NY Times publishes documents
More than once here at FGI we have lamented the fact that newspapers have not used the web to link to documents (of all kinds, not just government publications) that they cite. The New York Times is doing a better job of this than most. I recently realized that they even have a server named documents.nytimes.com. I noticed this when following a story (Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan, By James Dao, December 30, 2009) about a new, unpublished Army history of the war in Afghanistan. The report, "A Different Kind of War," was "written by a team of seven historians at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and based on open source material, it is scheduled to be published by spring." The Times posted the document online http://documents.nytimes.com/a-different-kind-of-war#p=1 , but not as a PDF or other downloadable format, but as a series of page-images. I would certainly prefer to see the option of downloading the entire document and can't see why the Times didn't provide that option. (There are no ads on the pages I viewed, so it isn't a matter of forcing you to view an ad for every page you read.) Presumably the published version will be available for downloading and preservation, but it would be better if this version was also available for downloading and preservation. That would make it easier for scholars to use now and easier to compare changes when the final version is released. I also noticed that, if you go to the root web directory of the Times documents web site (http://documents.nytimes.com) you are redirected to http://documents.nytimes.com/atom which is an RSS (actually "atom" -- a similar format) feed of documents posted. That is excellent! Continue reading
The ethical case for free, open and effective access…
In the sciences, the general case for sharing of all scientific knowledge (and knowledge resources) has long been clearly articulated. Robert K. Merton, sociologist of science at Columbia made the case in 1942 -- where he said: “The substantive findings of science are a product of social collaboration and are assigned to the community. They constitute a common heritage in which the equity of the individual producer is severely limited…” [SEE: Robert K. Merton, “A Note on Science and Democracy,” Journal of Law and Political Sociology 1 (1942): 121.] at about the same time (1941) a "Declaration of Scientific Principles" appeared in Nature -- “7. The pursuit of scientific inquiry demands complete intellectual freedom. And unrestricted international exchange of knowledge…“ [SEE:“The Commonwealth of Science, ” Nature No.3753 October 4, 1941] These scientific values have been affirmed and re-affirmed many times. In fact, the predecessor to UNESCO was the League of Nations Committee on International Intellectual Cooperation... [SEE related: "The union of International Associations" and "The Mundaneum" http://www.uia.be/node/85 ] The principle that access to knowledge is an essential human right (and fundamental to effective citizenship) has also been widely affirmed. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 declares: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." [SEE: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml ] In fact, the authors of the US Constitution realized that access to knowledge was essential to the public welfare -- the notion of limited monopoly on "intellectual property" -- as defined in the provisions for patent and copyright make this clear and by the recognition of the public domain. (Thomas Jefferson, corresponding with his Secretary of War in 1807, wrote: "The field of knowledge is the common property of all mankind.") In 1954, when Edward R. Murrow asked him about patenting the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk famously commented" "That would be like patenting the sun..." 35 years later Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg was warning of the deterioration of the ethic of sharing [SEE: “Data Sharing: A Declining Ethic? -- Commercial pressures and heightened competition are testing the notion that scientific data and materials should be widely shared.” Science v. 248 p952- 957, 25 May 1990]. It seems more than a little ironic that now -- 50 years later -- "20% of human gene DNA sequences are patented" [Science Magazine Policy Forum: K.Jensen and F. Murray, "Intellectual Property: Landscape of the Human Genome," Science 14 October 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5746, pp. 239 - 240]. Thus sadly, despite clear and longstanding articulation of the principles of free and open access to knowledge, there has been a strong countervailing trend toward restriction of knowledge ["commoditization" -- SEE: J. Birkinshaw and T. Sheehan, “Managing the Knowledge Life Cycle,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 44 (2) Fall, 2002:77]. So, assuming (as in my previous post) that librarians are both stewards and advocates -- how do we make our case...? 1) We marshal all available historical and philosophical evidence for support of open access [in effect, I've cited just a few of the diverse sources for such a case...] 2) we organize and broadly disseminate by publishing, presenting, discussing, teaching 3) we insist upon evidence-based public policy with full transparency -- not only of data but of the logic that directs the definition of data as evidence 4) we insist upon transparent processes by which data can be transparently and effectively scrutinized -- this means specifying all forms of transformation to which data are subject and presenting the "chain of custody" / provenance of data thus certifying both logical validity and technical integrity 5) from a policy perspective, we begin with the "lowest hanging fruit", which politically means we start with bio-medicine (humans are naturally enough -- anthropocentric) -- thus NIH, CDC and UN/WHO and their evolving policies -- but we also push in other domains like conservation, agriculture and agrarian science, education... 6) we analyze carefully and advocate for the broad implementation of "qualified peer review mechanisms" (NSF provides an excellent model) 7) we aggressively advocate for K-gray science literacy... More about all and each of these points will follow... Continue reading
University of Minnesota Libraries Speaker Series So Far: Lorcan Dempsey & Paul Courant
The University of Minnesota Libraries has taken a new approach to its planning process this year to help deal with seemingly conflicting realities. On the one hand, everything said publicly by University administration indicates that the U's financial future is Not Good. On the other, the Libraries has several projects in place that are innovative and many, many more on hold that would also be fabulous. These projects are in addition to the regular day-to-day work of a library. Something has to give somewhere, but the Libraries can't just metaphorically throw its hands in the air and say "the heck with this, I'm out". So, the Libraries is hosting a speaker series with the goal of moving from lemons to lemonade. There have been two speakers so far - Lorcan Dempsey and Paul Courant. See https://wiki.lib.umn.edu/Staff/UniversityLibrariesSpeakerSeries for more information - future speakers will be Jim Neal and Clifford Lynch. While online access is limited during the talks, the future speakers will be recorded and the webcasts posted soon after for all to view. And, at the risk of sounding sycophantic, I believe our University Librarian's - Wendy P. Lougee - opening remarks are also worth a listen on their own merits. Lorcan Dempsey - "Discovery and Delivery" Dempsey began by describing levels of rarity of library collections based on OCLC data with the suggestion that where libraries should focus their expenditures (presumably on preservation, simply having the space to hold, doing really good digitization, etc) is on the rare items. Non-rare items could reasonably be entrusted to network-level services like the Hathi Trust. He then presented a typology of library collection types sorted by rarity and current levels of stewardship. Government publications fell into high stewardship, but low rarity. Dempsey acknowledged that this was a broad characterization and that there might be rare items within a category like government publications or maps. Also, the University of Minnesota is a partner in the Hathi Trust and has sent some of its government publications collection in for digitizing, so the Libraries are already on the path he's describing here. Caveats aside, I feel that he provides a well-reasoned and evidence-based rationale for shifting stewardship away from non-rare items and towards collections that are getting no real attention at all. This was only a tiny portion of his overall talk and I recommend going through the entire powerpoint or webcast to get the full presentation. Presentation, Webcast, Related Readings: https://wiki.lib.umn.edu/Staff/UniversityLibrariesSpeakerSeries#dempsey Paul Courant - "Scholarly Communications and Publishing" Courant's talk can be best described as a reflection on just what is it that we'd like to pay for. He framed part of the problem in terms of the Parable of the Anarchist's Annual Meeting (see http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/anarchists.pdf). In short: with coordination - either between libraries or between libraries and smaller publishers or both - we can take at least some control of the journal publishing arena. We already spend a fortune on a situation we don't like. Surely the logical thing is to begin to spend some money on creating a situation more to our liking. This includes taking on more of a publishing role and allying ourselves with societies and small publishers (including university presses) who might be more interested in the benefits of open access that the big vendors. However, when I asked if he was advocating canceling contracts with big vendors, he answered (I'm paraphrasing) "Well, probably not. Well, not entirely. Might want to pass on those Big Deals they offer though." He also felt the library community should speak up loudly in favor of the recent RFI from the Office of Science and Technology Policy regarding increased access to the products of federally funded research. At the same time he reiterated that open access isn't exclusively a library issue. In fact, he said it's a faculty issue. Libraries need to keep pushing on the topic, but pushing faculty to understand that this is an arena they can control if the choose to do so. Courant isn't a librarian - he's an economist by background and I found his application of an economics perspective refreshing. Again, like Dempsey's talk, there was no magic "the Libraries should do this" moment because we are in a tough spot without easy resolution. But, also like Dempsey's talk, he has a great way of expressing the issues facing libraries. Presentation, Webcast, Related Readings: https://wiki.lib.umn.edu/Staff/UniversityLibrariesSpeakerSeries#courant I don't know if these speakers really will lead to concrete ideas for coping with our budget problems, but I sure am glad we're having them - each one has been thought-provoking. Continue reading
Action Alert for Our Facebook Fans
If you are one of the 557 fans of our Facebook page, please check your inbox for details on how you can use your Facebook Notes to promote government documents. Be sure to check for "updates" and not regular messages. If you decide to help, would you leave a comment here and/or on our fan page? Thanks! Continue reading
More ways to follow government tweets
The Hill Reports that there is yet another service tracking government tweets:
- New site tracks government-run Twitter accounts. By Jordan Fabian The Hill (01/04/10).
- a list of Twitter accounts from Cabinet Secretaries, Agencies and Departments by The White House
- GovTwit
- Tweet Congress
- Congressional 140
- GovFresh
- Members of Congress who Twitter
- Capitol Tweets