Bulk access to THOMAS and Legislation
From a blog post at Sunlight Foundation:
Yesterday, Rep. Bill Foster introduced a bill that would improve public access to legislative information. Specifically, H.R. 6289 calls for: * Bulk access to THOMAS legislative summary and status data, * The creation of an advisory committee that would issue recommendations on improving services provided by THOMAS, and * The Library of Congress to work towards adding bulk access to the full text of legislation. Rep. Foster Introduces Bill To Improve THOMAS, By Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation (09/30/10).Continue reading
Libraries: Good News, Bad News
This week, two stories in the news about libraries highlight the importance of libraries to their communities and the challenges they face.
- Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Announces Support for Library Facilities Across the Country. U.S. Department of Agriculture Press Release No. 0486.10 (Sept. 24, 2010). Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced investments in 30 states that will create jobs by building and enhancing libraries in 129 rural communities across the nation. The projects are being funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act). "Libraries are the centerpiece of rural community life, but in many cases they need additional funding to provide rural residents with computer access, modern equipment and new training and educational opportunities," Vilsack said. "These Recovery Act investments in our nation's libraries will serve rural America for generations to come."
- Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries, by David Streitfeld, New York Times (September 26, 2010). Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort -- and maybe not even then? "There's this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries," said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company's chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. "Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization."
GPO contracts Ithaka S+R to develop sustainable FDLP models
UPDATED 9/27. GPO staff kindly sent me the link to the original GPO RFQ, which I added below. JRJ Many of our readers will have already seen this announcement yesterday that Ithaka S+R (the "strategy and research" arm of the Ithaka group which also includes JSTOR academic journal database and Portico digital archive service) has been contracted by the Government Printing Office (GPO) for a project to "develop sustainable models for the FDLP in the 21st century" (see FedBizOpps award notice and GPO Request for Quotation (RFQ) here). Those interested may track the project on their Web site fdlpmodeling.net. While we have had spirited discussions with Ithaka regarding the future of the FDLP in the past, we look forward to tracking this project, participating in the discussions, and analyzing the outcomes. Because so many of us WILL participate in this project, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out a recent article by Barbara Fister in her Library Babel Fish column entitled "Assessing the (Enduring) Value of Libraries" (Inside Higher Ed, September 17, 2010). In the article, Fister points out that "library values - such as the preservation of knowledge and the protection of intellectual freedom - are bigger than any one library or any single community's local needs."
"If we focus so exclusively on how we contribute to the bottom line of a single institution, we may lose sight of the fact that libraries are cultural institutions that have something to contribute to society beyond our campuses and beyond this fiscal year. Somehow "return on investment" sounds like the kind of managerial thinking that shortchanges the future. And that worries me."I hope that Ithaka and my government documents and library colleagues will have Fister's words in the front of their minds as they discuss and plan for the future of the FDLP. And I hope Ithaka will share their draft survey instrument, list of participants, and draft report(s) as they work through this FDLP modeling project.
On behalf of the Government Printing Office, Ithaka S+R is launching a project that will develop sustainable models for the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st century. The Program plays a critical role in making federal government information available to the American public, preserving it, and providing services to help the public and specialized user communities to make effective use of government information. We’re currently reaching out to libraries of all types – public, government, academic, and law libraries, and both participants and non-participants in the Program – to alert you of the launch of this project. We hope that the FreeGovInfo community will choose to engage with us regularly during the project’s six-month duration, to ensure that your experience and perspective is incorporated to the greatest extent possible. Engaging the community – including non-participating libraries that may rely on depository libraries in providing government information services to their constituents as well as members of the Program – is a priority for this project. We will rely on the input of the library community in our efforts to model a FDLP that meets the needs of depository libraries as well as of the broader library community and those they serve. Towards this end, we’ve just launched a website – fdlpmodeling.net – to serve as a venue for community engagement, providing updates on the status of the project, offering a variety of mechanisms for community input, and sharing drafts and interim deliverables for comment. We’d encourage you to visit the site, learn about the project, and share your thoughts with us at this early stage. While you’re there, please subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for email updates so you can be alerted of new posts. And of course, please share this information with any colleagues or others who might be interested. We hope to hear from you over the course of this project, either via fdlpmodeling.net or directly by email. Kind regards, Roger Schonfeld & Ross Housewright Ithaka S+RContinue reading
Crowdsourcing challenge: Who started the open data initiative?
I was recently thinking about the diffusion process behind open data initiatives. Local and federal governments across the world are incorporating their versions of "free data." This movement has even travelled up north, such as in the village I currently reside in; which released its first batch of data on November 2009. It seems all too coincidental that many levels of government adopted "free data" soon after the launch of Data.gov by the U.S. government in May 2009. Some questions that pop into my mind are: 1. When and where exactly did this open data movement originate from? 2. Are left-wing local/federal governments stronger supporters of this policy? I invite the readers to share any insight they have regarding these (open?) questions. Continue reading
Lunchtime listen: Malamud at Gov2.0 summit (#gov20)
Carl Malamud's at it again. In his rousing opening keynote titled "Currents of Our Time" at the 2010 Gov2.0 Summit in Washington DC, Malamud described both the horrendous current lay of the land in govt IT as well as several uplifting examples from the progressive era of government and activists at the forefront of positive public change. Then he defined his 3 steps for for transforming government as platform:
- finish the opengov revolution (bulk data, strong FOIA, providing access to knowledge to all!)
- spend a minimum of $250 million per year for a decade on a national scanning initiative.
- open systems revolution: "a Computer Commission with the kind of authority the Civil Service Commission had to conduct agency-by-agency reviews and help us reboot .gov, flipping the bit from a reliance on over-designed custom systems to one based on open-source building blocks, judicious use of commercial off-the-shelf-components, and much tighter control of the beltway bandits."