Building a Civic Commons
Andrew McLaughlin who has been Director of Global Public Policy at Google, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for President Obama, Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is now the Executive Director of Civic Commons and part of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. On his new blog at Stanford he introduces the Civic Commons:
- Building a Civic Commons, by Andrew McLaughlin, Stanford Law School, Center for Internet and Society (June 7, 2011). Civic Commons is a new non-profit initiative that helps governments build and use shared and open technologies to improve public services, transparency, accountability, citizen participation, and management effectiveness, all while saving money.
If It Is Too Inconvenient, I’m Not Going After It
This research shows how much users value convenience and quick access. That will probably not surprise you, but it should help inform choices for libraries. The choices libraries make will increase their value to users or drive users away.
- Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, Timothy J. Dickey, and Marie L. Radford. 2011. 'If It Is Too Inconvenient, I'm Not Going After it:' Convenience as a Critical Factor in Information-Seeking Behaviors. Library and Information Science Research, 33: 179-190. Pre-print available online at: http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2011/connaway-lisr.pdf (.pdf: 275K/46 pp.). It can be argued that in the not-too-distant past, resources were scarce, and libraries were one of the only sources of trustworthy information. Users were obliged to conform to library practices and standards in order to successfully meet their information needs. Now, users' time and attention are scarce, while resources are abundant with the development of the Internet and Web-based services (blogs, chat, social media sites, etc.) and easily accessed, digitized content. This article provides an overview of findings from two multi-year grant-funded projects. These projects address the questions: "Why do people choose one information source instead of another?" and "What factors contribute to their selection of information sources?" Specifically, the emergence of the concept of convenience as a critical factor in information-seeking choices among a variety of different types of people, across a period of several years, and in a variety of contexts, is explored.
A Bit of New Info About Library of Congress/Twitter Archive
Boulder, CO based Gnip has announced they're working with LC and Twitter to deliver tweets to the archive. During the past six months Gnip has been delivering 8 billion tweets each week to LC. Gnip is in the real time social media biz for enterprise customers. Much more info at: http://infodocket.com/2011/06/09/news-about-lcs-twitter-archive-gnip-will-work-with-both-organizations-to-provide-access-to-tweets/ Continue reading
EPIC Reports: “WhiteHouse.gov to Track Users for Two Years”
From the EPIC Blog: "The White House modified its privacy policy for WhiteHouse.gov on June 3, 2011. The new policy is more than twice as long as the old policy. The new policy states the White House web site now uses persistent Google Analytics cookies that track users for up to two years. Previously the site employed only single-session cookies, which were automatically deleted when users closed their browsers. The site does not provide a means for visitors to opt out of receiving cookies." The EPIC blog post includes links to old and new privacy policies and a couple of other relevant links. Continue reading