October 2009 Lost Docs Report and Appeal
Last month we at Free Government Information (FGI) started the "lost docs blog" at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info to collect your receipts from GPO about the fugitive documents you reported through GPO's lost docs form at www.fdlp.gov/lostdocs or through GPO's Help system at gpo.custhelp.com. Starting this month, we want to provide you a monthly summary report and appeal for help. REPORT Thanks to generous and retention minded librarians, we posted 45 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. These receipts were primarily from 2008. Once we get the backlog posted, we hope to post receipts as we get them and will then be able to more closely track the number of submissions per month. Of these 45 reports, 12 items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with October 2009 dates. We are appreciative of these new records. In our view, three of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in October were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with October 2009 dates. 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.
- 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.
A Call to Action for State Government: Guidance for Opening the Doors to State Data
The National Association of State CIOs has issued a brief on state government transparency that describes and defines a vision of open government information. The brief recommends that State CIOs should partner with agency executives, records managers, librarians, archivists, data architects, and others to create an open system of government information. It sets out 8 Open Government DAta Principles. Data should be:
- Complete
- Primary
- Timely
- Accessible
- Machine processable
- Non-discriminatory
- Non-Proprietary
- License-Free
Read all about the Fall 2009 DLC meeting!
Whether you were able to attend the Fall 2009 Depository Library Council meeting or not, don't miss what is now online!
- GPO's Fall DLC Meeting - Arlington, VA page with presentations available for downloading.
- Tweets from fall09 depository library council meeting. See a record of what people tweeted in real time at the conference.
Arizona Court Rules on Public Records Metadata
Lobbyists beware: judge rules metadata is public record, By Jon Stokes, ars technica (October 29, 2009).
"The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the metadata attached to public records is itself a public record. Given the frequency with which metadata outs lobbyists' and corporations' efforts to mask their own contributions to public debates, this is a good thing."Continue reading
Free and open internet
Here's a simple, straightforward and thoughtful piece about what an open and neutral internet architecture means and why it's important. --that is all.