ALA President Leslie Burger testified before the U.S. Senate
ALA President Leslie Burger testified before the U.S. Senate concerning recent closure of several libraries in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She urged the Environment and Public Works Committee halt all library closures.
Despite the fact that Congress hasn’t passed a FY 2007 budget, EPA has already begun closing libraries and restricting public access to many of the libraries that are still open. Thus far, we have seen the closure of three regional libraries – in Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City – OPPTS and headquarters libraries in Washington, DC. Also, we have just learned that in the Region 4 library in Atlanta, the inter-library loan technician is the only staff member left, a fact EPA previously had not disclosed. The regional library in New York City was scheduled to be closed to the public with reduced hours for EPA staff on January 2, but, in light of Congressional and public pressure, EPA only recently decided to halt further closures of its libraries for the time being.Continue reading
Expect more from ExpectMore.gov
This headline is cheesy, but I can't resist. ExpectMore.gov is a website from the Office of Management and Budget that was launched last year to provide public reports on the performance of the many federal programs. You can browse through the list of Performing Programs, which are the ones OMB rates as being from adequate to effective, and the list of Not Performing Programs, which are either ineffective or have not adequately demonstrated results. The website explicitly explains why they gave each program its respective rating, and also explains what actions are to be taken to improve the program. This includes improving programs that are already highly rated; visit the report for the On-going Pest and Disease Management Program as an example. Wyatt Kash of Government Computer News recently reported in the article "Federal Web site introduces new analysis tools" on the many improvements ExpectMore.gov began rolling out this week. The website discusses on its What's New page the addition of a CSV (comma space delimited) [ZIP] file containing all the Program Assessment Rating Tool data. Kash's article adds, "Programs have also been more thoroughly tagged with up to three identification tags, said Shea, so researchers are likely to get more useful search results." I didn't see any information about this during a quick surf of the site, but the article indicated these improvements were just beginning to be introduced. Keep an eye out for more information. Continue reading
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
Web2.0 beautifully explained. Mashups and remixes, XML, repurposing information, connecting people to ideas, images, data etc. This is exactly why we here at FGI are so passionate about demanding digital govt information that is freely accessible, not tied down by DRM, and is preserved in a distributed fashion and in open, non-proprietary formats. Let us know what you think in the comments! Continue reading
President Bush’s library debate expands
We posted a story a few days ago about the controversy surrounding George W. Bush's presidential library. Here is a follow-up story in Inside Higher ED. While faculty members at Southern Methodist University (SMU) are mobilizing to challenge the university's plans to build President Bush's library, scholars have begun a campaign against Bush's executive order 13233 that extends the power that former presidents and their families have over their presidential papers, asking SMU to turn down the library as long as the executive order stays in place.
"I think this is very significant," said Benjamin Hufbauer, an associate professor of art history at the University of Louisville and author of Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory (University Press of Kansas). "They are raising the profile of an issue that gets to the heart of the profession." With the executive order in place, Hufbauer said, it isn't fair for SMU to argue that a great scholarly resource will be placed on its campus. "People say that the archive is the most valuable part of it. That's where you can hopefully get to historical truth," Hufbauer. "But if you don't have all the papers, instead you have just a museum of political propaganda."Continue reading
PEW report analyzes the impact of Web 2.0 on 2006 election
The Pew Internet Project released a report on how the public used the Internet and other media during the 2006 election.
Twice as many Americans used the internet as their primary source of news about the 2006 campaign compared with the most recent mid-term election in 2002. Some 15% of all American adults say the internet was the place where they got most of their campaign news during the election, up from 7% in the mid-term election of 2002. A post-election survey shows that the 2006 race also produced a notable class of online political activists. Some 23% of those who used the internet for political purposes – the people we call campaign internet users – actually created or forwarded online original political commentary or politically-related videos.Continue reading