twitter Expires, Google Realtime Search Goes Offline, by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Jul 4, 2011).
Google Doesn't Need Twitter Anymore, So It Just Let Their Deal Expire, by Matt Rosoff, Business Insider (July 4, 2011).
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Sometimes even the live links are dead (or languishing)
Readers of FGI are well acquainted with link rot, where internet links break over time. Today I'd like to talk about something more subtle with no obvious way to detect the problem. On the Alaska page of the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project, I had a link to APOC InfoQuick, a database of disclosure information for public officials and lobbyists from the Alaska Public Offices Commission. Today I visited the link at https://webapp.state.ak.us/apoc/index.jsp and chose the "lobbyist reporting" menu item because I thought it would be fun to list BP lobbyists in a personal blog entry I was drafting. The lobbyist reporting section had a Search Lobbyist Registrations link. I clicked on it, searched for BP and got some listings. But only from 2007, the first year that Sarah Palin was Governor. Searches in other parts of the lobbyist reporting system confirmed that NO information was available after 2007. I started to wonder if I'd missed the session law that repealed lobbying reporting requirements. Then I noticed that the URL started with "webapp" and thought that it might be good to see if this database was still linked from the APOC home page. It wasn't. Now they had a link called "search reports" at http://doa.alaska.gov/apoc/SearchReports/index.html. The page features two reporting systems for public officials - An "interim reporting system" for reports filed 2010 and later and "searchable campaign reporting" which is the public official/candidate portion of APOC InfoQuick. This explains why APOC InfoQuick wasn't taken off the live web. Current information on lobbyists in Alaska is still available, just not database searchable. You can access various PDF lobbyist reports from 2005 forward at http://doa.alaska.gov/apoc/TrainingReports/lobbyist.html. I have no information on why lobbyist information is no longer database searchable and speculating why would take me out of my comfort zone of not discussing policy choices made by the level of government I work for. The main point I'm making is that most librarians and other information specialists are pretty comfortable with link checking and fixing broken links when we find them. But what can we do when a site remains on the web but has stopped being updated? Especially when there's no note on the old site about the change? Continue reading
Those 11 words in the Pentagon Papers: redacted, not redacted.
It turns out that the mysterious eleven words that were supposed to have been redacted when the Pentagon Papers were officially released had already been published 40 years ago making their continued classification moot. Neither the classifying agency nor the now restored eleven words themselves were publicly identified.
- Why Weren’t 11 Words Redacted from the Pentagon Papers?, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News, (June 28, 2011).
Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA) Heads to House Floor
Legislation that would require copies of congressionally mandated reports to be published online by GPO cleared a major hurdle when it unanimously passed the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at a business meeting on Wednesday. The "Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act," introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley and joined by 12 co-sponsors, will now advance to the floor of the House of Representatives. "Access to Congressionally Advances to the House Floor" by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation (June 23, 2011). Continue reading
Promises, Promises…
July 5, 2011 / 1 Comment on Promises, Promises…
Following up on yesterday's post about Another Google Search going away: Gary Price notes that Google had promised an archive of Twitter posts and that Google has recently removed another service:
- Google Realtime Search Offline; It Will Return But What About Complete Twitter Archive Google Was Planning?, by Gary D. Price, INFOdocket (July 4, 2011).
- Official: The Google Wonder Wheel Is Gone, by Gary Price, Search Engine Land (Jul 3, 2011).
I find it significant when for-profit companies develop products and then take them offline or when they fail to deliver on promised products. I don't begrudge them the right to do this and I'm not surprised when they do. I find it significant, though, when libraries rely heavily on such services, particularly when they replace services and collections that libraries have traditionally provided to their user communities. Libraries always rely on commercial products, of course, from the old print volumes of Readers' Guide to fancy online abstracting and indexing services. But there is a difference between using such products to supplement and enhance services and collections and using them to replace services and collections. When libraries decrease their own services and minimize their own locally-controlled collections and act as little more than a gateway to commercial services, they do their user communities no favors. There is a lot being written about the role of libraries in the digital age and a lot of libraries are seemingly content to "let someone else do it." When libraries give up to publishers and for-profit companies the traditional library roles of selecting, acquiring, organizing, providing access to and services for information, and (libraries hope) preserving that information, they are abrogating their essential role, their defining characteristics. Such decisions will surely weaken libraries as an institution. But what about their user-communities? Such decisions leave the communities at the mercy of private companies and the marketplace and without a say in what information is important to them. IBM, a big company that has had its ups and downs, pointed out recently: This isn't surprising. What is profitable comes and goes. What is important for a user community shouldn't be left to the whims of the marketplace; it should be in control of the community through its own institutions. When we consider the information that is important to a user community, that institution is, by definition, the library. Then promises can be made by -- and kept by -- the community itself. Continue reading →Continue Reading →