Ken Burns on PBS
As you are probably aware, President Bush has proposed reducing public broadcasting funding by 56%. The New York Times asked in a recent article (Is PBS Still Necessary?, By Charles Mcgrath, New York Times, February 17, 2008) and there is now a debate about the value of Public Broadcasting in the age of cable and the Web (see for example: "Is PBS Necessary?" The Debate Moves Online, PBS Engage Blog). We have even had a few comments on this here on FGI (Is PBS passé?, by Susanna Leers, and comments).
Now Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker whose projects include "The War," "The Civil War," "Jazz" and "Baseball" (about which he says, "none of the films I have made in the last nearly 30 years could have been produced anywhere but at PBS") weighs in with an Op-Ed:
- Standing up for public television, By Ken Burns Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2008. "PBS offers an invaluable service that none of the other channels can deliver."
New UN statistical database
A posting in Slashdot has information about the new UN data access system called UNdata that contains information from all major UN databases and those of several other international organizations. UNdata will improve the dissemination of statistics by UN's Statistics Division (UNSD) to the widest possible audience. It is an easy to use data access system that was developed to meet UNSD’s vision of providing an integrated information resource with current, relevant and reliable statistics free of charge to the global community. The design allows a user to access a large number of UN databases either by browsing the data series or through a keyword search. Continue reading
LCSH heading change from “govt publications” to “govt “information”
My pal, Jenna Freedman, the Lower East Side Librarian started subscribing to the Library of Congress Subject Heading Weekly list (probably out of love for Libraries' great good friend and cataloger extraordinaire Sandy Berman!). This week she came across a strange one that I hope our readers can expound on in the comments, especially since I'm not a cataloger.
150 Electronic government information [May Subd Geog]Is this LC's documentation of a move away from government publications as the instantiation of our government's work toward e-government and government information as transaction? Should we be worried about this change in the heading? Is this just semantics? Is there a cataloger in the house? The other one that I found strange was:
* 450 UF Electronic government publications [EARLIER FORM OF HEADING]
* 550 BT Government publications
(C) 150 Global cooling [Not Subd Geog]Is that some sort of Newspeak?!?! Continue reading
450 UF Cooling, Global
550 BT Global temperature changes
Veterans’ Affairs institutes rights management software
The Veterans' Affairs Administration has recently instituted Microsoft’s Rights Management Services (RMS) (AKA DRM) to "manage" security of internal documents, email, handheld traffic. This sounds to me like a REALLY bad idea on so many levels, especially for a government that plays loose with emails, has a problem with classification and transparency. This seems to me a nuclear solution to a manageable social problem (duh! don't put home records of more than 26 millions veterans on a laptop PC that can be stolen!!), and one that will have far-reaching affect on open and transparent government. "VA gets its rights: Department specifies how people can use — or not use — documents employees create." By Joab Jackson. Government Computer News, 3/3/08.
Perhaps not surprisingly, VA has become one of the earliest adopters — and thus far, the largest — of rights management software with its use of Microsoft’s Rights Management Services (RMS). VA expected that by press time all employees would be able to set restrictions on what can be done with the documents they create. When Word, PowerPoint or Excel files, or Outlook e-mail messages are sent to others, the authors can set permissions on what the recipients can do with those documents. The creator of the document can decide whether it can be printed, forwarded or edited by other people. It’s the employee’s or the agency’s call. Moreover, the documents are encrypted, so anyone without the appropriate permissions cannot see the contents. "This ability provides our agency and users the assurance that only the author of the content or someone that has been given full-control permission to the content can remove the persistent protection from the e-mails and documents," De Sanno said. "For instance, say I send you an e-mail and RMS that message," De Sanno said. "I can actually say you cannot print this [document], or that you cannot forward this. Or, it can evaporate in 30 days." Among employees, contractors and other people, more than 250,000 individuals will shortly begin using this feature, the agency said.Continue reading
Creating Gov Doc “Libraries” in Google Books
Digitized Government Documents in Google Books has been written about quite a lot over here at the FGI (check them out) and I'd like to revisit this topic again but with a different focus.
I was searching for Civil War era government documents for a History Professor, and I realized that we did not own one of the documents he sought. Before suggesting that he interlibrary loan a copy of this document, I decided to search online for a full-text digitized version. Alas, it did not exist in the digital realm, but I did find some other digitized gov docs pertaining to his research needs in Google Books. We were both elated, he because I had found what he needed, and I because so many documents I found digitized on Google Books were the same documents we had lost to mold and water damage from Hurricane Rita!
Out of curiosity, I did a Google Book search for other types of government publications and found these gems:
Trial of the Conspirators, for the Assassination of President Lincoln
Illustrations of the Gross Morbid Anatomy of the Brain in the Insane (isn't that a Cypress Hill song? Nevermind...) by the Government Hospital for the Insane.
How it Feels to be the Husband of a Suffragette (not published by the Government Printing Office, but it is a book housed in the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection in the Library of Congress).
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion
Most of these documents were scanned at large research universities or depositories, but the quality is not always decent andcan sometimes border on the illegible. I was quite amused when I discovered a staff person's hand digitized on this document's cover:
However, there are bigger snafus than a digitized librarian's hand. For example, despite government documents being in the public domain, Google Books treats most post-1922 (i.e. post-copyright law) government documents as copyrighted material by only allowing a limited view! For more details, please read James Jacobs' post on this issue.
Despite all these issues (which have yet to be resolved), I decided to take advantage of the access to full-text, pre-1922 government documents and create a McNeese Gov Docs "Library"account in Google Books for my depository. The account also allows you to subscribe to updates of its holdings via an RSS feed. I put a link to the library account and the RSS feed on my depository's homepage and our "Gov Guides" wiki. I'll add more of these interesting and old documents as I come across them, especially those pertaining to Louisiana or documents that were lost to Hurricane Rita.
Here are some tips for finding gov docs in Google Books: Use Advanced Search, and in the Publisher field, type in Govt OR GPO OR "Government Printing Office". You can also search by agency, (i.e. "Department of the Interior") by typing the name of the agency in the Author field.
Have fun exploring and building your own digital collections, but please let me know if you find some really cool gov docs, ok? Continue reading