2008 Notable Government Documents in Library Journal
Yesterday Library Journal published its annual list of notable government documents, "Looking Back, Moving On: 2008 Best Notable Government Documents" written by Jim Church and his team of selectors and judges on the Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) Notable Documents Panel. Every year since 1983, the panel has pulled together and highlighted state/local, federal and international government documents in order to "promote awareness and acquisition of government publications by libraries and use by library patrons." This year's list highlighted such publications as Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports as well as free statistical databases from the United Nations (UNdata), the European Union (Eurostat) and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAOStat). Plus there was a special shout out to Carl Malamud and his Yes We Scan! campaign for Public Printer of the Government Printing Office. Check out this year's list of notable documents. You'll be amazed at the depth and breadth of publications by the various levels of governments. And by all means, if you have a favorite government document that you'd like to highlight, the Panel is always interested in nominations! (Full disclosure: I'm the chair this year of GODORT's Publications Committee, which oversees the work of the Notable Documents Panel.) Continue reading
Making the world’s knowledge computable
Wolfram alpha went online on Friday. After much hype in the press over the last couple of weeks (see, for example, The Google Killer, by Nicholas Ciarelli), it is certainly nice to finally see the product. It is definitely worth watching. See the screencast introduction to get an excellent sense of what it can do, and see the blog to keep up with developments. Biggest problem at this stage is the incomplete information about sources. When you get a result and click on the "sources" link, you get a list of sources that may or may not have been used to produce the results. Second biggest problem: everyone is looking at it and it is getting overloaded! Continue reading
What Google knows about you
What Google knows about you. "Google may know more about you than your mother does. Got a problem with that?" By Robert L. Mitchell, Computerworld, May 11, 2009.
Online tools really aren't free. We pay for them with micropayments of personal informationI notice, too, that the Google Privacy Policy does not say that Google is committed to privacy. It says, "At Google, we’re committed to transparency and choice." Continue reading
How a Public Law becomes a U.S. Code
What happens after a bill becomes a law, by Daniel Schuman, Open House Project, May 14th, 2009.
Many people remember from middle school the movie on how a bill becomes a law, but few civics courses teach about what happens afterward. On Monday, John, Josh, and I sat down with members of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Their job, in short, is to consolidate and codify laws passed by Congress based upon their subject matter — without making any substantive changes to the law — and to prepare the revised code for enactment into “positive law.”Continue reading
“Chat with GPO” Session on Authentication
Today I attended the "Chat with GPO" OPAL session, which focused on authentication and authentication for FDLP partners.Ted Priebe, GPO's Director of Library Planning & Development (LPD) and Lisa Russell, the Manager of LPD's Content Management unit presented material and answered questions. Basically, LSCM wants to partner with Federal Depository Libraries and find ways to authenticate content hosted by the FDL partners. The digital signatures of authentication will indicate partnership with the FDL institution and the contact information for that institution. This is great news, especially for those FDLs also interested in hosting digital content in partnership with GPO. The authentication session is archived on the GPO OPAL site. Continue reading