New Directory: Government Agencies in Virtual Worlds
Government agencies, like many businesses, are starting to explore Second Life and other "virtual worlds." FGI follows them in with a new directory of Government Agencies in Virtual Worlds. So far we've identified three federal agencies and three State Libraries in Second Life. Know about others? Leave a comment on the directory page or send an e-mail to admin AT freegovinfo dot info. Thanks! Continue reading
Must see video! Rep. Markey Films from the Chair’s Seat
Rep. Markey Films from the Chair's Seat Thanks to the OpenHouse Project for this description: Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) sought to make history Thursday by videotaping a congressional hearing from his own perspective. At the outset of the hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, which he chairs,Markey produced a video camera and said he would produce the first video "of a committee hearing from the chairman's perspective." The interlude produced great laughter and Markey proceeded to make the witness panel, the audience and the press wave to him. More here: Markey records video from chairman’s perspective, By Klaus Marre, The Hill, May 10, 2007. Continue reading
BPE 2007 – Why Care about OAI?
At Best Practices Exchange 2007, I listened to Todd Welch talk about the Colorado Plateau Digital Archives at http://www.nau.edu/library/speccoll in the context of his work with OAI (Open Archives Initiative) compliant data. I've heard about OAI, read articles about OAI and even had fellow FGI volunteers explain OAI to me but for some reason it didn't take. It kept being some technical standard that I probably know something about but made my eyes glaze over when it was mentioned. But Todd's talk changed that. I still don't know OAI well enough to try to explain here and my notes from his session are somewhat thin. But I now have a good grasp of WHY it's important. Designing databases and other applications to by OAI compliant allows other people to harvest data about about your project and reuse it in other applications. For example, OAIster gathers descriptive data (metadata) about collections around the world and makes them searchable in one place. There are benefits to narrower applications than OAIster. For example, Todd said that if other states in his area ran OAI compliant databases that could both generate and import data in OAI format, all of the states could build stronger collections about the Colorado Plateau because all the bordering states would have each others records to search. So now I get that part and hope I've communicated a little of the magic to you. It's enough that I'm now at least somewhat interested in finding a way to issue my state's depository shipping lists in an OAI compliant format, but I'm not sure where to begin. My list is generated by our SIRSI Unicorn system and then reformatted in Word for the print version and finally marked up in HTML for web access and LOCKSS harvesting. I'd need a solution that added very little work to what I'm already doing. Any ideas out there? Continue reading
Congratulations, Susan Nevelow on AALL Award
Susan Nevelow, author of the Library Law Blog recently wrote:
In the shameless self-promotion category, my article on FOIA and how to reclaim information disappearing from government web sites, Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet be Reclaimed?, 98 Law Library Journal 7 (2006), which was originally posted on this blog as a draft in June 2005, has been awarded the Law Library Journal article of the year award by the American Association of Law Libraries.We don't think that's shameless. We're happy to recommend your work to others. Especially when it is a timely reminder to our readers that if your library depends on pointing to third party servers instead of serving locally housed electronic collections through the Internet, you could lose access in the blink of eye with NO public process. There is another way. But you have to ask GPO and Congress for it. Continue reading
Real-Time Water Data for the Nation
You can access real-time water data from the USGS National Water Information System: Web Interface. Data are recorded at 15-60 minute intervals and then transmitted to USGS offices every 1 to 4 hours. During critical events such as flooding and hurricanes, recording and transmission times may be more frequent. Data from real-time sites are relayed to USGS offices via satellite, telephone, and/or radio and are available for viewing within minutes of arrival. Data are collected at approximately 1.5 million sites in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Data available include stream discharge, water levels, precipitation, and components from water-quality monitors. Drop down menus and a hot linked map are among the features that make finding and using this data easy. Continue reading