OOGL: Open Our Government List
The Sunlight Foundation has a new website called OOGL: Open Our Government List, for you to vote and submit ideas for what the Open Government Directive should address.
Shortly after President Obama's inauguration, he issued a memo on transparency directing his top officials to develop plans for an Open Government Directive to promote transparency, participation, and collaboration. The Sunlight Foundation has created this page in order to add a public element to the crafting of this Open Government Directive that is itself transparent, participatory, and collaborative.So far, the highest vote goes to Ethics Information, APIs & Bulk Data Access, and Procedural Information. Spread the word and vote! Continue reading
Act now for open access to govt funded research
[Note: I'm pasting here the action alert from Jennifer McLennan, Director of Communications, Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). FGI has no affiliation with SPARC, but this is an extremely important issue] CALL TO ACTION: Ask your Representative to oppose the H.R. 801 - The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act Last week, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (Rep. John Conyers, D-MI) re-introduced a bill that would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy and make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. The legislation is H.R. 801: the "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act". Please contact your Representative no later than February 28, 2009 to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and ask that he or she oppose H.R.801. Contact your Representative directly using the contact information and draft letter below, or via the ALA legislative action center. As always, kindly let us know what action you're able to take, via email to stacie [at] arl [dot] org. H.R. 801 is designed to amend current copyright law and create a new category of copyrighted works (Section 201, Title 17). In effect, it would:
- Prohibit all U.S. federal agencies from conditioning funding agreements to require that works resulting from federal support be made publicly available if those works are either: a) funded in part by sources other than a U.S. agency, or b) the result of "meaningful added value" to the work from an entity that is not party to the agreement.
- Prohibit U.S. agencies from obtaining a license to publicly distribute, perform, or display such work by, for example, placing it on the Internet.
- Stifle access to a broad range of federally funded works, overturning the crucially important NIH Public Access Policy and preventing other agencies from implementing similar policies.
- Because it is so broadly framed, the proposed bill would require an overhaul of the well-established procurement rules in effect for all federal agencies, and could disrupt day-to-day procurement practices across the federal government.
- Repeal the longstanding "federal purpose" doctrine, under which all federal agencies that fund the creation of a copyrighted work reserve the "royalty-free, nonexclusive right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work" for any federal purpose. This will severely limit the ability of U.S. federal agencies to use works that they have funded to support and fulfill agency missions and to communicate with and educate the public.
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 28
I got to say -- even one steeped in the cynicism of Illinois politics gets fatigued. Revelations about Roland Burris' selective memory of when and who he talked to about fund raising for our favorite ex-Governor continues to plumb new depths of political depravity. When will the this long state-wide nightmare be over? On another front -- a couple of political science professors have put together an excellent report on Illinois corruption -- find it here. What's more, the Illinois Attorney General is recommending legislative changes in the state's Freedom of Information of Information laws -- all because of you know who -- check it out here. And, I am pulling together a list of state libraries that are under threat of being shut down or service curtailed because of state budget crunches. If you know what is happening in your state -- drop me a line and I will report the results in a near future segment of "Won't Get Fooled Again" See you on Day 29. Continue reading
Law Libraries and Digital Information
In an interview in the Connecticut Law Tribune, Darcy Kirk, associate dean for library and technology and professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, addresses some of the potential dangers of digital-only legal information.
- Are There Drawbacks to Law Libraries Going Digital?, By Thomas B. Scheffey, The Connecticut Law Tribune, (reprinted at Law.com) February 18, 2009.
- A concern that the information won't be permanently available as technology changes. "If the government agency or court doesn't plan before the current format goes out of use, we could lose the ability to access those publications."
- A concern that a government agency or a court, publishing online, might decide on its own what to delete. "Then, all of a sudden you don't have it online and you don't have it in print, either."
- A concern about the Google Book project because "Google is a for-profit entity. We're not. Google is interested in things that might ultimately make them some money."
Public Media 2.0
An interesting new white paper contrasts "Public Media 1.0" (public broadcasting, cable access, nonprofit satellite set-asides) with "Public Media 2.0" (multiplatform, participatory, centered around informing and mobilizing networks of engaged users). It says that "the individual user has moved from being an anonymous part of a mass to being the center of the media picture."
- Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics, by Jessica Clark and Pat Aufderheide, Center for Social Media, School of Communication, American University, Feb 2009. [pdf] (also available in an html version.)
Curation: Users are aggregating, sharing, ranking, tagging, reposting, juxtaposing, and critiquing content on a variety of platforms—from personal blogs to open video-sharing sites to social network profile pages. Reviews and media critique are popular genres for online contributors, displacing or augmenting genres, such as consumer reports and travel writing, and feeding a widespread culture of critical assessment.Clark and Aufderheide do include libraries as one of the potential partners for public media projects along with other institutions in the nonprofit sector such as universities, museums, and issue-focused educational and social organizations. They note that these institutions have "assets" that "include archives and databases, issue expertise, legitimacy, and trusted brands." This vision certainly fits in with what John Shuler has been describing in his series on libraries as centers for education and civic engagement. I think libraries looking for service ideas could get some good ones from this report. But I also think that libraries will need to read beyond this report to find their unique role in society and in facilitating and participating in "Public Media 2.0." Libraries can fill the long-term preservation-and-use gap in the report. Specifically, civic participation needs trusted institutions to select, acquire, organize, and preserve information and provide that information in usable formats in an environment that encourages re-use and the kind of participation described in the white paper. Libraries need to concentrate on those "assets" -- not in the economic sense of private property that is owned and controlled for the benefit of the owners, but as valuable community property, managed and maintained for the community by information professionals. For Public Media 2.0 to succeed and flourish, for citizens to be able to reliably "aggregate, share, rank, tag, and critique," society needs more than content creators (journalists, broadcasters, writers, analysts, etc.); it also needs institutions that guarantee access and usability of information. It needs libraries. Thanks to Kevin Taglang, Editor, Communications-related Headlines, Benton Foundation for the pointer to this report! Continue reading