Open Library redesign and proposal for collaborative digitizing of documents
The Open Library announced yesterday that their redesigned site is now available with lots of new features and functionalities. As I suggested in my tweet a few minutes ago, wouldn't it be great if lots of depository libraries bought cheap book scanners like the Decapod (A Mellon funded project), digitized government documents and uploaded them to the Open Library? There are tons of records for government documents just waiting for the attachment of a digital file. And GPO could help by sharing their records from the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) with the Open Library where librarians and others could enhance to make more robust metadata (which could be fed back in to the CGP!). Lots of libraries with Decapods make light work! (Full disclosure: I'm on the board of QuestionCopyright, a 501(c)(3) non-profit which has its own book scanning hardware/software project called Book Liberator. BL developers are in close contact with Decapod folks. But I get no economic benefit from either Book Liberator or Decapod.) Continue reading
New report on link rot
The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive has released the results of its third annual analysis of link rot among the original URLs for law- and policy-related materials published to the Web and archived though the Chesapeake Project.
The 2010 analysis reveals that nearly 28 percent of the online publications archived between March 2007 and March 2008 have now disappeared from their original locations on the Web but, due to the project’s preservation efforts, remain accessible via permanent archive URLs.... These findings demonstrate a dramatic increase in link rot among archived Web content over time.The Chesapeake Project was designed to preserve born-digital legal information published directly to the Web. It was launched in early 2007 by the Georgetown Law Library and the State Law Libraries of Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake project has expanded by adding a new law library to the project. It has also become the model for The Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA) which has announced the formation of its Legal Information Archive, a collaborative digital preservation program for the law library community. See also, an earlier report: Recent report on Link Rot. Continue reading
Please Use askGPO to Report Lost Docs
Several observers at the recently closed Spring 2010 Depository Library Council conference reported that GPO staff are asking people to use the askGPO form available at http://gpo.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/gpo.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php when reporting fugitive documents instead of the LostDocs form. The LostDocs form may be in the process of being revised. We at the LostDocs blog want to do whatever we can to ensure accurate reporting that gets to the right people at GPO. So we encourage people to use the askGPO form after first checking the Catalog of Government Publications. When you get to the askGPO form, be sure to select "Federal Depository Libraries" as a category, then select fugitive publications/lostdocs as a subcategory. Then provide as much as you know about the document like title, producing agency, URL if there is one, author contact if available and so forth. Give GPO everything you think you would need or want to know to locate a copy of the document on your own. askGPO also sends out e-mail receipts. So if you make a report through askGPO, we ask that you forward your askGPO receipt to lostdocs "AT" freegovinfo DOT info, so they can be posted to this blog. One particularly exciting piece of news that came out of the Spring 2010 DLC was that GPO may institute statistical reporting for fugitive documents/documents discovery. All of us at FGI hope that this is true. GPO could give out a more complete picture of what is happening to reported documents than we can. We're a flashlight in the dark that highlights some documents but not others. A fully transparent GPO reporting program on fugitive documents could be the full light of day that would benefit everyone. Continue reading
Open Source code from the White House!
White House contributes to open-source project, GCN (Apr 22, 2010).
Much of the [White House website] is already open source as part of the Drupal project.... Today's release [of open source code for Whitehouse.gov] adds custom code to Drupal, making the White House a participant in open-source development. The release adds four modules to enhance three key characteristics: scalability, communication and accessibility.See the announcement "WhiteHouse.gov Releases Open Source Code" Posted by Dave Cole on April 21, 2010 at 04:26 PM EDT at http://www.whitehouse.gov/tech. Continue reading
April 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal
REPORT For this first time since we started the Lost Docs Blog, we had no false positives. None of the 38 reports made to GPO and posted by us were in the Catalog of Government Publications at the time the report was made. The reports were sent to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info in late March and April. Some of the original reports to lostdocs@GPO were made in February, but not sent to us until late March. One of the 38 reported items that were posted to the blog in April has been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. This item was Tornado Protection: Selecting Refuge Areas in Buildings. You can find the report and cataloging date at http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/2010/04/tornado-protection-selecting-refuge-areas-in-buildings/. We are appreciative that this was cataloged. 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.