What does the public know about the FDLP? Not much.
The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) has launched a set of videos on the FDLP Desktop, "What Does the Public Know About the FDLP? GPO Takes to the Streets". Staff members of GPO "took to the streets" of D.C. to ask the public what they know about the FDLP and Government Publications. What do they know? Not much, as evidenced by these videos! These videos can be embedded on your website, so let's take a look at them here, shall we? The marketing plan website states that "As evidenced by the Person on the Street videos, promoting the FDLP to the public is essential and necessary". I agree. However, is the FDLP Marketing Plan as it stands now, up to the job? Feedback was requested and the results of these findings were published. I think they need to ask for more feedback and publish more results soon, especially for those that did not get to take part in this feedback opportunity before. One problem I have with the marketing plan is the slogan itself, "Easy as FDL: Free Dedicated Limitless" which I believe means absolutely nothing to the average person, which they proved in these videos! They don't know what a FDL stands for. They don't know what a Federal Depository Library is. So why use Easy as FDL as one's slogan to market itself? Case in point: A couple of months ago, I left a bunch of the most recent "Easy as FDL" marketing promotional materials on our library brochure table for patrons to take, but I also left a bunch of the older GPO/FDLP promotional materials on the table as well (i.e. the brochures that have images of our nation's capitol building, stating "Make the Connection for Government Information", etc). Which ones were completely gone by the end of the week? The older materials. Which were left still sitting on the table? The newer "Easy as FDL" materials. From what I can deduce, patrons grabbed the visuals that had the "government information" phrase on it and the visual of a capitol building or an American flag because those images and phrases "spoke to them" more and they knew exactly what the brochure was about. Hopefully they took the time to read the brochure and learn more about what an FDL is, but I feel the term "government information" grabs their attention a whole lot more! The marketing plan website also states that "GPO designed The FDLP Marketing Plan to empower Federal depository libraries with the tools they need to market their valuable services to all audiences in the most effective way possible." I disagree. I don't think they designed the marketing plan to empower Federal depository libraries in the most effective way possible and I don't think we did a very good job of giving them enough feedback. I think that we ("we" meaning librarians, patrons, GPO, FDLP, etc) still need to improve and redesign the marketing plan in a more effective way. What do you think? Let's give GPO our feedback and ideas! A lot of work was put into this but lets make this a labor of love and really work to improve it even more. Continue reading
If YouTube Fails
I wonder how much government information we would lose if YouTube failed. Are agencies that rely on YouTube as a channel of communication keeping copies of the videos they post there? Would they make them available through another channel? What if FDLP libraries had copies?
- YouTube Is Doomed, by Benjamin Wayne, Business Insider: Silicon Alley Insider, Apr. 9, 2009.
Despite massive growth, ubiquitous global brand awareness, presidential endorsement, and the world’s greatest repository of illegally-pirated video content, Google’s massive video folly is on life-support, and the prognosis is grave.Continue reading
OpenRegs.com coming soon
OpenRegs.Com To Launch Soon, National Journal, "Tech Daily Dose." April 14, 2009. According to this brief announcment, OpenRegs.com, will take the daily XML feed of the Federal Register and offer a different view of the information. The .com site will provide greater flexibility in finding and following government regulations and will be more dynamic and user friendly than the .gov site. It is being developed by one of the co-creators of the government accountability Web site StimulusWatch.org. Continue reading
OpenSecrets.org Goes OpenData
How cool is this? Today the Center for Responsive Politics has announced that it's putting 200 million data records from its archive directly into the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics. The data are available through the site's Action Center. Thanks OpenSecrets!
The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org's Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php: CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP's researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence. LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well. PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports. 527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals. To download bulk data from OpenSecrets.org, users must register on the site and agree to prominently credit the Center for Responsive Politics, along with other terms of service. CRP is making its data available through a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, which allows users to remix, tweak, build upon and share the Center's work non-commercially. CRP will continue to offer its data to commercial users for a negotiable fee. OpenSecrets.org also offers a number of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to give users direct access via web programming to data displayed on OpenSecrets.org. Web developers are already using these APIs to display OpenSecrets data on their web pages and create mashups using live, up-to-date data. Users can also share CRP data using OpenSecrets.org's widgets, which can be placed easily on any website or blog. New widgets for the 2010 election cycle are in development.Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Los Angeles
The ALA GODORT Handout Exchange has librarian-produced guides using resources from every level of government, from international to local. Today's guide is a case in point:
Official Links for Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County (Mary Finley, California State University-Northridge, 2008)This guide is broken up into six sections:
- Official Links: City of Los Angeles - Los Angeles County
- Directories and Guides: Services & Help - Business Assistance - Transportation - Education & Culture
- L. A. City/County Statistics & Facts: Economic/Demographic - Crime - Environment - Education - Health - Other - Budgets
- Election Issues & Results
- Politicians: Who represents you? - Contact the politicians - Lobbyists and Campaign Contributions
- Local Codes and Regulations
- American FactFinder (Census Bureau)
- Airport Passenger Boarding and All-Cargo Data (Federal Aviation Administration) - Reports include data on several Los Angeles area airports.
- California Department of Finance - Site includes demographic as well as financial and economic data.
- Residential Vacancy Data (City of Los Angeles Housing Dept.)
- Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services Statistics - Statistical reports, caseload characteristics, and various research reports about social assistance programs and welfare reform from the Research, Evaluation and Quality Assurance Division of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services.