GODORT Database Registry Reaches 46 states & DC
I'm pleased to report to you that the ALA GODORT State and Local Documents Task Force efforts to create a 50-State Registry of state agency produced databases is nearing the end of its initial setup phase. With the help of 30 named volunteers, we have created content for 46 states and the District of Columbia. The remaining four states have prospective volunteers who should be filling in content soon or letting me know they cannot take on page volunteer duty at this time. Please see our nearly completed product at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases. In these pages you will find databases on finding doctors, shipwrecks, commercial properties, Confederate Veterans pensions, dangerous dogs and much more. To get a small taste of what is becoming available through the Registry, check out the unofficial project blog "State Databases of the Day" at http://statedatabase.blogspot.com/. You don't have to be a named volunteer to help with the project. If you go to a state's page and don't see your favorite state agency produced database, go ahead and add it if you are comfortable with editing wikis. If not send your link to the page volunteer, if available, or to me at dnlcornwall AT alaska DOT net as project coordinator. Please try to have a look at the Registry this week. Check out and improve your own state's page. Or check out what's available. A lot of stuff from the California page just amazed me. Think about how you might build subject listings (Wildlife, business, etc) using the Creative Commons' licensed material from this project. Together we're building a good resource. Let's keep at it. Continue reading
CA voting machines decertified
We've been tracking the continuing saga of electronic voting for a while. You'll remember that last week, we posted about a report from two teams of researchers at the University of CA about the vulnerability of electronic voting machines. The latest news is that, on Friday, August 3, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen de-certified (with a path for conditional recertification) all the electronic voting machines used in California. Brad's blog has the scoop:
Bowen announced that she will be disallowing the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems made by the Diebold and Sequoia companies on Election Day, allowing only one DRE machine per polling place which may be used for disabled voters. The paper trails from votes cast on DREs manufactured by those two companies must be 100% manually counted after Election Day. DREs made by Hart-Intercivic are used in only one California county and will be allowed for use pending security upgrades.Continue reading
HR 3155 Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007
Put this in your "picture is worth 1000 words" file. Can you guess the effect of HR 3155, the Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007? Thought so... But if you'd prefer to read about analysis of the proposed law, see "Copycrime Bill Raises its Ugly Head, Again" from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Continue reading
More about Malamud Google Tech Talk
Here is a bit more information about All The Government's Information, Carl Malamud's "Google Tech Talk" (51 min video) May 24, 2006. (See also our post: Carl Malamud on "All The Government's Information").
I urge you to listen to this because there is so much that government information specialists will find interesting. The prepared part of the talk is only about 22 minutes. There is enough technology to make the talk interesting to technologists, but not so much as to make it uninteresting to the non-technologist. Most of the talk is about ideas and how to make them happen, not the technology.
Here are my notes about some interesting parts -- with (very approximate) references to the minute:second time within the video.
The heart of Carl's talk is his description of his new project, The Public Memory Trust (17:11), and its first project, "Washington Bridge" (14:43). The trust has a mission "of building public works projects on the internet." The Washington Bridge project is an attempt to get video from Congressional hearing rooms to the real world and to the internet in real time and to archive the video permanently. His goal is to demonstrate the feasibility and practicality and utility of this kind of service so that it can be taken over and run by others. (This is the same thing he did with SEC data.) He sees training other to do the same thing at the state and local level and replicating the service (48:30). He says that if there is a public proceeding, the public needs to have access to it, now and forever and it needs to be archived.
I find it particularly interesting that Carl's vision is to provide "the data" (i.e., the raw video streams) not just to service providers (such as television networks and Google Video), but also to anyone who might want to "take this data and do something with it." He mentions technology companies that could use huge amounts of video as raw material for their experiments with creating digital signatures, creating metadata automatically, and doing speech to text conversion, but, presumably, "the data" would be available for anyone to use and reuse as they please. At question time someone asks about peer-to-peer and Carl says, "bittorrent service on the entire archive is a no-brainer" (40:25).
Carl says he spoke to Bruce James at GPO about the project and GPO is giving the project a "GPO fellow" position. (18:00 - 20:00) But a key part of Carl's goal is to create a "large public domain archive" -- something that GPO has never explicitly stated that it is willing to do in quite the same way. GPO's model is to hold onto and control access to government information; Carl's model is to distribute it and make it available to others. He notes that "in the long run, I would like to see every library in the country have a peta-byte of disk and a permanent archive of all congressional proceedings." (18:07)
Net-Neutrality comes up briefly (47:00 to 48:30)
Meta-data creation is discussed in several places (e.g. at 25 minutes and 35 minutes).
Carl's slide with links is at http://public.resource.org/google.techtalk.html.
Carl Malamud on “All The Government’s Information”
Here is another video for your "lunchtime listen." All The Government's Information, Carl Malamud, A Google Tech Talk, (51 min video) May 24, 2006. Carl Malamud was instrumental in getting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to make its data available through the EDGAR database. In this "Tech Talk" at Google headquarters, he talks about putting SEC data on the web, the Smithsonian/Showtime deal, disappearing information and much more. Carl's latest goal is to put video of Congressional Hearings online. He's succeeding. See: Welcome to Report to the Congress: Congressional Hearings Online and Hi-res video from hearings now available. Carl says, "As an individual you can actually change the way government does things... Sometimes it is hard, sometimes they really don't want to do it and they go kicking and screaming, but that's kind of the business I've been in for the last ten years." Wouldn't it be nice if libraries pushed government as hard as Carl does? Continue reading