President Obama Hosts Open House Reception at the White House
The Obama administration is hosting an Open House Reception at the White House today. Those who would like to be there on the President’s first day can sign up for the reception using this form. The website states that this is an initiative to inform the public that the new administration “will be one of the most open and accessible administrations in our nation's history.” Continue reading
President Obama Halts Guantanamo Trials
Yesterday, President Obama issued orders to halt the pending Guantanamo trials for 120 days. This would temporarily stop the proceedings of the remaining twenty-one cases. Obama has guaranteed that he will close the Guantanamo prison camp. As the trials will be suspended until May 20, the new administration would have some time to assess the cases. At present, there are 245 foreign prisoners held at the prison camp. If you like to read the full article, it is available in The New York Times. Recently, Human Rights Watch “called upon the new administration to ensure the rights of detainees at Guantanamo who have been slated for release but who cannot be returned home for fear of torture or persecution.” In November 2008, the organization published a briefing paper, Fighting Terrorism Fairly and Effectively: Recommendations for President-Elect Barack Obama, which outlined eleven steps that the new administration should take to change the counterterrorism practices of the United States. Continue reading
iGov
The Atlantic published an article entitled "iGov: How Geeks are Opening Up Government on the Web" by Douglas McGray that discusses API Documentation and examines the possibilities when government agencies allow access to their raw data in an open, standard file format. The article uses the BART system as an example:
Turns out, it didn’t. In 2007, Google engineers asked public-transit agencies across the country to submit their arrival and departure data in a simple, standard, open format—a text file, basically, with a bunch of numbers separated by commas—so Google Maps could generate bus and subway directions. A handful of agencies, including BART, decided to go a step further and publish that raw data online. Once they did that, any programmer could grab the data and write a trip planner, for any platform. “It’s not 1995,” BART’s Web-site manager, Timothy Moore, explained. “A single Web site is not the endgame anymore. People are planning trips on Google, they’re using their iPhones. Because we opened up our schedule, we are in those places.” “We can’t envision every beneficial use for our data,” Moore told me. “We don’t have the time, we don’t have the resources, and frankly, we don’t have the vision. I’m sure there are people out there who have better ideas than we do. That’s why we’ve opened it up.”Continue reading
Interview with Internet Archive Founder
FLYP online magazine published an interview with Internet Archive's founder, Brewster Kahle, entitled "Know It All". There is a text version of the article, but the interactive multi-media verison is much more fun! Plus, it contains a nice video showing Brewster explaining the mission of Internet Archive.
Brewster Kahle wants to give you digital access to every book, film, video, song, TV show and periodical ever published. If he succeeds, the world will be a different place.Continue reading
Government Information Liberation Day
It is done. New web pages for the White House. I understand it was an outstanding inauguration -- which I did not get to see or listen to because life was making other unexpected plans today -- I did record about seven hours of the event on my DVR, and expect to go back and watch it when I can. In the meantime, I've put a general news blackout on the speech and its contents until I can experience it as it happened through delayed TV. Going to be interesting to see if I can carry this off -- judging from the blog posts here at FGI, I kinda feel like the only government information librarian who did not watch, read, or listen to the remarks. Either this is a fascinating twist on my long 75 day slog to liberation; or its a metaphor for our time that one can be so selective in choosing from the media stream. But, I do not think we have to hear the speech to understand that our collective task remains unfinished -- to sustain an accessible and permanent infrastructure of civic information. I believe Obama and his policies favor many or our ideals, and where other administrations choose either indifference or resistance to this notion, I think we are going to experience a bit of a golden age in regards to public information. Part of the this optimism stems from the capabilities of technology. Part of it comes from the reborn notion that government just might be a positive force in our society. In either case, libraries and their civic minded employees have their work cut out for them if they want to make a serious bid for both relevance and effectiveness in this new age of democratic possibilities. To this end, as I have mentioned before, a series of critical discussions will take place at various national level librarian conferences. It starts with the ALA midwinter confab in Denver at the end of this week. followed by at least three other meetings before the gathering during July in Chicago for ALA's annual gig. To this end, I am resetting the discussion time clock. 140 days to consensus on the future role of libraries in the fabric of our civic information exchange. See you on the day after Continue reading