My $3.52 Worth of PACER
As you might have noticed, I was inspired to register for a PACER account because of the presentation from the Six State Virtual Conference. Today I'd like to share my brief initial experience with PACER. I received my password a few hours after applying for it. Today I logged into PACER and decided to look for documents related to Perry et al v. Schwarzenegger. I realize that some documents in this case are already publicly available, but I wanted something to search that I knew would be in the system. First I clicked on the database link for the Northern District of California, since I knew the case was heard in San Francisco. The resulting search screen offered my several choices, including searching by attorney name. I tried Theodore Olsen, knowing he was one of the attorneys. I got back two cases, but neither was Perry et al v. Schwarzenegger. I was charged $0.08. According to PACER documentation, I would have been charged $0.08 even if I had zero results. So I did a quick Google search to learn that Perry's first name was Kristen and did a party search for Kristen Perry. I immediately got Case Number 3:09-ev-02292-VRW, better known as Perry et al v. Schwarzenegger. This also cost me $0.08, but since I got a useful result, I didn't mind. I looked at the Case Summary ($0.08). I looked at the Case File Location ($0.08) and determined the case files might still be with Judge Walker. Then I looked at the Docket Report. There were 742 files associated with the case. PACER determined that this should be charged as 30 pages or $2.40. Browsing through the list I decided to pull up a 10 page letter from "Voter X" which was sent to Judge Walker during the trial. This person said they feared retaliation from pro-same sex marriage forces and represented themselves as just one of the many voters who voted for Prop 8. The letter was written like a legal brief and I suspect the author was an attorney or paralegal. Viewing and downloading this letter cost me $0.80. By now I had spent $3.52. PACER waives $10/quarter, so if I stop here, I won't be charged this quarter. But what if I wanted to look at multiple documents?. At $0.08 a page, I had 81 pages left. And if I reloaded the Docket Report a few times instead of remembering to open documents into a new browser tab, I could have only opened up a document or two before getting charged for real, because each refresh of the Docket Report would have been another $2.40/30 pages. I started playing with PACER to see if it was worth recommending registration to those library patrons looking to retrieve federal court documents. I need to think about it some more, but at the moment my feeling is that $10.00 worth of free access doesn't go very far. And it would probably be used up quickest by the very patrons I would want to recommend it to. Folks who may want a lot of briefs and filings but who are not great searchers. But I haven't totally made up my mind about this. What do you think? If you work in a non-court library, have you gotten patrons to register for PACER? What has been your experience? I do suggest that librarians should register for PACER accounts and search around to see what's available. Then decide for yourselves whether to lobby Congress to free this resource so people can explore the law without watching the meter. Continue reading
Training Sessions from the Six-State Virtual Conference Available
The Government Printing Office posted the following announcement to their FDLP-L list that seemed worth sharing:
From: Announcements from the Federal Depository Library Program On Behalf Of FDLP Listserv Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 8:50 AM To: GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV Subject: Training Sessions from the Six-State Virtual Conference Available The six states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming recently held an online conference using the OPAL web conferencing software. Over 5 days, the Six-State Virtual Government Information Conference ran 17 different programs covering numerous topics of interest to Federal depository libraries and government information professionals. GPO is proud to have provided technical support for this online conference and we invite the wider FDLP community to view 15 archived sessions of the conference in the OPAL Archives at their convenience at http://www.opal-online.org/archivegpo.htm. The topics of the sessions vary greatly to cover both hot issues in depository libraries as well as training on Federal information products. Examples include: the Sunlight Foundation's address on open access, demographic and business information from the Census Bureau, tracking the usage of your online depository collection, moving to a more electronic collection, FDsys, and marketing depository collections and services, to name a few. Be sure to visit the Web page the conference organizers developed to accompany the virtual conference. The page includes links to the PowerPoint presentations, audio clips from government information specialists, a Twitter feed, OPAL information, and more. See http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/govpubs/conference/6state/index.htmIn addition to the above, there is a program on using PACER, the federal courts documents system. I've got a lot to learn about PACER and this session seems like a great place to start. We at FGI have often spoken of the need for GPO to partner with depository libraries to provide training to the wider community. We salute GPO, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming for making this conference a reality and for sharing it with the wider govinfo community. If you attended the conference or watched the videos, we'd be interested in your impressions and comments. Continue reading
Today in history: ratification of the 19th amendment
On August 18, 1920, the [w:Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution] was ratified giving women the right to vote and participate in the political process! Most states ratified right away; but 10 states held out. Georgia and Louisiana didn't get around to ratifying until 1970(!).
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.And in memory of that momentous occasion, don't forget to check out what libraries have to offer. You'll find lots of books, images and more at the sites below:
- Marching for the right to vote: remembering the woman suffrage parade of 1913 (part of the American Women collection at the Library of Congress)
- By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
- Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921
- Worldcat search for Women's suffrage (find library materials near you)
- National Archives Women's history collection
- Then and Now: Faces of Suffrage - International Museum of Women
Bringing GPO into the Digital World
Mike Wash, CIO for the Government Printing Office, is Washington Post's Federal Player of the Week. Also interesting, this article was jointly prepared by the Washington Post and the Partnership for Public Service, which strives to improve federal government performance and recognize the good, hard work of our public servants. In an environment replete with knee-jerk anti-government sentiment, such work seems especially important for enhancing the public's understanding of government professionals' work and impact. Another similar organization I follow is Understanding Government, which supports excellence in reporting of the executive branch. Of course, we need our watchdogs and gadflies to push back against government secrecy, but we also need to know when people at all levels of government are doing things well. Continue reading
Govistics and the need for library data microservices
Several of us here at Stanford library who deal with data and/or govt information have recently received emails asking if we'd be interested in a free trial of the Pro level of subscription to the Govistics Government Spending Database built by the Center for Governmental Research (CGR). I'm a sucker for free trials, so took them up on their offer. Here's what I found -- and please take it with an FGI grain of salt ;-) The interface is easy for quick results and high-level comparisons, but I found it lacking for any kind of in-depth scholarly pursuits -- the researchers and students I work with would most likely be interested in historic data for all counties or all municipalities in a state or region or ALL states; and they'd probably want the data exportable so they could do further analysis with a statistical package (SPSS etc) or GIS software. I also didn't find the maps or charts particularly compelling. $50/year for an individual subscription (I didn't ask about an institutional subscription) seems like too steep a price to pay when there are other *free* tools out there -- my personal favorite is Many Eyes (also check out their new project Many Bills visual bill explorer!). Many Eyes allows a person to upload datasets, share them, run a variety of visualizations (charts, graphs, maps, clouds etc), and most importantly embed those visualizations in other Web pages. Govistics doesn't do any of that. And what about the underlying data you say? Govistics is basically US census of govts which is available for free on factfinder.census.gov (although only in PDF with no data export :-|). Many of the same variables are also available via the Census' County and City Data Book (again only PDF :-|). Govistics only offers data export with the pro version and the data only goes back to 2007. I don't begrudge the govistics folks trying to make a quick buck on public domain data that's already available online for free (well maybe a little). Perhaps for the casual user, this service will work well. But what I'd love to see is libraries creating interfaces like this *for free*. There needs to be free tools that include access + visualization + preservation. UVA has done gotten a great start with their historical county and city data books 1944-2000(!). This is especially cool because it not only gives access to historical data back to 1944 (no visualization yet, but users can use Many Eyes!) and allows for export of data for reuse, but it provides a preservation model as well. And THAT'S why I'd love to see more libraries doing this sort of thing. This is an increasingly data driven world and it would behoove libraries to combine these kind of access/visualization services with libraries' traditional strength in long-term preservation. --that is all. Continue reading