Guide of the Week: Treaty Research
Treaties exist between many nations on many subjects. From mutual defense to copyright to exchanging meteorological data, chances are there is at least one treaty between at least two nations on almost any subject you can think of. This week's Guide of the Week will help you navigate this crowded field: Treaty Research: Sources and Tips (Debbi Schaubman, Michigan State University, 1999) Last updated 10/27/2006 by Terri Miller. This guide aims to be a starting point for the most important sources to treaty finding. It is divided into five sections:
- General Bibliographies and Indexes: World Coverage
- General Bibliographies and Indexes: Regional/National Coverage
- Treaty Texts
- Treaties between Native Americans and the United States or Canada
- Tips for Tracking Recent Treaties and Treaty Actions
- Treaties and Alliances of the World
- Canado-American Treaties
- United States Treaties and Other International Agreements
- Avalon Project: Treaties between the U.S. and Native Americans
- Texts of Recently Deposited Multilateral Treaties
New “Global Legal Monitor” RSS Feeds @ LOC
The Law Library of Congress's Global Legal Monitor has added more than 300 topic and jurisdictional RSS feeds. Topics include the Census, Freedom of Information, Government Publications, Intellectual Property, Libraries, and Secrecy! There is also an RSS for all articles in the Global Legal Monitor too. Tip o' the hate to Resource Shelf. Continue reading
FGI @ ALA annual conference ’09 in Chicago
If anyone's going to be in Chicago July 9-13, you might consider heading over to the American Library Association's Annual Conference '09 for their grassroots program. All of the FGI gang will be there. Jim Jacobs, Shinjoung Yeo, and friend of FGI Gabriela Schneider will be on a panel called "Libraries and Obama’s Information Policy" on Saturday, 3:30–5 p.m. Hope you can make it!!
Libraries and Obama’s Information Policy Saturday, July 11, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. Hilton, Lake Ontario room The nation’s information policy is a major concern for the library community. We are facing a critical historical juncture, where libraries can raise our voices and provide a vision of information policy. This panel will provide an opportunity to identify key issues in the new administration’s information policies and discuss ways the library community can participate in forming that policy. Moderator: Caroline Nappo, Doctoral Student, Information in Society Fellow, University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library & Information Science Panelists: Jim Jacobs, Data Services Librarian Emeritus, University of California San Diego, Co-creator of FreeGovInfo.info; Gabriela Schneider, Communications Director, Sunlight Foundation; ShinJoung Yeo, Information in Society Fellow Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignThere's also a panel on Monday July 13 from 8-10am called "From Legacy Data to Linked Data: Preparing Libraries for Web 3.0." None of the FGIers are on the panel, but we're sure to be there as data is very important!! Continue reading
Lunchtime listen: Tim Berners-Lee on government data
I just read Tim Berners-Lee's notes on putting government data online. I must say, when TBL describes it, it sounds like a piece of cake :-) The key seems to be the use of linked data. It's a snap; let's do it! RAW DATA NOW!!
Footnote: Do's and Don'ts * Do pick URIs which are likely to be persistent * Do put RDF metadata giving the license. * Do use the RDF and SPARQL standards * Make sure your human readable pages are accessible. * Do NOT hide data files inside zip files unless they are also available directly. * Do NOT put data up in proprietary formats. * Do NOT wait until you have a complete schema or ontology to publish data. * Do NOT seek to replace existing data systems.Continue reading
University of Toronto’s Canadian Political Parties and Political Interest Groups Collection
The University of Toronto Libraries are a network of 30 collections with over 15 million holdings, forming the largest academic library in Canada, and ranking third among research libraries in North America. With an average of 12,000 visits per day, and a rapidly expanding online information system, the collections meet the research, teaching and learning needs of scholars in an exceptionally broad range of disciplines. Serving researchers in Canada's largest university, across the country, and around the world, UTL is an internationally recognized cultural resource. The University of Toronto has used Archive-it to create a comprehensive collection on Canadian Political Parties and Political Interest Groups. The collection archives the websites of all of the national Canadian political parties, and a number of special interest groups across the political spectrum. The University of Toronto has been archiving these sites several times a year since 2005. You can find the University’s portal to their Archive-it collections here. -Lori Continue reading