Starr Hoffman: BOTM for September, 2008
Starr Hoffman is Librarian for Digital Collections at the University of North Texas Libraries. She is responsible for maintaining UNT's Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports Archive and the CyberCemetery, a NARA-affiliated archive of defunct government websites, and is also the Web Administrator for ALA GODORT. Starr received her Master of Library Science and Master of Art History from the University of North Texas, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Higher Education. Her research interests include web archiving, distance learning, digital collections, library marketing, and graphic novels. She also writes the Geeky Artist Librarian blog… and it’s rumored that sometimes she finds the time to sleep. Continue reading
Following/mapping the election
If you're like me, you want to keep track of the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. I thought I'd share a few sites that I've bookmarked in order to keep up to the minute. My favorite site is Electoral-vote.com. E-V collects national and state polls and shows a nice map of the current electoral vote count. As new state polls are released, the maps, spreadsheets, tables, graphs, etc. are updated. There's also a comparison for that day in the 2004 presidential race, roll-over stats for how each state voted since 1992, and tracking of Senate and House elections. Another site of interest is FiveThirtyEight "electoral projections done right." This one has lots of graphs, "tipping point" states, a return on investment index and more. 538 (the # of electors in the electoral college of course :-) ) also tracks governors' races. It's run by Nate Silver, a writer and baseball statistician. You know how crazy baseball fans are for data, so you know that this site is sucking up as much data as they can, chewing it up and serving it up in lots of different ways. Also check out RealClearPolitics. This one pulls together news, blogs, editorials, polls and electoral maps (although the mapping feature is only for presidential race). [Thanks David Weinberger/JoHo for the RealClearPolitics tip!] Continue reading
Carl Malamud: government information copyfighter
[Update: HA! StanfordLawLibrarians cross-posted a similar story almost at the same exact moment on FGI and over at LegalResearchPlus. So I deleted their post and include this link to their story as well!] Carl Malamud is itching for a copyfight, and when he wins(!), the American public will be better informed due to better access to state, county and federal regulations, building codes, plumbing standards, criminal laws etc. Code city is now open and the readme file is a graphic novel (view it as a Flickr slideshow here!) explaining the travesty of state and local codes being copyrighted rather than in the public domain and freely available online. Code city included full-text scans of 43 state codes -- including the entire California Title 24 Safety Codes! -- and several city codes (Little Rock, Denver, Phoenix, Wilmington, Honolulu, St Louis, Las Vegas). The goal of the project is to get as many city, county and state safety and building codes and regulations out on the open Web in a standardized digital format (YAY open standards!!) so that others can use the documents to design Web sites with more modern search and presentation features, "social Web sites where, for instance, plumbers could provide useful annotations to building codes -- perhaps blending Wikipedia with Facebook for a more useful law site." If/when he's successful, citizens (not to mention libraries!) will no longer be forced to shell out hundreds of dollars (CA code is $1,556 for a digital copy, or $2,315 for a printed version!). And that's a very good thing!!
California's building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws can be found online. But if you want to download and save those laws to your computer, forget it. The state claims copyright to those laws. It dictates how you can access and distribute them -- and therefore how much you'll have to pay for print or digital copies. It forbids people from storing or distributing its laws without consent. That doesn't sit well with Carl Malamud, a Sebastopol resident with an impressive track record of pushing for digital access to public information. He wants California -- and every other federal, state and local agency -- to drop their copyright claims on law, contending it will pave the way for innovators to create new ways of searching and presenting laws. "When it comes to the law, the courts have always said there can be no copyright because people are obligated to know what it says," Malamud said. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse in court." Malamud is spoiling for a major legal fight. He has begun publishing copies of federal, state and county codes online -- in direct violation of claimed copyright. --Nathan Halverson, Press Democrat, Wednesday, September 3, 2008Continue reading
Coverage of Political Conventions
Looking for online coverage of the political conventions? Here is a good roundup of options!
- The Best 2008 Political Convention Coverage Online, by Mark Glaser, MediaShift, PBS, 28 August 2008.
Google and the Search for Federal Government Information
A couple of weeks ago, Bonnie Klein, of the Defense Technical Information Center, submitted a comment here with a link to an article she wrote about the effectiveness of using Google and other commercial search tools to find government information. I recommend it highly:
- Google and the Search for Federal Government Information, by Bonnie Klein, Against The Grain, v.20, no. 2 April 2008.