New wiki for Anniversaries and new library page
With a number of Federal Depository Libraries celebrating important anniversaries, I was pleased to stumble across the Library Anniversary Celebrations wiki. I was so happy to see a community generated resource like this, that I've created a page for this and similar projects. It's called the Library Community Projects page and will link to efforts that appear to well up from within the depository community, focus on either government information or depository libraries and are open to editing from outside the group that started the project. Do you have such a project? Let us know in comments or an e-mail to dnlcornwall AT alaska.net. This weekend is the Alaska Library Association conference, so sites suggested before Monday won't be up until next week unless my fellow volunteers take pity on me and post links before then! Continue reading
Library anniversary celebrations wiki
With so many libraries having important anniversaries, someone has created an anniversary Wiki to get and share ideas! While it is not clear who drew up this wiki, information is plainly sourced and looks useful. The wiki can be found at: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Library_anniversary_celebrations and is currently divided into these areas: 1 PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS 1.1 Press Releases 1.2 Publications 1.3 Materials to Obtain, Adopt, or Create 1.4 Resources 2 AGENDAS, SPEAKERS 2.1 Ideas for an agenda promoting GovDocs 2.2 Speakers 3 DEPOSITORY LIBRARY EXCELLENT EVENTS While some of this material can be dug out of the govdoc-l archives, isn't it better to have it all in one place? Whether or not you're celebrating the big 1-0-0, check out this site. It could give you event ideas for non-anniversary years. My thanks to whomever was responsible for this great start. I say start, because like most wikis, it is freely editable. So anniversary libraries, start your engines and make this site even better for those of us who will be celebrating big anniversaries Continue reading
Voice of America removed from USA.gov
Government's Global News Is Pulled From USA.gov, by Aliya Sternstein, National Journal's Technology Daily [subscription required] February 22, 2007 PM edition
The Internet home for government information has been stripped of Voice of America content and other international news after federal lawyers determined that the material should not be on a domestic news site.... "In light of the administration's other ventures into domestic propaganda," said Patrice McDermott, executive director of OpenTheGovernment.org, "it was a matter of real concern that such information was on USA.gov, which is linked to by the states and by educational institutions around the country." ...Removing VOA stories from USA.gov will not prevent the American public from accessing VOA on the Internet, VOA spokesman Joe O'Connell said. "VOA has had a Web site for many years, now," he said Wednesday. "In fact, all 45 of our broadcast languages have Web sites. The nature of the Web is that it doesn't respect boundaries."Continue reading
FEC aims to restrict Inspector General reports
Politico reporter John Bresnahan noted a brief item currently on the front page of CQ's PoliticalMoneyLine about the "minor changes" the Federal Election Commission wants to make to its System of Records.
"In a bland Federal Register Notice requesting public comment on a System of Records, the Federal Election Commission seeks to restrict access to the reports of the agency’s Inspector General unless the requestor has the permission of the individual involved."Bresnahan explains that a former FEC official is being investigated for misappropriation of funds that were used to settle a sexual harassment complaint. According to PoliticalMoneyLine:
"For the FEC this means the Inspector General’s report on the activities of the last Staff Director and his supervision, or lack of supervision, by the Commissioners could not be made available to the White House or Congress unless the former staff director and other individuals involved granted approval."The FEC is accepting public comments on the requested revisions until the end of the business day tomorrow. Here's how to submit a comment, from the Federal Register notice:
Comments should be addressed in writing to Thomasenia P. Duncan, Privacy Act Officer, Federal Election Commission, 999 E Street, NW., Washington, DC 20463, and must be received by close of business on February 23, 2007. Comments also may be sent via electronic mail to Privacy@fec.gov.Continue reading
Problems search engines have indexing government web sites
Here is bad news about public access to government information. In an article (Agencies Take Steps To Make Web Data Searchable by Daniel Pulliam, National Journal's Technology Daily, February 21, 2007 PM Edition. [subscription required]) about efforts by Google, MSN. and Yahoo to index government web pages using the Sitemaps tool, J.L. Needham, a strategic partner development manager at Google, criticizes government information access.
Despite months of meeting with nearly every government agency, Needham said there is a lack of understanding about search engines. He said most agency officials do not realize that about 80 percent of visitors to their sites come through search engines. Most sites under the e-government initiative of the President's Management Agenda remain unsearchable, Needham said. "Literacy about search engines is lower in the federal government than in the private sector," he said. Because about half of all government Web pages are not searchable, a substantial percentage of people conducting searches are missing information they would otherwise find, Needham said. Managers cite other priorities and a potential increase in bandwidth use, which could drive up costs, as their primary concerns about optimizing their sites for searches, he said.Continue reading