Senator Uses Google Ads to Respond to NYT Article
After the New York Times ran a front page article this morning about how Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y) defended tobacco companies when she was a young lawyer (As New Lawyer, Senator Was Active in Tobacco’s Defense, By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI, New York Times, March 26, 2009), Gillibrand started using Google AdWords, to respond.
- Gillibrand Uses Web Ad For Rapid Response, National Journal "Tech Daily Dose" (March 27, 2009).
Simply search for "Gillibrand" on Google and an ad from her campaign proclaiming that "Gillibrand Fights Tobacco" should appear to the right.Continue reading
CIA Records Search Tool (CREST)
Steven Aftergood reports (CIA Updates Digital Archive, Restricts Access, Secrecy News, March 26, 2009) on the release by the Central Intelligence Agency of a new tool that allows users to search on-line to discover the availability of declassified CIA documents. The tool is the CIA FOIA - 25-Year Program Archive Search. But you cannot download the documents you discover. Steven notes that the CIA will not "put the entire CREST database online so that anyone, anywhere could download these declassified, often heavily censored records. Nor will CIA release an electronic copy of the CREST database so that others may post it." The CIA justifies withholding the complete text because, "The Agency evidently believes that there are latent secrets concealed in the declassified record that could somehow be extracted by a clever analyst who reviewed them in electronic form." See also: Pozen, David. The Mosaic Theory, National Security, and the Freedom of Information Act. SSRN eLibrary. 26 Mar 2009. Steven also says:
In 1995, President Clinton ordered agencies that classify information to “establish a Governmentwide database of information that has been declassified” (Executive Order 12958, section 3.8). That never happened, and in 2003 President Bush deleted the requirement (Executive Order 13292, section 3.7). Restoring such a requirement, and fulfilling it, would be an appealing feature of a new executive order on classification.Continue reading
The Future of the Library
A few days ago I posted (The opportunities that libraries missed) a link to Peter Murray-Rust's blog where he is discussing the future of the library and getting ideas for his talk at JISC's Libraries of the Future Debate at the Bodleian April 2nd 2009. The whole series of his posts (starting with librarians of the future - part I) and the comments he received from readers are definitely worth reading. Continue reading
Grading WhiteHouse.gov
Grading WhiteHouse.gov, By Jose Antonio Vargas, Washington Post, March 24, 2009. Remember when government information was boring and no one talked about it? Well, not anymore! Now everyone wants to weigh in on making government information accessible and interesting and useful. At the Washington Post, there is a new series, Grading WhiteHouse.gov, "a monthly feature that invites five thinkers across the online political and cultural spectrum to grade President Obama's WhiteHouse.gov." Cool! Continue reading
Transforming the Relationship Between Citizens and Government: Making Content Findable Online
Transforming the Relationship Between Citizens and Government: Making Content Findable Online, by Vanessa Fox, O'Reilly Radar, Mar 24 2009.
The most important feature government web sites can add isn't really feature at all. But it would absolutely transform the relationship between citizens and government and make an amazing array of public data available. What's this magic feature? Make government web sites search engine friendly.Continue reading