Do We Need A World Library?
Plans for a World Library were announced with great fanfare earlier this week. It's a nice idea but I have to admit, my first thought when I learned of this project was "Why?" We already have a digital library that covers the world. It's called the web. Yeah, I know the collection could use a little weeding but still, it's up and running and being added to all the time. Are grand designs and top-down planning still the way to go in a time when anyone with a laptop, a scanner, and a DVD burner (or good bandwidth) can crank out gigabytes of data? The other day I was visiting a friend and, while we sat talking in his livingroom, he burned a DVD for me containing every Black Flag album, every Sonic Youth album, every Minutemen album, and every Husker Du album ever released. It was all done in about 20 minutes. Now I'm not saying that scanning the Mabo Case Manuscripts would be as easy, and I have tons of respect for those who labor to provide access points to such things, as well as the folks who coordinate such activities. But I do worry because the methods for organization are already here, the technologies are already here, and while smart people spend time crafting carefully worded discussion papers, things are disappearing.
Continue readingThe Googlization of Everything, “Drop the fight”? or Start a Revolution?
Siva Vaidhyanathan is writing his next book, The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce, and Community--and Why We Should Worry, and will be posting snippets of text on the blog, The Googlization of Everything and asking readers for comments. He says of the book:
The book will answer three key questions: What does the world look like through the lens of Google?; How is Google's ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?; and how has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states?
Vaidhyanathan is an associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, a fellow at the Institute for the Future of the Book, and the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs and The Anarchist in the Library.
"Drop the fight"?
To those of us at FGI, the increasing reliance by libraries on Google is something that needs close scrutiny. I was dismayed to read recently that an associate dean for public services and collection development said, that because Google does the "search function" "better than so far any library can do" therefore "..what would be in our best interests is to drop the fight, to let Google take over that..." (Susan Gibbons quoted in Young Librarians, Talkin' 'Bout Their Generation by Scott Carlson, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19, 2007). To say that finding information can be done only one way and the (apparently) winner-take-all popularity-contest and keyword-in-text approaches used by google are so good that libraries should "drop the fight" is just plain short-sighted and an abrogation of our responsibility (IMHO). For a different point of view, see On Google's Monetization of Libraries, By Rory Litwin, Library Juice 7:26 (December 17, 2004).
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 reading