Open formats
Over at the Open House Project mailing list there has been a long discussion recently of how to make sure we have long-term, open, free, public access to Congressional and Presidential videos. (See also: Congress on YouTube and Should Obama ditch YouTube?) Today, Clay Shirky posted a clear and concise and persuasive summary of why we need open formats. (Re: Open video, Clay Shirky, Jan. 28, 2009.)
I was the head of the technical work on the Library of Congress's digitial preservation network (NDIIPP) in the early part of the decade, and when we undertook a survey of threats to long-term preservation of digital material, we assumed, dumb bunnies that we were, that we were dealing with issues of storage, redundancy and migration costs. It turned out, though, that the biggest threat to long-term preservation isn't hardware or cost, it's format; proprietary formats don't just happen to hamper unexpected future uses, that's what they are _designed_ to do. If you had an ASCII file and a WordStar file, both from 1987, and had to open and read each one as quickly as you could, what would the difference in elapsed seconds be? There has been some back and forth on this list about possible threats to putting USG-created materials into the hands of commercial entities. I'm on record as worrying about that precisely because path dependence on commercial motivation can easily come a cropper, and I recently had an experience that seemed to highlight that risk. Last Friday, I heard a talk at the Smithsonian from the awesome George Oates, who was instrumental in getting the Flickr Image Commons going. It was an inspiring talk, and when I went to introduce myself afterwards and we were talking about what might be next, she told me Yahoo had cut her job in the December round of layoffs. Of course. Why shouldn't Yahoo have done that -- the Commons may have been good PR for them in 2008, but its hard to argue that the cost is going to be recouped in revenues somehow. When we are talking about public goods, we are talking about goods that don't flourish in the commercial market *by definition.* We need to make that part of all the systemic thinking we do about open data; Ogg for video would be a great addition to the arsenal.There have been some excellent discussions going on over at the Open House Project Google Group lately. If you don't usually monitor that list, you might want to browse through the last couple of weeks posts. Continue reading
CRS reports to be released
Wikileaks plans to release nearly 10,000 Congressional Research Service reports. See: Wikileaks and CRS, Clay Shirky, Jan 28, 2009. Continue reading
Nationalizing the American Banking System?
Here is an interesting news analysis from The New York Times on whether nationalization or partial-nationalization of the American banking system is a good idea. The pros and cons are discussed in detail. The transcript of George Stephanopoulos' interview with Nancy Pelosi is available from ABC News. She discusses the GOP stimulus proposals and also talks about recovery plans for banks. Continue reading
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 7
There is something bracing about a Congress, or a congressional committee, that embraces its oversight and investigatory powers with a kind of constitutional "old testament" righteousness. Our constitutional founders created a divided government for very good reasons -- and even though this model of shared governance amongst three co-equal branches is messy, inefficient, and at times politically distasteful -- when the pendulum of "checks and balances" gains a particular civic rhythm, the insights and research unleashed are extremely satisfying. Exhibit A in this democratic discourse is the House Judiciary Committee report: REINING IN THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush. This 487 page report details many of the long-standing objections about how President Bush chose to exercise his authority -- often at the expense of the people and other branches of government. That is not to say, obviously, that the other branches were innocent bystanders in this constitutional encroachment. When the Congress was under the thumb of either republicans or democrats, our legislative leaders showed little constitutional backbone to push back against the presidents power grab. Only the supreme court demonstrated some sense of the limitations on Bush's treatment of the war prisoners. Of particular interest to this community is the report's Section 5: Government in the Shadows: Executive Privilege, Secrecy, and the Manipulation of Intelligence and Section 4 – Misuse of Executive Branch Authority. As we enter a new political season that attempts to walk back the cat on many of these policies and programs, I can think of no better primer that enables any engaged citizen/librarian on what went wrong and how to get back to a more reasonable constitutional ecosystem. See you on Day 8. Continue reading
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 6
I got to thinking about all the changes and initiatives launched by the Obama Administration during its first week in power -- which sources of information should transcend the political elections? In other words, as librarians shouldn't we argue that certain categories of federal government information should remain consistent and accessible regardless of which political party rules the White House or in the halls of Congress. For instance, shouldn't there be a standard and predictable form for a press briefing transcript? Compare how the White House handles this with the approach of the State Department. With the State Department the form of the briefing as an actual transcript remains the same from Secretary of State to another. With the Obama press briefings, we get summaries (blog posts) rather than actual transcripts (which were more common with the Bush and Clinton administrations.) Preservation of individual web sites is important. Continuity of essential civic information from one political change to another is equally important. See you on day 7. Continue reading