NARA Cannot Assure Complete Transfer of Bush Records
NARA Cannot Assure Complete Transfer of Bush Records, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News, January 5, 2009. Steven has a link to “National Archives Oversight: Protecting Our Nation’s History for Future Generations,” hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, May 14, 2008 and comments on the the integrity of the process of transferring the records to the National Archives.
Although the President is supposed to obtain the written views of the Archivist prior to any proposed destruction of non-permanent records, "the final disposal authority rests with the incumbent president… regardless of the Archivist’s views."Continue reading
Web 2.0 and the Middle East Crisis
The current Middle East crisis has received wide publicity via web 2.0. It is certainly a new way of reaching out to the international audience. Recently, there was an article in CNN about Israel’s attempt to influence the global public opinion through YouTube and Twitter. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit has uploaded several videos of the crisis on YouTube. Likewise, the Israel Consulate in New York held a “Citizen’s Press Conference” on Twitter on Dec. 30, 2008. While Israel is busy in engaging the international community’s attention, Al Jazeera also has been using Twitter to spread information about the Gaza conflict. For more details, take a look at boingboing. Continue reading
Welcome Chella Vaidyanathan, blogger of the month for January 2009
Happy 2009 gentle readers! We're back to work and hoping to make FGI even better in 2009. Chella Vaidyanathan (full bio) from University of Miami is our guest blogger for January 2009. Take it away Chella! Continue reading
Chella Vaidyanathan: BOTM for January, 2009
Chella Vaidyanathan is the subject liaison librarian for History, Political Science, U.S. Govt. Information, International Documents, and GIS at the University of Miami. She enjoys teaching course-specific library instruction sessions for her assigned subject areas. Chella completed her MLS from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) in December 2006. Moreover, she has a Master of Arts in Modern European History, a Master of Philosophy in History, and a Master of Arts in Indian/South Asian History. At McKeldin Library in UMCP, Chella worked as the GIS Graduate Assistant in the Department of U.S. Gov. Information, Maps, & GIS Services, where she also served at the reference desk and helped patrons locate government information. Since then, she has always been very interested in teaching and promoting government documents. Continue reading
Some more background on how change.gov was created
Dorobek Insider has some additional background on the making of change.gov. 2 things of interest: 1) change.gov's use of Google moderator, a 3rd party app, which falls under google's privacy policy rather than the federal government requirements under the [w:Privacy Act of 1974]; and 2) both sides of the political debate seem to be trying to figure out how and why GSA set up change.gov, including submitting FOIA requests. Team Obama’s Change.gov — abuzz about how it was created — and how difficult change in government is [thanks for the heads-up Peggy Garvin!] Continue reading