Government 2.0 Blog Posts @ Mashable.com
Dr. Mark Drapeau writes a wonderful series of posts on Government 2.0 ("from an insider's perspective") at Mashable.com. Dr. Drapeau is the 2006-2008 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security policy of the National Defense University in Washington. He also has his own fun blog and tweets at Twitter under the name "Cheeky_Geeky". How cute is that? Here is an excerpt from his Mashable Government 2.0 blog post about his attendance at "Government 2.0 and Beyond...Harnessing Collective Intelligence," a conference hosted by the Department of Defense’s Information Resources Management College:
It had all the makings of a public relations boon: High-profile speakers like David Weinberger...corporate sponsorship, media coverage, and a new auditorium to show off. Alvin Toffler, the author of Future Shock, was even there. But what I didn’t see among the people in the room was urgency. Much lip service was given to welcoming new technologies, openness, information sharing, transparency, and collaboration. But there was no talk of a strategy, a plan, or a roadmap. Frankly, there was no talk of anything concrete in the way of actual progress towards Government 2.0, as the title of the event would lead one to believe. And while I am certain that DOD Deputy CIO David Wennergren was genuine when he spoke about the future of command and control being a more agile system of “focus and converge,” I am also certain that people in my workplace have Dell laptops so old they have time for a power nap during boot up. ...As the event was winding down, I heard a line not unfamiliar to me at this point, about everyone in the room being an “agent of change” that had to help. I became a bit frustrated with this and Tweeted the following: "I am growing very tired of rooms full of 'agents of change' - Let's CHANGE. I want DOD [Dept. of Defense] MySpace access TODAY. Let's GO. Stop talking. DO IT".Amen to that! Continue reading
Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative
I've been reading and digesting the recently released Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative website and the sustainable formats page, so I can discuss it (if there is time) during my presentation at next week's Depository Library Conference. A dozen federal agencies launched an initiative to establish a common set of guidelines for digitizing historical materials. Two working groups have been established: the Still Image (books, photographs, maps, etc.) and the Audio-Visual Working Group. They have two draft documents currently up for review and comment: Tiff Image Metadata and Digital Imaging Framework. Comments are due on November 15. I'm also loving their glossary of terms, which "has been generated to serve the participating agencies as a standardized vocabulary for their deliberations and guidelines" and it is "a work in progress" so suggestions are welcome. Continue reading
Putting the documents library in wikipedia
One of our past guest bloggers, Rebecca Blakeley, tweeted a little while ago about this Online article of interest. In it, Lauren Pressley and Carolyn McCallum talk about how libraries should participate in Wikipedia. Besides the easy step-by-step directions, Pressley and McCallum give a compelling argument for librarians adding content to Wikipedia in order to raise awareness of library collections and, more importantly, to "change academicians’ minds about Wikipedia." Please read it, think about it, roll your sleeves up and get wiki-ing :-) Putting the Library in Wikipedia By Lauren Pressley and Carolyn J. McCallum. Online. Vol. 32 No. 5 — Sep/Oct 2008. Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Human Rights
UC Berkeley contributed this annotated bibliography to the ALA GODORT Handout Wik: Human Rights Resources (Univ. of California--Berkeley, 1999) Last updated 7/7/2006 It is separated into the following sections:
- Encyclopedias, Guides, and Handbooks
- Guides to Research
- Document Sources
- Directories
- Bibliographies
- Annuals
- Library Catalogs
- Periodicals Indexes/Databases
- Periodicals
- News Sources
- Government Information
- Internet Sources
- Censorship
- Civil rights
- Detention of persons
- Dissenters
- Government, resistance to
- Human rights
- Human rights workers
- Political crimes and offenses
- Political persecution
- Political prisoners
- Race discrimination
- Refugees, political
- Self-determination
- Sex discrimination
- Social justice
- Torture
- Encyclopedia of human rights. 2nd ed. E. Lawson. Doe Reference JC 571 .E67 1996 Comprehensive compendium including texts of 200 instruments, descriptions of human rights organizations, status of human rights in countries, etc.
- Guide to human rights research. J. Tobin. Doe Reference K 3236 .T63 1994 Comprehensive guide to the literature
- Multilateral treaties deposited with the Secretary-General Doe Reference JX 1977 .A3652 .M8 Govt/Stat; latest.
- World refugee survey. Main Stack HV 640 .W63; latest in Doe Reference - Govt/Stat
- International journal of human rights.(JC571 I593 Main)
Link directly to legislation (sort-of)
From the better-than-nothing department: Thomas has posted instructions for how to link directly to legislation. Well, it is certainly nice to be able to link to legislation with a persistent link! But it would be much better if one could click to create a link rather than following a 600 word description of how to link on another page. Here is the essence of how to create a persistent link: To link to Senate bill 254 from the 110th Congress, just add "110s254" to:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation. Like this: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110s254 Continue reading