A visionary plan for broadband access for all
One of the problems government information specialists face is that, as so much government information is born digital and available only online, a large percentage of people have less access than they did when a paper copy of government information was within relatively easy reach at their local FDLP library. We all imagine that this is a temporary situation and hope for a time when broadband access is as available as electricity and telephones and television. But, as the reports and surveys continue to reveal, the digital divide is real and is not shrinking very fast if at all. The Benton Foundation has released a new report that addresses this issue head on.
- AN ACTION PLAN FOR AMERICA: Using Technology and Innovation to Address Our Nation's Critical Challenges A report for the new administration, Benton Foundation, by Jonathan Rintels, December 1, 2008. [more links and HTML at http://benton.org/initiatives/broadband_benefits/action_plan ]
Problems of Access to Congressional Information
In a CQ Weekly cover story, Tim Starks examines openness and secrecy in Congress:
- A Dome Under Lock and Key, By Tim Starks, CQPolitics, Nov. 30, 2008.
- The Senate voted almost two years ago to disclose more information from the letters senators write requesting appropriations earmarks but the provision was quietly dropped the bill became law.
- A bill drafted behind locked doors in one committee, is debated in open session by another.
- Senate committee votes on a presidential nominee kept secret
- Some committees restrict access to amendments made during markup so tightly that no paper is circulated except on the dais were the members sit.
- The House Appropriations Committee has a surveys and investigation team assigned to investigate the worthiness of federal programs, similar to the function of the Government Accountability Office, none of the team's reports have been made public in at least two years.
Gov Doc Art
Check out my cousin Gabriel Troy's artwork using government documents. He says about this sculpture, "Federal Paperwork Burden": "I wanted to make these Government documents accessible and inaccessible at the same time. The books are fixed by tension without a back or shelf."
Principles for an Open Transition
Lawrence Lessig launched the website An Open Transition which offers President-elect Obama three principles to "guide the transition in its objective to build upon the very best of the Internet to produce the very best for government". These principles include: - No Legal Barrier to Sharing - No Technological Barrier to Sharing - Free Competition Read more about these principles, view the video, and sign the petition at open-government.us. Continue reading
50 Days to Government Information Liberation
When I started this long conversational march towards liberation, I thought libraries as institutions would be the first of those Gutenberg artifacts to be thrown onto our bonfire of change. But I now realize that this rush towards bibliographic revolution was just too glib. The exchange over the last two weeks -- here, here, and here -- reminds me again just how much of the intrinsic conflict between services and collections (as James puts it, is a false dichotomy) still frames our very foundations as professionals, even in a digital environment. I want to push this just a bit more. I fully recognize that a library world without collections is still very much in the distance of our professional perspective (much like the Pilgrim's "city on the hill"; something only realized by the approaching, never by the arrival.) And I fully recognize James' arguments for a collective bonding of local activism and global responsibility, or as he puts it so well, The networked environment means that for all intents and purposes, the local IS the global. Networked technologies like P2P, cheap servers, ever better indexing/search, metadata standards, harvesting and preservation infrastructures etc means that all libraries can have locally-important digital collections (and both human and networked services!!) that are globally accessible and able to be shared/reconfigured/repurposed with other local digital collections But this same networked ecosystem of digital political, social, cultural, economic and civic information ecosystems, in my opinion, does not automatically bestow the same kind of "authority" on these digital collections as they do (or might) on traditional repositories of paper and print civic information -- be they digital archives, libraries, institutes, centers, cooperatives, etc. I see governments at all levels binding their services and information sources more tightly together through the deployment of electronic government. The bibliographic gap created in the distribution chain of print and paper allowed many traditional libraries to grow their own local collections of government information that met the purposes of their users, and also allowed them to become ad hoc service providers either officially (picture patent and trademark libraries here) or unofficially (picture tax forms, explanations of medicare provisions, regulatory and legislative research.) In the digital world, this gap is eliminated. What is left is explanation, mediation, and organization of information sources that might be created by thousands of public and non-public institutions -- but for the most part will either remain with the producers or be delivered directly to the users by the producers (or a variety of third parties -- including libraries.) This is the kind of competitive information world (or the city on the hill) I see. I am not arguing for an either/or choice (we had this zero sum discussion earlier.) I am talking about how librarians deploy their limited capital, social and labor, within this evolving information ecology coming out of electronic government. It is about choices, yes. And one of those choices will be how much emphasis we should put on collections and how much on services. This new competitive environment among all these institutions, I argue, demands a different kind of government information librarianship. We said we will never win each other over -- but let our sparks of difference better illuminate our path as we slog our way towards that distant civic prominotory. This is fun. See you on Day 49 Continue reading