The bad dream of DRM
DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it, by Nate Anderson, ars technica (July 24, 2008).
The bad dream of DRM continues. Yahoo e-mailed its Yahoo! Music Store customers yesterday, telling them it will be closing for good—and the company will take its DRM license key servers offline on September 30, 2008. ...[T]he Yahoo news is just another depressing reminder of all the wasted time and energy put into these schemes designed to create roadblocks for legal users.Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Consumer Issues
While we are a nation of citizens, we are also a nation of consumers. Every patron we have is a consumer and so all of them may have need for our current "Guide of the Week" from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange: Consumer Issues and Advocacy (Mary Finley, California State University-Northridge (CSUN), 2004) Last updated 1/10/2008 Mary Finley has put together an information guide broken down into sections on Books / Complaint Guides & Consumer Agencies / Business Addresses / Brandnames / Journal Articles / Newspapers / Government Agencies & Activities / Laws and Regulations / Internet. Many of the print resources listed in this guide can be found close to you either by searching the catalog of your local library or by searching on WorldCat.org. Ms. Finley's guide references online databases that CSUN has paid for the use of their students and faculty. Some of the same databases might be available to you. Check out the Indiana State Library's listing of statewide virtual libraries at http://www.in.gov/library/inspire/other_states.html to see what desktop database access you might have. Check out the guide. Then see what else is available. And if you're a docs librarian with a handout, please share it! Continue reading
Kris Tells Us Why We Should Care
In the Summer 2008 issue of Dttp: Documents to the People, Kris Kasianovitz has a thoughtful overview of copyright of state and local documents and how that interacts with efforts to digitize such documents. The article: Why Care About Copyright? by Chris Kasianovitz. Dttp, v.36, no. 2, Summer 2008, p. 12 Gives a history of state/local copyright and argues that for history's sake and on the principle of free access to government information, copyright law ought to be amended to give state and local gov't documents the same public domain status as federal documents. We at FGI are in hearty agreement with that! As far as I can tell, Kris' article is not freely available on line, but some of the history she covers is also available on our government copyright page at http://freegovinfo.info/copyright. The whole Summer 2008 Dttp is well worth the read. There is also a freely available web supplement that you should check out at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/DttP_Supplements_v36_n2 if for no other reason than that FGI's own James Jacobs has an article on using del.icio.us for government documents. Continue reading
Right to govt information the cornerstone of the GPO
For my first blog post, I want to begin by saying that I am honored to be the guest "Blogger of the Month" and thrilled to share my thoughts on various tools, technologies, trends, and other events that impact my professional passions. Our Founding Fathers fought to ensure that the people have the right to its Government's information. That is the cornerstone of the U.S. Government Printing Office's (GPO) Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and a cause to which I have dedicated the past 16 years of my Federal service. Technology and innovation are core elements necessary for change. As the Director of Library Services & Content Management and the acting Superintendent of Documents at GPO, I am constantly seeking ways in which GPO and the FDLP can improve the dissemination of Federal information to the public as well as ways in which GPO can better serve our library partners. Many of the topics that I will be covering this month will relate to the challenges of keeping up with the latest technology, improving our services to our partner libraries, and ways in which we can stay innovative. I am eager to read your feedback and encourage readers to stay in touch even after I pass the torch to next month's blogger. Continue reading
Please welcome Ric Davis: blogger of the month for August, 2008
And now the moment you've all been waiting for when we unveil our special guest blogger this month. So please welcome to the podium Ric Davis, acting Superintendent of Documents and Director of Library Services & Content Management at the U.S. Government Printing Office(read more of Ric's bio here). We're really excited to have Ric blogging for us and look forward to the conversations this month. Take it away Ric! Continue reading