EPA upgrades to Web 2.0
EPA upgrades to Web 2.0, By Kathleen Hickey, GCN, 09/09/08.
The Environmental Protection Agency launched a redesigned Web site today that features Web 2.0 tools. EPA officials said they made the new site more interactive and task-oriented to fulfill the needs of the public and federal, state and local agencies. The new site features a blog, social bookmarking tools, Really Simple Syndication feeds, videos and podcasts about EPA activities. The site also includes links to information about protecting the environment and improving energy efficiency, recycling and pollution prevention.Continue reading
We Want YOU… To Help With the Dot Gov Harvest!
Hi to all you FGI readers! I'm thrilled to be this month's guest blogger. As we all watch this historic presidential election unfold, there's another question going on in the back of our minds--how much of this online government information is going to change with the new administration, regardless of who's sworn in next January? As someone who works specifically with digital government collections, and whose primary job is capturing defunct government websites, this is of particular interest. Most of you already know about the "Dot Gov Crawl" project that's been organized to address this issue. The project partners include the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, the California Digital Library (CDL), the University of North Texas (UNT), and the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). We're working collaboratively to harvest and preserve government websites (primarily .gov and .mil domains), to form a snapshot of digital government information at the end of the current presidential administration. The Internet Archive will be performing the comprehensive crawl, and Library of Congress is focusing on congressional materials. CDL and UNT will be performing in-depth harvests of specific government websites, gathering documents linked deep within the websites that may not be gathered in the Internet Archive crawl. I encourage you to participate in the project. Communicate with the partner institution closest to you, and let them know if there are specific websites (or portions of websites) that are of particular interest to you. At UNT, we're trying to focus on documents that support our regional interests, things that might be overlooked in the kinds of sweeping national topics that will be handled by the Internet Archive. We're requesting that librarians for the central United States send us things that you want captured--websites you use often, publications deep within websites that might not be captured in large crawls, topics of regional interest. Your requests will help us identify and prioritize the information that is preserved for future generations. Please, submit any suggestions you have in the comments section below--I'll be monitoring them and adding them to our list. Thanks for your input! Continue reading
Big Data, Environmental Data
The Journal Nature has a special issue about "Big Data" with articles by Clifford Lynch, Cory Doctorow, and others. The whole issue is worth reading and is freely available online for a short time.
Coping with floods of data is now one of science's biggest challenges. In this Nature Special, we assess the need to complement smart science with smart searching; look at what the next Google will be; talk to the pioneering biologists who are trying to use wiki-type web pages to manage and interpret data; and recall that the first mass data crunchers were not computers, but the remarkable women of Harvard's Observatory.In the area of government information, David Goldston, the former chief of staff of the House Committee on Science, writes about environmental data.
- Big data: Data wrangling by David Goldston, Nature 455, no. 7209 (September 3, 2008): 15.
Guide of the Week: Energy
Since energy policy has been in the news most of this year, it seems like a good time to highlight this guide from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange: Energy (Ed Herman, University of Buffalo, 2007) Ed has produced an annotated listing of web resources to these aspects of energy:
- National Policy Issues
- US Statistics
- Technical Information
- Nuclear Energy
- New York State
- International Data
- Additional Information
- The Energy Source (U.S. Congress. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources) http://energy.senate.gov/ The hearings and news room sections are the most informative parts of this site. These abbreviated hearings reproduce testimonies of witnesses before the full committee and the subcommittees, but exclude dialogs among the witnesses and the Committee members. The Business and Government Documents Reference Center maintains the complete hearings in paper format. The news room includes two sets of press releases issued by the Committee Chair and the ranking minority member.
- States (U.S. Department of Energy. Energy Information Administration) http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/states/_seds.html Presents energy statistics pertaining to the 50 states.
- Building Energy Codes (U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy) http://www.energycodes.gov/ Attempts to promote improved energy codes for buildings by working with government agencies, national code organizations, and industry. It also hopes to develop and distribute compliance tools; and provide financial and technical assistance to states.
- Nuclear Power Information Tracker (Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)) http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/nuclear_safety/reactor-map/embedded-flash-map.html Select power plants from a map or a list to view a brief box that describes safety issues and a detailed statement that cites the reactor's owners, locations, populations within a 10-mile radius, and safety issues. Links lead to more detailed documentation.
- International Energy Annual (U.S. Department of Energy. Energy Information Administration) http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/contents.html Provides information and trends on world energy production and consumption for petroleum; natural gas; coal; and electricity. Statistics measuring population and GDP put the data in context. View information in PDF format or download Excel files that offer longer time series.
Cloud of McCain’s acceptance speech
Last week I posted a tag cloud of Barack Obama's speech accepting the Presidential candidacy of the Democratic party. Today is John McCain's turn. I got the transcript at zimbio, the same site I used to get the Obama speech. Tag Crowd was again used to analyze the transcript. Enjoy!