Lunchtime Listen: Interview with Emily Sheketoff

Library Perspective. Interview with Emily Sheketoff, Executive Director of the Washington Office of the American Library Association, CSPAN, 11/06/2008. [30 minutes, Flash Video]. Sheketoff discusses federal copyright, privacy, and piracy policy and how those issues could be effected by President-Elect Barack Obama’s administration. Paul Sweeting, editor of Content Agenda was the guest host. Continue reading

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Guide of the Week: Defense Spending

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently identified defense spending as one of 13 urgent issues facing the next President and Congress. Today on Guide of the Week, we'll talk about some librarian produced guides from the ALA GODORT Exchange Wiki that can help inform citizens, Congress and President-Elect Obama on this issue. While there do not appear to be any guides that specifically address defense spending alone, the guides below and taken together should be helpful:

I'm juggling several projects this week so I'm hoping you'll be willing to check out the above guides without teasers from each. I will say that John Hernandez's guide has a full section devoted to the budget and procurement process relating to weapons purchases. This section also helps you find out information on specific defense contractors. Next week I'll be dealing with librarian produced guides relating to "improving the U.S. image abroad." So if you have any guides relating to that topic, please try and post them to the Handout Exchange this week. Continue reading

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Moving Toward A 21st Century Right-To-Know Agenda

In case you missed this report when it was released last month (as an MS Word document), you might want to check it out now (in PDF):

Many library organizations and individual librarians signed on to this document, which mentions FDLP specifically and recommends that "The president should direct agencies to insure that their government information products are included in the FDLP and thus public access assured." It also notes that "Currently, private companies enter into non-competed agreements with agencies – often Memoranda of Understanding that are not public – and create subscription/charge-based access to public records that they have digitized at 'no cost' to the government." It recommends that "The next administration should create incentives to convert government documents to no-fee, electronic, publicly available documents." Continue reading

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Obama Transition Team To Reveal Documents and Meetings with Groups

Your Seat at the Table, by Dan McSwain, Change.gov, December 5, 2008.

In a memo released today, Obama-Biden Transition Project Co-chair John D. Podesta announced that all policy documents from official meetings with outside organizations will be publicly available for review and discussion on Change.gov.
There are some really interesting documents on the Your Seat at the Table page of Change.gov. See Also: Continue reading

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FDA to post information on WebMD

FDA to post information on WebMD, NextGov, Dec. 3, 2008.

FDA warnings and consumer information will appear on the online medical information portal WebMD.com under a partnership announced today. The agency will provide food-safety warnings, recalls and other alerts in a dedicated, ad-free section of WebMD's Web site, FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach said.
Von Eschenbach said that the agency is exploring similar partnerships with other organizations. Continue reading

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