Welcome Aimee and James Quinn, bloggers of the month for August, 2009
Happy August, fine readers. Please welcome Aimee and James Quinn to the podium for the month of August. Aimee and James are librarians and activists who hale from the fine state of New Mexico (full bio here). Take it away James and Aimee. Also, many thanks to Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, our BOTM for July, 2009. Check out Jeanne's posts here: Cheers to Jeanne and now take it away James and Aimee! Continue reading
Aimee and James Quinn: bloggers of the month for August, 2009
James and Aimée Quinn are both librarians who share a love of cats, books, movies, coffee, dogs, exploring new places (especially libraries) and technology although James is much more tech savvy than Aimée. Both work with the Humane Societies to fight for animal rights. Aimée is a librarian at the University of New Mexico, Parish Memorial Library. She served on a variety of ALA committees, task forces, discussion groups, etc. related to government information, permanent public access to government information, rare & valuable government publications (yes they really do exist) and government literacy. Aimée is an assistant editor of the international journal, Government Information Quarterly. After working in academic law libraries for over 25 years, James, along with Matthew Wright, co-founded the Library Underground. He now works with Chris Zammarelli (another of our guest bloggers!) to maintain the site. James is an anti-nuke/environmental activist who also serves as the list owner for an international anti-nuclear discussion group. These activities coupled with associating with librarians makes him a dangerous peacenik. Continue reading
Smithsonian Reports Its Web and New Media Strategy
This new Smithsonian document "describes a transformational change for the Smithsonian, which will have impact on the Institution’s culture, operations, allocation of resources, talent recruitment, and priorities. This strategy can only become operational with adequate resources, and will require the Smithsonian to rethink the ways in which it generates revenues and prioritizes how resources are allocated to programs."
A key part of the strategy is to create a Smithsonian Commons "dedicated to the free and unrestricted sharing of Smithsonian resources and encouraging new kinds of learning and creation through interaction with Smithsonian research, collections, and communities" but it will also "Use the commons to attract the funding necessary to update the Smithsonian’s Web and New Media operations and business models." The report notes that:Attempting to directly monetize access to, and use of, museum content does not appear to be a sustainable business model. Through these low-margin business practices, we alienate users, perpetuate the practice of institutions charging each other, discourage research and publications, and undermine our civic mission. The commons presents an alternative: gradually reduce our dependence on access and use fees by aggregating larger number of visitors under a strong brand supported by sponsorships and other value-added products and services. It is likely that the Smithsonian will make more money by promoting “free” resources to a large audience than it can make charging small amounts for small transactions to a small audience, and it is a much better fit with the mission.Continue reading
Recent report on Link Rot
A recent report evaluating a two-year web harvesting project found that 14.3 percent of the original URLs of all titles harvested from the Web and archived during the first year of project had become inactive within at least one year of harvesting. (p.33)
- Two-Year Pilot Project Evaluation. Legal Information Archive, The Chesapeake Project. (June 2009).
More than 4,300 digital items, representing nearly 1,900 titles, have been harvested from the Web and archived, and roughly 14 percent of these titles have already been removed from their original locations on the Web, demonstrating the importance and effectiveness of the project’s efforts. Moreover, the project’s access figures demonstrate both the broad, international reach of the project’s efforts, as well as the successful selection of high-interest and high-use materials by project participants.Continue reading
US Federal Government IT Dashboard: Data and Visualization
If you enjoy interactive data visualizations, make sure you visit the US Federal IT Dashboard. This site is meant for use by both the public and the staff of federal agencies. The goal is to make it easy to explore how the federal government is spending its IT dollars. The major components of the dashboard are:
- Performance Dashboard: supports viewing of major IT investments, filterable by agency
- Data Feeds: will let you select data to download or create a "dynamically XML feed"
- Analysis Visualizations: lets you chart and animate any combination of 15 IT spending statistics from 2002 to present
"The IT Dashboard provides the public with an online window into the details of Federal information technology investments and provides users with the ability to track the progress of investments over time. The IT Dashboard displays data received from agency reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including general information on over 7,000 Federal IT investments and detailed data for nearly 800 of those investments that agencies classify as "major." The performance data used to track the 800 major IT investments is based on milestone information displayed in agency reports to OMB called "Exhibit 300s." Agency CIOs are responsible for evaluating and updating select data on a monthly basis, which is accomplished through interfaces provided on the website."Continue reading