Google VP for search quality talks about searching
An interesting interview with Udi Manber, vice president in charge of search quality at Google:
- At Google, a search guru's dream comes true, by Stephen Shankland, CNet, June 5, 2008.
The other difference is it depends on location. If you do the same search from a different country, you get different results, even if it's the same language. We will tune the results by the country in which you're searching. It's by language and location.Continue reading
How do you collect digital documents?
I spend a good deal of time scouring newspapers and Web sites like Docuticker (RSS Feed) and UN Pulse (RSS Feed) in order to add digital government documents to my library's collections. Sometimes I have the url cataloged; or if I think the document is particularly in danger of disappearing, I'll upload them to the Internet Archive's govt documents collection. Below are a few that I've come across in my digitravels recently. At the upcoming International Documents Taskforce (IDTF) meeting at ALA Annual Conference (GODORT conference schedule here), I'm giving a short presentation about digital collections. I'd really like to hear how/if others are doing digital collection development either randomly or as a matter of course. Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts, ideas, and hopes. Please include any information you care to share -- what you do, how you do it, if you have favorite haunts/Websites etc.
- Addressing the global food crisis: Key trade, investment and commodity policies in ensuring sustainable food security and alleviating poverty. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
- The Contribution of Early Childhood Education to a Sustainable Society. UNESCO
- Carpet bombing in cyberspace. Armed Forces Journal
- The Employment Situation: May 2008. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Senate Intelligence Committee Unveils Final Phase II Reports on Prewar Iraq Intelligence. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence.
- Phase II Report on Public Statements (PDF; 2.5 MB)
- Phase II Report on DoD Policy Office (PDF; 819 KB)
- Eighth Annual Trafficking in Persons Report. U.S. Department of State. Download in sections or as full report (PDF).
The Federal Government Must Reimagine Its Role As An Information Provider
Here is a pre-print (not-final version) of a paper with fascinating ideas about distribution of government information:
- Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P and Felten, Edward W, "Government Data and the Invisible Hand" (2008). Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008.
...reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility.While the paper does not address preservation and long term access explicitly, it does suggest that the government should provide a "permanent location" with a permanent URL for "each piece of government data." It also implies (I think) that something like LOCKSS will ensure authenticity and permanent access ("As long as there is vigorous competition between third party sites, we expect most citizens will be able to ?nd a site provider they trust.") I believe that oversimplifies the problem and relies too much on hope and not enough on a social commitment to preservation through public funding of memory organizations. Thanks and a tip of the hat to Joshua Taubere (GovTrack.us) for pointing to this article. He describes and comments on the paper in a post on the Open House Project blog: (Government Data and the Invisible Hand June 6th, 2008 by Joshua Tauberer). Continue reading
Open Access in Peril for Wisconsin Documents?
[cross posted on legalresearchplus] Wisconsin’s Public-Records Law: Preserving the Presumption of Complete Public Access in the Age of Electronic Records, by Leanne Holcomb and James Isaac, 2008 Wisconsin Law Review 515 (2008).
Under Wisconsin’s public-records law, the public is permitted access to the actions of government officials in order to act as an effective check on government power and give force to the democratic system. This policy translates into the legal right of inspection by any person of any public record, . . . Over the last three decades, however, statutes have not kept pace with technological advancements that have dramatically transformed public records, threatening the presumption of complete public access. The emergence of electronic documents as the preeminent record of government activity has complicated the application of existing public-records law to records-retention practice and the disclosure of public records. As e-mail illustrates, primary electronic documents are often capable of being “deleted,” but not in the traditional sense of this term. this difference begs the question whether deleted e-mail, and other deleted electronic documents like it, belongs to the public record and should be disclosed upon request. This Comment argues for an answer in the affirmative. Additionally, the creation of each primary record in electronic form includes numerous unseen secondary records, such as metadata, that do not accompany traditional paper records. While secondary records are unintentionally created, they nonetheless provide a considerable amount of information about the creation and history of the record, information that is sometimes of great use to the requester and arguably in line with the existing statutory definition of record. Wisconsin needs to address these electronic-records issues in order to maintain an up-to-date and relevant public-records law. This Comment therefore suggests adapted statutory language and continued judicial recognition of electronic documents’ peculiarities, aiming to modernize the public-records law and provide a solid platform from which the legislature can address inevitable technological advances in the future.Continue reading
Open Access in Peril for EU Documents?
[Cross posted on legalresearchplus] Shrinking access to EU documents? This is from a press release on the European Ombudsman site: “The European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, has called on the European Parliament (EP) to defend the European Union’s commitment to transparency and the citizens’ right of access to EU documents. This follows the European Commission’s recent proposals to revise the law on public access to documents. In his contribution to today’s public hearing in the EP’s LIBE Committee (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs), the Ombudsman said: “The Commission’s proposals would mean access to fewer, not more, documents. This raises fundamental issues of principle about the EU’s commitment to openness and transparency.” Read the entire contribution given by the Ombudsman The EU proposals sharply limit the definition of what is a “document” — ”The Commission’s proposed definition of a document would mean that, in many cases, citizens could only apply for access to a document if it appeared in a register.” Read the full text of the EU proposal to revise Regulation 1049/2001: “Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents” [4/30/2008] Hat tip to the lawlibrarians blog for tracking this! Continue reading