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.
Less Access to Less Information By and About the U.S. Government
[UPDATE 3/25/10: Thanks to Bernadine Abbott Hoduski for sending me 1997-98 volumes, the complete chronology from 1981 - 98 is now digitized and hosted at the Internet Archive!] From 1981 until 1998, Anne Heanue and the fine folks at the Washington Office of the American Library Association (ALA) published an amazing series called Less Access to Less Information by and about the U.S. Government, a chronology of efforts to restrict and privatize government information. In 1986, the publication was listed in Project Censored's annual review, Top 25 censored stories for 1986. I recently had a nice email exchange with Emily Sheketoff, Associate Executive Director of ALA and manager of the Washington Office in which I suggested that Less Access to Less Information ought to be online for the world to see, read, share etc. Emily graciously gave me permission to digitize the series. So, with the help of Rick and Megan Prelinger, Robert Miller and others at the Internet Archive, I give you Less Access to Less information by and about the U.S. government in several formats including text, flip book, PDF, and DjVu.
- 1981-1987 chronology
- 1988-1991 chronology
- 1990-1996 chronology
- 1997 chronology: January – June
- 1997 chronology: June – December
- 1998 chronology: january – June
- 1998 chronology: June – December
White House summary of open government brainstorming
The White House Blog has a nice summary of Open Government Brainstorm sponsored by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). It says the brainstorm generated more than 1000 ideas.
- Wrap-Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Transparency, White House Blog, June 2, 2009.
- Convert Depository Libraries around the country into Regional Data Centers
- Use Data.gov as a repository of newly declassified information
- Make contributed data subject to a waiver of copyright and database rights
- Government should create permalinks on the paragraph level to make documents easier to cite
- Digitize all government research reports and make them available free