PublicMarkup.org
[cross-posted from Legalresearchplus.com] As I wrote about earlier, I was having a fun, albeit geeky Saturday night following links hither and yon, and I ran across the fascinating PublicMarkup.org site. PublicMarkup is a project of the Sunlight Foundation , and just like sunlight is the best of disinfectants, a bit of public scrutiny and participation should make legislation stronger and more viable. The folks at PublicMarkup drafted the Transparency in Government Act of 2008, and hope that the wonders of online collaboration will enhance and improve the legislation and will inspire lawmakers to carry it forward. From the PublicMarkup site: “The Sunlight Foundation has put together what we think can become model transparency legislation—the Transparency In Government Act of 2008—and we now need your help to further shape and refine it.” Interesting? Inspired? Well, you better move fast if you want contribute — You only have until May 19th before they close the site for comments and then try to re-craft/re-draft the legislation. -Erika Continue reading
Ruggles report on preservation and use of economic data liberated!
A few weeks back, we posted a story about an Atlantic article from November, 1967 called, "The National Data Center and Personal Privacy" in which was discussed the idea of a National Data Center, the precursor to Total Information Awareness. It was such a hot topic of the day that Congress held a hearing on computers and the invasion of privacy of US citizens (The computer and invasion of privacy. Hearings, Eighty-ninth Congress, second session. July 26, 27, and 28, 1966. by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. Special Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy.) I started reading the hearing, and found that Yale Economics Professor Richard Ruggles (NYT obituary from 2001) had also testified before that hearing. So I started poking around about Ruggles, looking in WorldCat and Google Scholar. I found quite a few citations to a document entitled, Report of the Committee on the Preservation and Use of Economic Data submitted to the Social Science Research Council in 1965. But for such a well-cited document that spawned a Congressional hearing and much worry in the mainstream press about computers and privacy, there were only 3 libraries in the whole country that held the report. Imagine that! Well, I decided to liberate the report, so -- after much finagling! -- got a copy, scanned it, and uploaded it to the Internet Archive. Score one for the digital public domain!! I hope to see more libraries listed as having a copy in WorldCat in the near future. And if you've got any fugitive documents laying around your hard drive, send them to us here at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info. We'll make sure they get up on the open Web safe and secure in the Internet Archive!! Continue reading
CIA’s Psychology of Intelligence Analysis book now online
The CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence has posted the full text of one of its guidebooks, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis originally published in 1999. you can get it on the CIA site, but I also took the liberty of downloading it and then uploading it to the Internet Archive's government documents collection. That link is stable and would be appropriate for adding to the 856 field of your bib record. Wouldn't it be really cool if all of those 4412 govt documents in the IA's collection had downloadable MARC records?
Intelligence analysts, in seeking to make sound judgments, are always under challenge from the complexities of the issues they address and from the demands made on them for timeliness and volume of production… How many times have we encountered situations in which completely plausible premises, based on solid expertise, have been used to construct a logically valid forecast–with virtually unanimous agreement–that turned out to be dead wrong? A central focus of this book is to illuminate the role of the observer in determining what is observed and how it is interpreted. People construct their own version of “reality” on the basis of information provided by the senses, but this sensory input is mediated by complex mental processes that determine which information is attended to, how it is organized, and the meaning attributed to it. What people perceive, how readily they perceive it, and how they process this information after receiving it are all strongly influenced by past experience, education, cultural values, role requirements, and organizational norms, as well as by the specifics of the information received.[Thanks BoingBoing!] Continue reading
As Easy as FDL? What do you think?
The Government Printing Office has produced a draft marketing plan for the Federal Depository Library Program. The 22 page plan and a survey link can be found at http://www.fdlp.gov/promotion/marketingplan.html. Depositories have been asking for marketing/promotion assistance for awhile and this plan seems to be in response to these requests. It's also quite good that it is a draft plan and that input is being solicited before being rolled out. It suggests a willingness to collaborate that is appreciated. It is our hope at FGI that GPO will get a good response rate to their call for comments because this will become a major way of marketing for the community. Better that stakeholders have input and suggestions BEFOREHAND instead of complaining about it afterwards. The proposed slogan for the marketing campaign has stuck in my head every since I read it off the executive summary of the plan -- "As Easy as FDL - Free (information), Dedicated (service), Limitless (possibilities)" As slogans go I think that this is an excellent encapsulation of everyone's vision for the FDLP. I think it might even serve as a rough approximation for what the program is now. Whether this slogan will strengthen an improving reality or degenerate into mere lip service depends greatly on how the electronic era will be implemented. If it becomes a centralized model with digital rights restrictions that means that info is only free within depository walls, then it won't be as easy as FDL. But if librarians successfully adapt the century old model of decentralized, freely reusable information to the electronic era, it will be as easy as FDL. Continue reading
Welcome Outdoor Oklahoma!
Today we welcomed a new state agency podcast to our government podcasts directory: Outdoor Oklahoma - This is a video podcast of a weekly TV show produced by the Department of Wildlife Conservation. It appears to be archived on iTunes. We're always on the lookout for new podcasts by government agencies. If you know of that isn't in our directory, let us know. Remember, to be a podcast, there must be a way to subscribe to the program. A pointer to a list of audio/video files that someone must visit to determine new content is *not* a podcast. Continue reading