UN refugee agency teams up with google earth
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has just announced the "Google Earth Outreach" partnership with google earth. The program will allow humanitarian agencies the ability to use Google Earth and Maps to "highlight their work on behalf of millions of refugees and other populations of concern in some of the world's most remote and difficult areas." All one needs is to download the google earth application and the UNHCR kml file, then launch the app and open the kml file (KML = Keyhole Markup Language). Navigate to a region -- like Chad, Iraq, Colombia or the Darfur region of Sudan -- and you'll get access to news, video and other information about the situation and daily life/struggles of refugees. Check out the google earth gallery for other KML files that people have built -- from world energy consumption to Death valley driving tour to Yosemite 1/2 dome hikes to the Burke and Wills expedition of 1860! I haven't yet come across an FDLP KML file, but perhaps one of our readers would like to start one? It's as easy as creating a google map and clicking the button "view in google earth" at the top right of the map. This will automatically generate the KML file. You can then send it to admin AT freegovinfo DOT info and we'll post it to the site. Continue reading
Lunchtime listens from NYPL
The New York Public Library has lots of free audio and video (and text!) on iTunes! See: NYPL on iTunes U., by Barbara Taranto, NYPL, April 8, 2008. If you have iTunes, here are some direct links to get you started:
Continue readingNARA will NOT harvest at end of current administration
According to a post on .govwatch (The National Archives Is Quietly Destroying Millions of Documents April 08, 2008 by Coby Logen), a recent memo at the National Archives and Records Administration says:
After considering our other records management program priorities for FY 2008, availability of harvested web content at other "archiving" sites (e.g., www.archive.org), and the resources required for conducting and preserving a government-wide web snapshot, NARA has determined that we will not conduct a web harvest or snapshot at the end of the current Administration.Logen says that "Not capturing federal web sites now may mean losing millions of web pages authored under the Bush administration when leadership changes in January 2009." John Wonderlich at the Sunlight Foundations comments that "The fact that digital preservation is done by others outside NARA isn't an excuse for NARA to abdicate their responsibility, but an argument that they should be capable of fulfilling it." (Digital Preservation Under Threat? by John Wonderlich on April 9, 2008) This seems yet another example of the government saying it cannot and therefore it won't. (The NARA/TGN contract as a bad precedent). Call it the Katrina of digital preservation? The New York Times sums up the underlying issue nicely yesterday: "In Storing 1's and 0's, the Question Is $" (By John Schwartz, New York Times, April 9, 2008). It is not a technological issue; it is an issue of funding and policy and control. (See: The Technical is Political.) Continue reading
Lunchtime listen: the audacity of government
I love love love [w:This_American_Life]. It's at the top of my podcast list (along with [w:Studio_360] and [w:Radio_Lab]). The 3.28.08 episode, "The audacity of government" is particularly interesting from a govt information viewpoint. Ira Glass once again takes the strange but true anomaly, tells it in the first-person humanly and humanely to show the absurdity of, in this case, bureaucracy and governments. You can download it to your favorite audio player or listen online.
Act One. The Prez vs. The Commish. Ira Glass tells the story of a little-known treaty dispute with far-reaching ramifications for our understanding of executive power. The dispute is between the President and one of his appointees...to the International Boundary Commission with Canada. Act Two. This American Wife. This American Life contributor Jack Hitt uncovers a strange practice within the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. If a foreign national marries a U.S. citizen and schedules an interview for a green card, but the U.S. citizen dies before the interview takes place, the foreign national is scheduled for deportation with no appeal—even if the couple has children who are U.S. citizens. Act Three. 44. Ira Glass interviews Charlie Savage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Boston Globe, who's written a book called Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy about the ways the Bush Administration claims executive powers that other presidents haven't claimed.Continue reading