May 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal
REPORT We have now gone two months on the Lost Docs Blog, without a false positive. None of the 33 reports made to GPO and posted by us were in the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) at the time the report was made. Five of the 33 reported items that were posted to the blog in April have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can see the cataloged items by visiting http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking for items with a May 2010 date. We are appreciative of these items being cataloged. There were six instances where a record for the paper item was in the CGP, but there was no indication this item was also available electronic. To view these items, visit http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/catalog-eversion/ and look for items with a May 2010 date. APPEAL If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:
- 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.
Fugitive Gulf of Mexico MMS Docs
As I was tardily working on the May 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal, I noticed a few of pre-spill Minerals Management Service (MMS) documents dealing with the Gulf of Mexico reported to GPO that have not yet been cataloged. I'm posting links here in hopes that people may find them useful in the "Before and After" comparisons that will eventually be made. Northern Gulf of Mexico Continental Slope Habitats and Benthic Ecology Study. July 2009 http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/ESPIS/4/4842.pdf Post-Hurricane Assessment of Sensitive Habitats of the Flower Garden Banks Vicinity. July 2009 http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/ESPIS/4/4851.pdf Foraminiferal Communities of Bathyal Hydrocarbon Seeps, Northern Gulf of Mexico http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/ESPIS/4/4833.pdf Lest anyone get the idea I'm accusing GPO of hiding MMS documents, I want to acknowledge that GPO has cataloged most of the MMS items reported to it that we are aware of. See http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/tag/minerals-management-service/ for titles received by the Lost Docs Blog. Continue reading
Smithsonian digitization strategic plan
The Smithsonian has just released their digitization strategic plan for fiscal years 2010 - 2015 called "Creating a Digital Smithsonian" -- executive summary and full report. I'm in 2 minds about this as well as similar digitization plans. On the one hand, the digitization of Smithsonian collections -- books, research reports, data, music, film and other sounds (like frog vocalizations!) -- will mean potentially a boon to online access to some really amazing materials. On the other hand, this quote from the executive summary worries me:
To preserve our collections, the Smithsonian constantly battles the destructive forces of time and environment. Despite our best efforts, plastics discolor, wax cylinder recordings distort, and botanical specimens become brittle. Digitization offers a way to make objects — and the valuable information they contain — available without jeopardizing their integrity by handling or by exposure to the elements.While they mention a "life cycle-management approach to digitization," there doesn't seem to be a serious amount of thought given to the fact that digital objects degrade faster than physical objects, and that digital preservation is an ongoing and potentially more expensive effort. I worry that SI.edu will broker the same kind of disastrous deal that GAO did with Thomson-West whereby a whole swath of public domain information was privatized. I would call on SI.edu and ALL .gov agencies to insert a clause into ANY digitization contract that ALL digital files and metadata will be accessible via free and open sites. That means where applicable, copies of all digital content would be ingested into GPO's FDsys, Library of Congress, NARA and/or publicly accessible non-profit sites (eg. UNT digital library or Internet Archive). Please help us get this message across to your friends in the .gov sector. Public information should remain public! Continue reading
BREAKING: 46,000+ pages of SCOTUS nominee Kagan Docs Now Online
In an article entitled "In Supreme Court Work, Early Views of Kagan" Charlie Savage at the NY Times has just released a ton(!) of memos written by SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan during her time as a young law clerk working for Justice Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court.
The latest release with more than 46,500 pages re: SCOTUS Nominee, Elena Kagan, are now available on The Clinton Library Web Site.
You Can Access the Individual Files Here (Found in 74 Boxes)
or Download Seven Large PDF Files (about 205 Megs each) and Access All Pages in All Files
See Also: Previously Released Documents re: Elena Kagan
[Thanks for the heads-up Gary Price at ResourceShelf!] Continue readingHow a bill is *actually* made
This was just tweeted by the folks at the Sunlight Foundation and I thought the infographic was really sweet:
Compare that with the simplified version on GPO's Ben's Guide which makes no mention of CBO scores, markup, lobbyists, filibusters, reconciliation etc.
The graphic above (see full size here) was one of the winners in the Sunlight Foundation's recent Design for America contest. There's also an excellent guide to the Senate rules, and a brilliant, user-friendly redesign of the IRS website. You can see all the winners here.
Thanks Mike Wirth for the killer infographic and thanks Sunlight Foundation for a well done Design for America contest!
Continue reading