Artists and the recession
A recent National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Research Note says that "Artists are facing sharp increases in unemployment. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the artist unemployment rate reached 6.0 percent for a total of 129,000 unemployed artists."
This is part of the interesting series of NEA Research Notes. NEA also has a series of Research Reports. The Research Reports series includes the November 2007 newsworthy item: To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence and the 2004 report Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. Continue readingOpen Up Government Data Wiki
Over at the Wired magazine "How-to wiki," there is a page about making government data more easily available.
- Open Up Government Data [wiki], Wired How-To Wiki, Based on work by Alexis Madrigal.
We've established this wiki to help focus attention on valuable data resources that need to be made more accessible or usable. Do you know of a legacy dataset in danger of being lost? How about a set of Excel (or — shudder — Lotus 1-2-3) spreadsheets that would work better in another format? Data locked up in PDF's? This is your place to report where government data is locked up by design, neglect or misapplication of technology. We want you to point out the government data that you need or would like to have. Get involved! Based on what you contribute here, we'll follow up with government agencies to see what their plans are for that data — and track the results of the emerging era of Data.gov. With your help, we can combine the best of new social media and old-school journalism to get more of the data we've already paid for in our hands.From the look of it, I'd say that the folks who designed this page are not familiar with the many existing sources of government data, but that's just a guess. Nevertheless, I think this is worth monitoring and I hope that librarians contribute to it. (It's easy! "Just jump in and edit the wiki. Add links to data that's out of date or in danger of being forgotten or that comes stored in a less-than-ideal format. Help define how Data.gov gets built by making sure that the data you need is included." And... "If you're not comfortable with the MediaWiki formatting language, feel free to get in touch with Wired.com staff writer, Alexis Madrigal, either by e-mail alexis.madrigal[at]gmail.com or on Twitter: @alexismadrigal.) They note:
We're not writing a policy paper here. We're trying to highlight datasets and sources of knowledge that the new Administration — and it's open-data friendly CIO — could make more widely available and accessible with small, concrete actions.Already on the list: Economic Research Service, ClinicalTrials.gov, creating a data catalog of every agency's data streams, "View Data Release From the User's Point of View, not the Agency's", and more. It also lists "Models for Government Data Release, Transparency" such as ESDIS (Earth Science Data and Information System Project at Goddard). Continue reading
yes we scan revisited
On 02.24.2009, FGI "wholeheartedly and without reservation" endorsed the YES WE SCAN campaign of Carl Malamud for Public Printer of the United States. Mother Jones unequivocally endorsed Malamud one week later: "President Obama, Appoint Carl Malamud!" (Jonathan Stein | Mon March 2, 2009):
"Carl Malamud is a badass. If you are a techie or a transparency geek, you probably already know who he is. If you've never heard of him, he is an internet pioneer who has worked for decades, at times using renegade means, to make government information public. He fought to make the information in the SEC's "EDGAR" database free and public (which it now is) and is currently leading a similar fight over the court records database PACER. Today, Malamud has another campaign. He wants to become the Public Printer of the United States, i.e. the head of the Government Printing Office (GPO)..."The Lede Blog, NYTimes.com, looks at Malamud's campaign in "Yes He Scan" (03.04.2009): "To show that he’s the people’s choice, Mr. Malamud is asking for support in the form of links to his site. So far he says he’s got more than 700 endorsements, like these tweets, and this blog post by Lawrence Lessig, which says, in part:
'I can’t imagine a more exciting appointment. Sometimes an agency needs STASIS. Sometimes it needs CHANGE. Gov’t tech is certainly in the second category, and no one I know of could more effectively deliver on the commitment to open government than he.'" [Lessig Blog | 02.27.2009]Continue reading
Guide of the Week: U.S. Intelligence Community
Today's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki is for people wanting history and background relating to the US intelligence community: U.S. Intelligence Community (Jerry Breeze, Columbia University, 1999) Last updated 1/29/2008 This guide starts out with an introduction worth quoting:
This is a selective guide to resources at Columbia University Libraries and on the Internet, for conducting research on U.S. government agencies involved in intelligence activities, the classification and declassification of government documents related to intelligence activities, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Some of the items included may also have information about commercial espionage or intelligence activities of foreign governments, but that is not the focus of this guide. Please consult CLIO [Columbia's catalog] for other materials in the Columbia University Libraries.For a selective guide, it is chock full of print and internet resources relating to the intelligence community. The guide contains links to secondary and primary intelligence materials and is divided into the following sections:
- General
- Background Information
- Bibliographies & Indexes
- Periodicals/News/Blogs
- Intelligence Reform
- Congressional Oversight & Budget
- Classified/Declassified
- FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)
- Other Web Sources
- Agency Specific
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Defense Intelligence Agency
- Department of Energy
- Department of State
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
- National Reconnaissance Office
- National Security Agency
- National Security Council
- Other Agencies
White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families Blog
A new web page at whitehouse.gov for the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families has its own blog (but, oddly, no separate RSS feed!).
According to a press release:The Task Force is a major initiative targeted at raising the living standards of middle-class, working families in America. It is comprised of top-level administration policy makers, and in addition to regular meetings, it will conduct outreach sessions with representatives of labor, business, and the advocacy communities. The Task Force will be chaired by Vice President Joe Biden. The Vice President and members of the task force will work with a wide array of federal agencies that have responsibility for key issues facing the middle class and expedite administrative reforms, propose Executive orders, and develop legislative and policy proposals that can be of special importance to working families.Continue reading