Chipping Away at FOI in WV
A story in the Intelligencer, Wheeling News Register, Public Shut Out of Records, published November 4, 2007, details how West Virginia's public records law has not aged very well:
West Virginia’s FOIA law originally only contained eight reasons why a government agency could withhold information from the public. These exemptions mirrored several in the open meetings law, and also covered such areas as trade secrets, internal documents and “test questions, scoring keys and other examination data” used by schools and licensing agencies.
But the number of exemptions doubled in 2003 as lawmakers sought to protect “information that could be used in a terrorist act that would have a detrimental effect on public safety or public health.”
“The reaction to 9/11, and perhaps the reaction to identity theft, seem to be more of a knee-jerk reaction,” said Patrick McGinley, a West Virginia University law professor who has helped state residents pursue FOIA requests in court. “The question in those cases really ought to be, is there a compelling reason to make these things secret.”
One of the original eight exemptions shields “information specifically exempted from disclosure by statute.”
Armed with that provision, legislators have peppered other sections of state code with 68 additional exemptions, the AP’s review shows.
This commentary on West Virginia was part of a 50-state study conducted in part by the National Freedom of Information Coalition. They found sad results nationwide:
Better Government Association and National Freedom of Information Coalition give 38 out of 50 states "F" grade in overall responses to FOI requests. Read more here.
America deserves better.
Continue readingFedFlix: putting the US Govt’s videos online
Public Domain superhero Carl Malamud has done it again! Public.resource.org has announced a joint venture with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) (mmmm NTIS documents!!) to digitize their videotapes and deposit them in the Internet Archive. Carl's announcement doesn't say what kind of videotapes NTIS is offering up, but I'm assuming they're coming from NTIS' National Audiovisual Center (NAC) which "contains over 9,000 audiovisual and media productions ... in occupational safety and health, fire services, law enforcement, and foreign languages. Information and educational materials include areas such as history, health, agriculture, and natural resources." I hope Carl can confirm that. And I also hope he'll send us titles/links every month so we can get them into library catalogs and into library users' hands. And I'd like to challenge libraries to catalog anything of interest to your local users that you find in the Archive -- audio, video, text. If Carl can digitize 20 videotapes a month, imagine how many digital items the 60,000 libraries in 112 countries in the OCLC cooperative can catalog. In no time, libraries could catalog the roughly 600,000 items in the Internet Archive (206,890 audio, 104,076 video, 290,269 text). If each OCLC library catalogs 1 item/day, the job will be done in 100 days. So get to it, and thanks again Carl Malamud for being such an inspiration!
"Public.Resource.Org is pleased to announce a joint venture with the U.S. government's National Technical Information Service, a program I've dubbed 'FedFlix.' Each month NTIS will send us 10-20 videotapes, which we'll digitize, then send the tapes back. We'll upload all this public domain data to places like the Internet Archive, and also give the NTIS a digital copy of their data."[Thanks BoingBoing!] Continue reading
Technology and the GovDocs World
First, I would like to thank the folks at FreeGovInfo for this opportunity to serve as guest blogger. I have attempted many times to create blogs without much success. Usually, I only post a couple of things and then forget about it. This is an opportunity for me to do much better than my blog history has given me.
Writing what constitutes as an online journal that all may read is a little different from what the original purpose of a diary/journal was...to write down your own personal thoughts that were not meant to be shared with anyone else. The world of literature has given us some wonderful insights due to the publishing of diaries such as Pepys and Anne Franks just to name a couple. I wonder if they would've been bloggers? Would they have been so willing to share their thoughts online for the rest of the world to see?
The late 20th and early 21st century has allowed us to progress at an alarming rate technologically speaking. What once was science Fiction (Star Trek) became science fact in the past 30 years. Star Trek's communicator is the present day cellular phone.
Star Trek's PADD (Personal Access Display Device) is today's Blackberry.
So, how can we make all this great technology work for us in the gov. docs. world? Is this technology helping us or working against us?
Already, libraries out there believe that they can find everything on the web including gov. docs. Last month's blogger Barrett mentioned in his last post how he came in one day and realized he didn't have a job any more. Everett Public Library in Everett, WA went through something similar, though now they are primarily an electronic depository.
Last week, I was checking some links on our extensive website when I went to the NASS website for the State of Washington. Our link was old and it was linked to the Washington Annual Statistical Bulletin from 1995/96 - Present. Well, the new link in the NASS' recently redesigned page only had five years of it (2003 - Present). I sent an email to NASS about it and they told me they will only retain the current five years online. Trying to convince them to retain all issues will be a chore but I made sure that Robin Haun-Mohammed receive a copy to my response to their email. I don't know if anything can be done or at the very least have GPO store the old ones on their server. I did find some of the old urls in the Internet Archive but most of the links on each page did not have the .pdf files.
Yes, the technology has made some things easier for us but at the same time it has also made it harder for us. Now, there is public perception that everything is online and that kind of attitude also comes from library administrators! How do we prove our worthiness when there aren't any physical titles to checkout any more? How do we gather statistics for online only publications and let administrators know that they are being used? GPO's PURL referral page is a good start but I would like to see OPAC companies do the same at the item level so we can have statistics that would show actual usage to library administrators.
I would like to know how many depositories are downloading online documents on their servers. What criteria are you using to do so? How are you meeting the challenges of accessibility to online documents?
Looking forward to your comments.
Continue readingWelcome Carlos Diaz, Blogger of the Month for November, 2007
Please welcome to the BOTM podium Carlos Diaz, our blogger of the month for November, 2007. Carlos provides a convenient psychic bookend to Barrett Jones -- our Oct BOTM -- in that he hails from the other Washington, Washington State. Welcome Carlos! We'd like to thank Barrett Jones, our BOTM for October. I wish we could offer him a salary to continue working for FGI as you no doubt saw the bad news about his leaving IMF. Any grant writers out there want to write one to push FGI into the 501(c)3 arena?! Please be sure to look back through Barrett's posts last month. There was quite a bit of interest, not least of which was the thread about the World Library -- which has become our most emailed post!! Here's our version of a Feschrift for Barrett:
- Read Your Own DHS Travel Dossier
- Conversations, Not Memos
- Do We Need A World Library?
- Mind the Gap with Gapminder
- iSimulate - collaborative economic modeling
- Mapping Human Rights
- The IMF Starts Blogging
Carlos Diaz, BOTM for November, 2007
Carlos A. Diaz is the Head of Government Documents/Maps at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. His interest in government documents is due to his lifelong interest in history, geography, and travel. Concerning his love for history, Carlos stated, "I have always wondered why people did what they did...what led them to make the decisions they made. I always found it fascinating." His love and curiosity for other countries led to a love for stamp collecting and maps. "I don't think I've met anyone who didn't like maps. Most of the patrons I help are just drawn to the collection...they are fascinated by it all." Carlos has been at Evergreen since 1999 and is enjoying every minute of it.
Continue reading