the really modern library
The folks at the The Institute For The Future Of The Book and the Digital Library Federation are having a series of brainstorming meetings to discuss what they call "the really modern library." Read more at the Institute's blog:
- the really modern library the institute for the future of the book, October 8, 2007.
The goal of this project is to shed light on the big questions about future accessibility and usability of analog culture in a digital, networked world.Continue reading
Evaluating states’ efforts to bring sunlight to political money
Grading State Disclosure, 2007: Evaluating states' efforts to bring sunlight to political money. A Report by the California Voter Foundation, with the Center for Governmental Studies and the UCLA School of Law A Publication of the Campaign Disclosure Project, Supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Grading State Disclosure is a study of the Campaign Disclosure Project, which seeks to bring greater transparency and accountability to money in state politics through [evaluations] of state disclosure laws and programs. The Campaign Disclosure Project is a collaboration of the UCLA School of Law, the Center for Governmental Studies and the California Voter Foundation and is supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The Grading State Disclosure series is produced by the California Voter Foundation, with assistance from the Center for Governmental Studies and the UCLA School of L
A fourth, nationwide [evaluation] of state-level campaign finance disclosure programs has found that 36 states received passing grades, while 14 states failed to meet this study’s criteria for a satisfactory campaign disclosure program. The number of states that passed the 2007 [evaluation] increased by two over the 2005 study, and findings contained in Grading State Disclosure 2007 demonstrate the continued trend of improved campaign disclosure practices at the state level as identified in the previous three studies.Continue reading
Grading State Disclosure 2007 evaluated four specific areas of campaign finance disclosure: state campaign disclosure laws; electronic filing programs; accessibility of campaign finance information; and the usability of state disclosure web sites.
Video: What GAO Does
I found this video on the Government Accountability Office website. It tells what GAO does through short news clips that appear in my total layman's opinion to be well within traditional fair use guidelines. As a video produced by the Government Accountability Office, an arm of the US Government, the video itself should be public domain.
Because of this analysis and because I think the GAO story is too good to stay locked up in a corner of its web site, I posted the video to YouTube, which is the embedded video here. For preservation purposes and just in case that YouTube doesn't agree with my analysis of the copyright status of the video, I also posted it to the Internet Archive, which is a fierce supporter of the public domain and fair use.
Continue reading10 questions: collaborative question-building for presidential candidates
Here's a pretty cool project called 10Questions. It's sorta like Reddit for the presidential election. Here's how it works:
- You ask a video question to the presidential candidates
- You vote on the best questions
- The top ten questions get selected
- Candidates post their video answers
- You decide if they actually answered the questions
Unlike television debates, the 10Questions Presidential Forum makes full use of the web’s potential to expand participation in politics. Everyone has an opportunity to ask a question, and to rally support for their question being in the top ten. The candidates have plenty of time to formulate their answers, and can post in-depth replies. Finally, the community will be able to grade the candidates’ answers. With large numbers of people participating, the candidates will have an incentive to pay attention. Who knows, maybe we’ll even change the course of the election!Continue reading
Aids.gov podcast
The newest entrant to our government podcasts directory is the AIDS.gov podcast from the federal department of Health and Human Services. The podcasts are short videos (3-5 min) that focus on news and conversations about AIDS. Despite the fact that these podcasts have been going out since February 2007, we seemed to have scooped our friends at usa.gov because I didn't notice it on their Health Podcasts page as of October 16, 2007.
This is a decent example that publishing on the web isn't the same as either distributing a document or proactively informing the public or press. Posting something to the web without further efforts means the content lays there until stumbled upon -- in this case by my Google Alert that looks for podcasts in the dot gov domain.
In this particular case, I'm sure the aids.gov folks, far from hiding anything promoted their podcasts to their constituencies, but the effect for the rest of us was the same. We don't find stuff like this unless we're looking for it. Ideally, there should be some outlet - usa.gov, GPO, etc (I don't know) where new content like this would be pushed out to people the moment it is published.
The Federal Digital System (FDSys) seems like it will promise this sort of functionality for government documents published with GPO's knowledge. I'm looking forward to seeing how that promise holds up.
Continue reading