Documenting the Government — Strait of Hormuz edition
The recent encounter between U.S. warships and Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz provides an opportunity to reflect on the role of depository libraries in the digital age.
Background
The incident occured on January 6. On January 7, Navy Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff briefed Pentagon reporters via video teleconference from his headquarters in Manama, Bahrain. On the defenselink web site, a transcript of that news conference includes a link to page with a video of the incident. The video includes a voice saying "You will explode [unintelligible] minutes." In an undated post, apparently from January 7 or 8, on the U.S. Central Command web site, there is a story that includes a link to the same video and a still photo from it labeled "From Defense Department Video."
- DoD News Briefing with Vice Adm. Cosgriff at the Pentagon, Arlington, Va., January 07, 2008
- Iranian boats approach U.S. Navy ships, by U.S. Fifth Fleet Public Affairs, US Naval Forces Central Command, United States Central Command.
The incident received widespread news coverage. This morning, a search on news.google.com for "hormuz iran explode" retrieved over 2000 stories.
The initial stories were followed by accusations from Iran that the video was faked and second thoughts and analyses.
- Iran airs own video of US ship incident, AFP, Jan 10, 2008
- Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats, By Lartha Raddatz and Jonathan Karm, ABC News, Jan. 10, 2008
- Degrees of Confidence on U.S.-Iran Naval Incident By Mike Nizza, New York Times blog, The Lede, January 10, 2008
- What to Make of the Iranian Videotape by William M. Arkin, "Early Warning", Washington Post, January 10, 2008)
According to a story on TelegraphTV (The Pentagon have released amateur footage of the alleged encounter between the US Navy and Iranian vessels) the "amateur footage" released by the Pentagon was "filmed by a crew member of the USS Hopper" and "the audio and video recordings were made separately but have been put together in a compilation which showed more than 20 minutes of the alleged confrontation."
You can see copies of the 4 minute and 20 second video here:
- Iranian boats confront Navy, United States Central Command. (direct link to video, Quicktime, 5.1 megs)
- DoD News Briefing, Tuesday, 7 January 2008 - 2:00 PM. (direct link to video: Three U.S. Navy Ships Approached by Iranian Boats. (.wmv 28 MB) (080107-D-6570C-001))
Government Information Issues.
While the government has hundreds if not thousands of videos online, most go unnoticed by most Americans. But this video got extremely high media attention at a time when newspapers are running stories with headlines like "Bush's Iran war plot."
One analysis of the news coverage said:
ABC's Jonathan Karl quoting a Pentagon official as saying the Iranian boats "were a heartbeat from being blown up".
Bush administration officials seized on the incident to advance the portrayal of Iran as a threat and to strike a more threatening stance toward Iran. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley declared Wednesday that the incident "almost involved an exchange of fire between our forces and Iranian forces". President George W. Bush declared during his Mideast trip Wednesday that there would be "serious consequences" if Iran attacked U.S. ships and repeated his assertion that Iran is "a threat to world peace".
- Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel Analysis by Gareth Porter, IPS, Jan 10, 2008.
This prompts me to ask several questions related to the role of the FDLP and libraries that wish to preserve and provide access to government information.
- Is the video an official government publication? You can ask this question from the point of view of FDLP and Title 44 and wonder if it is "within scope of GPO's information dissemination programs." GPO is careful to not get information that is not within its scope (see: Web Publication Harvesting). But we can also ask, Is an "amateur video" by a crewman on a warship "official"? Can ask, When does audio, apparently from a warship radio, become a public document? Does a label of "From Defense Department Video" on a still photograph make the video official? Does anyone happen to know what that official-looking number (080107-D-6570C-001) attached to the defenselink version of the video means?
- Who assembled the video and audio? This question is, of course, related to the one above. The video consists of 4 or 5 separate shots and the "explode" audio over a black screen. Was it assembled officially and if so, by whom?
- What is the provenance of the video and audio? Were the separate shots and the audio recorded by one individual or several?
- Will the video be deposited with the National Archives? or GPO? or FDLP? And, the converse of this question is, of course, Will it disappear from the .mil web sites? Will take-down notices be filed with copies on Youtube? Will its "official" status later become "unofficial"? Will the military claim the video is owned by a private individual and the military has no rights to it?
- Has any digital library saved a copy of this video? There are copies of the video and exerpts of it all over the net. My search for the "official" version took some time and I came across news media excerpts, copies of newsmedia versions, and other copies. But none of the places I found the video (including the "official" versions on the .mil sites) have any library-role of guaranteeing long-term preservation and free public access. There once was a time when more ephemeral documents distributed by the government might have some life in newspapers and the stories about them. But, in an age of video, are any libraries saving copies of significant public documents like this video? Or are they hoping that someone else (ABC? CNN? DOD? GPO?) will do that for them? And who is in control of those copies? Daniel has put a copy in the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/DodFootageOfJan62008IranianEncounter, but even the IA has a policy that web site owners "can voluntarily restrict access to their material."
- Where is the "20 minute" compilation cited in several news stories? Perhaps it is somewhere on the web, but I did not find it. If anyone has found it please let me know.
I believe that libraries should be asking these questions in general, not just of the highly-visible items like the Hormuz video. In fact, if anything, the Hormuz video will probably be saved somewhere because, like toothpaste out of a tube, it is hard to put something back once it's been release on the net. But libraries are the only places that will preserve the things that are not high profile today but which will have great value tomorrow. Unless libraries create explicit policies to select, acquire, organize, and preserve digital information, much will be lost -- whether it is "within the scope" of FDLP or not.
Continue readingGPO and DLC: Thanks for Sharing
Recently, GPO released a sample of EPA documents that had been harvested from the EPA's website by software agents. These documents were gathered as a result of GPO's web harvesting project and a sample can now be found at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/harvesting/index.html.
According to the EPA Web Harvesting page, documents are being made available in two ways:
The first method involves the creating of brief bibliographic records for the monographs and the CONSER standard record format for the serials. The majority of publications included in this sample will be made accessible through this method. Users may conduct a keyword search in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) for the phrase “EPA pilot project” to review these cataloging records. The second method of access being tested involves posting a portion of the publications from the sample to GPO Access using a browse table. At the request of the Depository Library Council, LSCM is also trying to determine if there is a mechanism that enables public access to Web harvested content while these publications are in the queue for brief bibliographic records. LSCM has posted a small portion of the sample to GPO Access using a browse table.
If you want to see the full methodology and the documents available through the browse table, then please visit http://www.gpoaccess.gov/harvesting/index.html.
Regular readers of FGI know that we have problems with brief bibliographic records with no subject access, but we definitely appreciate GPO's efforts at item description and posting the browse table.
We are also very thankful to the Depository Library Council for requesting that the public be able to access harvested content while the publications are waiting for their brief records. We hope that GPO can find a way to accomodate their request as it will open up many possibilities for getting EPA publications in a timely yet searchable manner.
So thanks for sharing!
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Three Cheers for GPO: Tangible Copies of US Budget
I was very happy to hear that the Government Printing Office will be producing paper copies of the annual US Budget despite a White House announcement to go electronic only. Here is the GPO message sent out to FDLP-L today:
From: Announcements from the Federal Depository Library Program [mailto:GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV] On Behalf Of FDLP Listserv
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 12:03 PM
To: GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV
Subject: Tangible Copies of the Budget of the United States Government
On January 9, 2008, Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle announced that the Budget of the United States Government would be released in a web-only format for Fiscal Year 2009 on February 4th, 2008. Mr. Nussle cited the cost savings of such a move as the reason for the discontinuance of paper copies of the Budget.
GPO wishes to assure the members of the Federal Depository Library Program that we are committed to keeping the various Budget publications in printed format. To this end, OMB has agreed to provide GPO with files of the Budget documents that will be put to press for the purpose of dissemination to the public through the FDLP and Publication & Information Sales Program. We intend to ship these tangible copies of the Budget in conjunction with the February 4th internet release.
The class numbers, titles, and item numbers involved in this announcement by OMB are:
PREX 2.8: Budget of the United States Government; 0853
PREX 2.8/1: Budget of the United States Government; 0853-C
PREX 2.8/5: Analytical Perspectives; 0855-B
PREX 2.8/7: Budget Revisions; 0853
PREX 2.8/8: Historical Tables, Budget of the United States
Government; 0853
If you have questions, please use the GPO online help service at:
<http://www.gpoaccess.gov/help>.
Why is this good news? For several reasons:
Preservation - At this point in time, tangible formats are the only absolutely proven way to ensure something will be readable 100 years from now. LOCKSS and other technologies may eventually change this, but certainly in digital preservation still belongs to the future. And folks in 2109 will want to know how our government spent its money in 2009.
Access - While electronic versions of documents like this are terrific for searching for a specific piece of information, they can be cumbersome to use. And for the 80,000,000+ Americans without internet access, a tangible format is the only access they'll have to the President's spending plans.
Privacy - With the United States called a pervasive surveillance society by Privacy International and other groups, the best way to avoid gov't and commercial scrutiny of your scrutiny of the US budget is by using the paper version. I still plan to use both print and electronic, but it's nice to have the choice in my hands.
I haven't asked GPO their reasons for continuing to print the US Budget in light of its migration to the Internet, but I am very glad they will be preserving this year's documents for future generations. Three Cheers!
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FBI Agent’s ALA Midwinter Talk “Censored”
Library Journal Academic Newswire reports that Bassem Youssef, the Chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) unit responsible for administering two warrantless search programs, who was scheduled to discuss "a number of critical failures within the FBI's counterterrorism program undermining the basic Constitutional rights of American citizens and threatening the effectiveness of America's counterterrorism effort" on Saturday, January 12, at the ALA's Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia will now "only be allowed to answer selected questions."
The FBI cited "rules concerning prepublication clearance of any potential speech." Youssef's lawyer says that these "are not the formal rules", that the FBI has not previously published them or incorporated into employment agreements, that they are secret, that they "constitute secret censorship requirements", and that "Mr. Youssef is prevented from showing these rules to anyone outside the FBI."
- FBI Agent's ALA Midwinter Talk "Censored." Library Journal Academic Newswire, January 10, 2008.
Weeding libraries. Hello, Grisham — So Long, Hemingway?
Hello, Grisham -- So Long, Hemingway? With Shelf Space Prized, Fairfax Libraries Cull Collections. Lisa Rein, Washington Post, January 2, 2007 This is probably the saddest, most telling story about libraries I've read in years. It all is pitched as 'strategic' and 'popular' and 'data-driven' as if it is inevitable and unavoidable, but the real reason is clearly stated in the article: these changes are "driven by a $2 million cut to the budget" and "...circulation, a sign of prestige and a potential bargaining chip for new funding." Once again it looks like libraries have correctly defined a problem and instituted a completely wrong solution :-| There's plenty of literature that says that building collections based solely on popularity doesn't work over the long run, but there are plenty of people (including I guess ALA president Leslie Burger) who, instead of being creative in highlighting their collections, would rather rely on some piece of software to tell them when a book hasn't checked out for 24 months. I also found the bit about "it's not here, but we can get it to you in a week" lame and dishearteningly parallel to the FDLP "shared collections" weeding plans (see for example, Govt Printing Office Draft guidelines for shared regionals (PDF), GODORT/AALL/SLA letter commenting on the draft, and ARL Draft support). I would agree that you don't need 40 shelf feet of books on tulips (unless you're the SF Botanical Garden or Longwood Gardens), but the public interest in much fiction and non-fiction (not to mention government documents) looks like a sine wave, not a long tail. Continue reading