Dorothea Lange and Censored Images of Japanese Internment
Dorothea Lange's pictures from the 1930s helped to create documentary photography. "Migrant Mother," her 1936 portrait of a 32-year-old stoop-laborer, which she shot on assignment for the federal Resettlement Administration, has become iconic, part of our collective memory of the Great Depression. The woman sits in a doorway with three of her seven children, staring into the distance, her expression an impossible combination of despair, dignity, and hallowed beauty. Over the decades and throughout the world, in countless exhibitions and publications, scores of people have seen this image and others by this major American artist. However, less than five years after she took "Migrant Mother," Lange shot another 1,000 photographs, also on commission from the US government, that are far less familiar. In fact, they were considered so revealing of this country's bias, brutality, and shame that they were immediately censored and confiscated by the same government agencies that had commissioned them. They were of Japanese internment camps in California during World War II.
Excerpt from Persons Of Japanese Ancestry by Marilyn Richardson, Women's Review of Books, Vol 24, Issue 3 (May/June 2007), a review of Impounded: Dorothea Lange and Censored Images of Japanese Internment Edited by Dorothea Lange and Gary Y. Okihiro.
Continue readingGPO’s FY 2008 Budget Request via CRS
Thanks to our friends at the Open House Project and Open CRS, we can bring the Congressional Research Service summary of GPO's FY 2008 budget request contained in the report:
RL34031
Legislative Branch: FY2008 Appropriations
June 05, 2007Government Printing Office (GPO). The agency’s FY2008 request of $181.98 million represents a 49% increase over the $122.1 million made available for FY2007. GPO’s budget authority is contained in three accounts: (1) congressional printing and binding, (2) Office of Superintendent of Documents (salaries and expenses), and (3) the revolving fund. FY2008 requests for these accounts are ! congressional printing and binding — $109.5 million; Office of Superintendent of Documents (salaries and expenses) — $45.6 million; and revolving fund — $26.8 million.
The congressional printing and binding account pays for expenses of printing and binding required for congressional use, and for statutorily authorized printing, binding, and distribution of government publications for specified recipients at no charge. Included within these publications are the Congressional Record; Congressional Directory; Senate and House Journals; memorial addresses of Members; nominations; U.S. Code and supplements; serial sets; publications printed without a document or report number, for example, laws and treaties; envelopes provided to Members of Congress for the mailing of documents; House and Senate business and committee calendars; bills, resolutions, and amendments; committee reports and prints; hearings; and other documents.
The Office of Superintendent of Documents account funds the mailing of government documents for Members of Congress and federal agencies, as statutorily authorized; the compilation of catalogs and indexes of government publications; and the cataloging, indexing, and distribution of government publications to the Federal Depository and International Exchange libraries, and to other individuals and entities, as authorized by law.
GPO requested $26.8 million for its revolving fund to support the agency’s acquisition of information technology infrastructure and security enhancements, workforce retraining and restructuring efforts, and facilities maintenance and repairs. This is an increase of $25.8 million over the $1 million provided in FY2007. Of the requested amount, $10.5 million was proposed for the completion of the development of GPO’s Future Digital System, while $9.4 million would cover the replacement of a 30-year-old automated composition system.20
Highlights of House and Senate Hearings on FY2008 Budget of the GPO.
Acting Public Printer William H. Turri, in his written testimony, discussed recent efforts to transform GPO’s operations for the digital age.21 GPO’s production of U.S. passports to meet new standards and increased demand has also been of
interest to appropriators.20 Testimony of William H. Turri, Acting Public Printer of the United States, U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, Legislative Branch Appropriations for 2008, hearings, 110th Cong., 1st sess., March 16, 2007 (not yet published).
We at FGI would welcome any comments that GPO staff would want to post here, along with any other interested party's comments.
Continue readingDaniel’s Docs Videos now at Internet Archive
As you should know by now, Free Government Information maintains a listing of video spots promoting government documents and government information. Most of these videos are available at YouTube and the Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network.
But we recognize that a number of organizations ban "commercial/consumer video" sites like YouTube. So I have posted the videos on the list that I personally created over at the Internet Archive, which most filters seem to treat as an educational site and often left unblocked:
- Air Force at Your Library (3 min) - US Air Force documents and other resources set to the official Air Force Song.
- Army at Your Library (1 min) - Selection of Army resources set to Army Song.
- Best Titles Ever! The Video - 13 titles from FGI's Best Titles Ever page set to electronic music.
- Documents on Parade: Criminal Edition - Web sites and Dept of Justice documents set to music familiar to boomers.
- FDLP - The Final Frontier (Approx 2 min) - Space. The final frontier. Available at your Federal Depository Library since the dawn of the space age. Music by Victor Stellar courtesy of Podsafe Audio.
- Marines Get Around! (approximately 1 min, posted 12/24/2006) - Roundup of documents showing how active Marines have been in our nation's history.
- Navy at Your Library (39 seconds) - Sampling of Navy documents and web sites set to music.
- Shield of Freedom (2 min, posted 12/30/2006) - USCG documents set to the tune Coast Guard's Chief Petty Officers March.
Placing these videos in the Internet Archive has another virtue. They can be downloaded, burned onto CD/DVD, remixed, whatever. These videos are under a noncommerical Creative Commons license, so free to use them in your own promotional materials. And if you create your own videos, we at FGI encourage you to upload them to the Internet Archive now that the IA has simplified the upload process. If you need a walkthrough or have other questions, just drop me a line at dnlcornwall AT alaska DOT net or leave a message here in comments.
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Weinberger on Privacy
David Weinberger, author of Everything Is Miscellaneous, has written a typically thoughtful and thought-provoking piece about privacy in the digital age:
- The Privacy Non-Principle by David Weinberger, Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization (August 31 , 2007)
Back before the information age, privacy had a fairly well-defined set of applications. It covered what authorities could ask about you, and acts you wouldn't feel comfortable performing in the middle of a skating rink. But now it applies to wherever there's information. And nowadays, everything is information.
Although a lot of David's examples deal with online merchants, I believe much of this applies to government information as well. One way it does is summed up in David's quote of Brad Templeton's law : "If you make something easy to do, it will be done more often."
And more:
The easier it is to give somebody ID information, the more often it will be done. And the easier it is to give ID information, the more palatable it is to ask for, or demand it.
If we agree to systems that only allow us to get "authentic" government information from government-controlled web servers, it will be easy for government to ask for and even demand personal information -- and easier for users to give that information. And once the government has that information, the same principle applies to government's use of our personal information. That situation is one that we do not want to encourage or facilitate, regardless of current policies and principles of existing government agencies.
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NARA sued over access to Hillary Clinton Papers
Conservative Group Targets Hillary Clinton's Papers in Presidential Library Library Journal Academic Newswire (August 28, 2007)
The Clinton records request highlights two significant government documents issues now pending before Congress: FOIA backlogs, and a controversial Bush executive order regarding access to presidential documents.Continue reading