40 percent in US lack home broadband
The new report from the National Telecommunications And Information Administration (NTIA) on broadband availability in the U.S. is now available. The most dramatic finding is that approximately 40 percent of all persons in the U.S. have no broadband access at home.
- DIGITAL NATION: 21st Century America’s Progress Towards Universal Broadband Internet Access "An NTIA Research Preview" (February 2010). (PDF, 1.3 MB)
White House uses ebook formats
The Economic Report of the President is available from the White House web site in 3 formats: PDF, Kindle, and the open ePub format which Barnes & Noble's Nook, Sony's Reader, and other ebook-reader-software can use. The epub format, being an open, non-proprietary standard is, potentially, much easier to preserve for the long-term than proprietary formats like Kindle and PDF. I looked at the Kindle version, the ePub version using the Stanza application on a Macintosh laptop and on an iPhone, and the PDF version on my laptop. The PDF looks the way the printed book looks with accurate page formatting and layout. The ePub and Kindle formatting is not perfect, but is readable. Table of Contents links did not work at all in Stanza, but did on the Kindle -- including links to individual statistical tables in the appendix. The PDF version has a navigation sidebar for the chapters, but not for the statistical tables within the appendix. Statistical tables are complete and accurately formatted in the epub and Kindle versions. They are tiny on the iPhone, but re-sizable, so the tables are readable. I doubt many people will want to read those tables on their phones, however. On the Kindle, the statistical tables are not resizable and I found them very hard to read, even when I rotated them to "landscape" orientation. The tables did not appear at all in the Stanza app on the Macintosh. This is a welcome first step for making digital government information more widely available. The digital publishing community needs to do more work on the open ePub format to handle formatting and links better and the hardware and software manufacturers need to work toward better usability. After working recently to produce a book in Kindle, epub, and PDF formats, I know that publishers (including whoever formatted these for ebook readers [GPO?]) can do a better job even now with what they have. But, this is a good first step. See also: White House embraces e-book readers, By Nate Anderson, ars technica (February 15, 2010). Continue reading
International Amateur Scanning League (IASL) to the rescue!
Carl Malamud announced yesterday the inaugural meeting of the International Amateur Scanning League (IASL) (I'm already imagining cool swag!). Malamud is taking FedFlix program to the streets! Fedflix, a joint venture between the National Technical Information Service and Public.Resource.Org, digitizes NTIS video and makes them available on YouTube, the Internet Archive, and the public.resource.org Stock Footage Library.
Well now a gang of volunteers including members of DC CopyNight and Smithsonian employees working on their own time are going to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and copying over 1,500 DVDs to be uploaded to the net.
Malamud said:
What makes this grassroots digitization effort so remarkable is that it has the full support of the government. Indeed, David Ferriero, the U.S. Archivist, joined me in the initial meeting where we taught volunteers how to rip DVDs!Kudos to Malamud and the IASL! And this makes me think that more libraries and librarians should be doing the same thing for govt documents. Why not set up your own scanning operations in your depository library (Book Liberator or DIY Book Scanner can show you how to digitize on the cheap!) and then deposit those scans into the Internet Archive's US Documents Collection (don't forget to follow FDLP digitization standards!). Scans could also be ingested into FDSys (when they've got that capability working ;-)). So get to it; what are you waiting for?! Continue reading
GPO Fugitives Talk Now on OPAL Archive
The Government Printing Office (GPO) has posted their recent session on reporting fugitive documents at their OPAL archive: Helping GPO Identify Fugitive Publications presented in January 2010 by Joe McClane, Manager of Content Acquisitions, and Linda Nainis, Acquisitions Librarian, U.S. Government Printing Office.
- Streaming audio with slides (runtime 69:10)
- Downloadable MP3 audiorecording (22 MB; runtime 69:10)
White House claims copyright of photos on Flickr
White House Makes Full Copyright Claim on Photos, by Kathy Gill The Moderate Voice (Feb 6th, 2010).
The U.S. government policy on photographs and copyright is pretty straightfoward: photos produced by federal employees as part of their job responsibilities are "not subject to copyright in the United States and there are no U.S. copyright restrictions on reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance, or display of the work." Why, then, is the Obama White House asserting that no one but "news organizations" can use its Flickr photos? Why is it asserting that manipulation is prohibited? Why is it asserting that photos may not be used in "commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House"?http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/4331402906/ Continue reading