Archive-It gang: guest bloggers for June, 2009
Molly Bragg and Lori Donovan work at the Internet Archive's Archive-It web archiving service. Archive-it is used by over 100 libraries and organizations around the globe to harvest, preserve and access born digital content. The service began in 2005 as a way for memory institutions who lacked technical infrastructure to archive born digital information. Partners include U.S. State Archives, State Libraries, University Libraries, National libraries, federal institutions, museums, public libraries, non-profit organizations and individual researchers. The Archive-It website provides access to over 850 collections, over 900 million URLs and 81 tb of data all full text searchable and available to the public. For more information contact the Archive-It team at archive-it at archive.org. Continue reading
New site: Road to Recovery
A new web site: whitehouse.gov/Recovery/. "While WhiteHouse.gov/Recovery will be the place where our story of Recovery is told, you can always go to Recovery.gov to make sure your recovery dollars are going where they should: jobs, jobs, jobs." White House Unveils New Stimulus Site, Tech Daily Dose, June 8, 2009. "The White House Web team unveiled yet another Web page on Monday -- WhiteHouse.gov/Recovery -- that provides snapshots of economic stimulus package dollars at work around the country." Continue reading
Report on State Department Office of the Historian and FRUS
Steven Aftergood describes a new report on the State Dept. Office of the Historian and the Foreign Relations of the United States series:
- Something “Very Wrong” in State Dept History Office, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News, June 8, 2009.
- Management Review of the Office of the Historian, (Report Number ISP-I-09-43), State Department Office of Inspector General, May 2009.
With plummeting employee morale and departures of experienced staff historians, “something in HO is very wrong,” the Inspector General concluded. “HO is suffering from, and has for some time been handicapped by, serious mismanagement... Under present circumstances, the task of the FRUS series, although mandated by law, is “almost unachievable,” the IG said.Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Space and Astronomy
Did you know that today (June 6, 2009), asteroid Asteroid 2004 FY15 is flying by the earth at 35 times the distance to the Moon? Or that the 52nd Session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is going on this week? You would have if you had spent some time exploring this week's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki: Space and Astronomy (University of Colorado at Boulder Government Publications Library, 2008) The events above came from the Space Calendar listed in the "US Government Information" section of the guide. This is also the section to pay close attention to if you're at all interested in highlighting Apollo Program resources in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. Other sections in UCB's guide include: International Information, Nongovernmental Sources, Resources in the Catalog and Related Topics. Some of the resources highlighted in these sections include:
- Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
- Hubble Space Telescope Images
- Electronic resources on space exploration or astronomy from UCB Library's Chinook catalog
- Image Databases
Google Squared
Ars Technica has a good evaluation of Google Lab's new product Google Squared.
- Google squares the Web, hilarity ensues, By John Timmer, Ars Technica, June 4, 2009.