Lame Duck Reorganization Cutting Green Jobs to Promote Outsourcing
Reclamation Jettisoning Environmental Functions, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), August 18, 2008.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is rapidly downsizing its environmental capabilities by forcing scores of Denver-based specialists to go into retirement under threat of layoff, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). This massive lame duck restructuring will force the next administration to contract for the eliminated functions.Among the services being cut are "The Center’s world renowned library." There are links at the PEER site above to more details. Thanks and a tip of the FGI hat to Bernadine Abbott Hoduski! Continue reading
Multimedia at EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency has consolidated its Web 2.0 multimedia (video, photos, audio, podcasts) at Multimedia Center, US EPA. The current featured video is an interview with with US EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock, discussing the Greenversations blog. It is worth watching (only about 5 minutes) as an enthusiastic view of the possibilities of better citizen communications with government. Unfortunately, the EPA, as far as I can tell, has not provided a way to bookmark videos or download them for preservation and has settled on the "standard" of Flash video, rather than open source video formats. (See Feds set sights on small screen, By Wade-Hahn Chan, FCW, August 11, 2008). Continue reading
FGI at SAA
I just got back from another fun-packed week of teaching the data services workshop at ICPSR, and next week I will be speaking briefly at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists on "The challenges for preservation of government information in the digital age" (Appraisals/Appraisers Section Meeting) on Friday. Stop by and say hello! Continue reading
Library Partnership Saves Government Sites
Library Partnership Preserves End-of-Term Government Web Sites, The Library of Congress, News Releases, August 14, 2008.
The Library of Congress, the California Digital Library, the University of North Texas Libraries, the Internet Archive and the U.S. Government Printing Office today announced a collaborative project to preserve public United States Government web sites at the end of the current presidential administration ending January 19, 2009. This harvest is intended to document federal agencies' online archive during the transition of government and to enhance the existing collections of the five partner institutions. ...The project will also call upon government information specialists -- including librarians, political and social science researchers, and academics -- to assist in the selection and prioritization of web sites to be included in the collection, as well as identifying the frequency and depth of the act of collecting. The Government Printing Office will lend expertise to the curation process along with libraries in its Federal Depository Library Program. A tool has been designed by the project team and developed by the University of North Texas to facilitate the collaborative work of these specialists, and will be made available to participants in August 2008.See also: Project will preserve Bush administration Web sites, By Jill R. Aitoro, NextGov (08/15/08). Continue reading
Planned Launch of GPO’s Federal Digital System (Fdsys)
The first public release of GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys.htm will launch later this year. Staff in the Superintendent of Documents Library Services and Content Management unit at GPO have been working with GPO's Program Management Office who are responsible for developing this system. We want to ensure that the requirements for the Federal Depository Library Program will be met. In order to ensure that we are accurately communicating the requirements capabilities of the system, we are requesting your feedback. Based on your knowledge of FDsys, what are your expectations for the first public release? We want to make sure we continue to get this information in the hands of the development team and keep lines of communications open. Additional information should be also be shared with GPO's Program Management Office at pmo@gpo.gov Continue reading