GODORT update
Now I'm at the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) update. On the agenda are Cheryl Nyberg, University of Washington law library talking about the Washington State Digital Archive, Matt Brosius from OECD, and Judy Russell, soon-to-be-retiring GPO superintendent of documents. Cheryl mentioned that the information in the state archive is "open source" in that all content is not tied to individual software and so can be preserved and shifted into new and/or future systems. Much is available including purchase of "certified" copies of records in cases where records/documents are needed for legal proceedings. Nice touch! Unfortunately, they're using a plugin called Djvu. The plugin is necessary to view the documents. It's basically a PDF viewer from a private company. I recently ran into this plugin for while using the Spectator Project, a 19th century digital newspaper project, and was dismayed (as was the user I was helping) because the plugin could not be installed on the public computer that she was using. I would HIGHLY recommend that future archives projects -- not to mention current ones like the WA state archive -- should give users multiple ways to access documents. Access is the key right!! Washington State library is actively harvesting WA state documents, storing them locally and linking them to the WA State library catalog. Shouldn't EVERY state library be doing that?!?! Also in the works are a plan to connect the digital archive and state publications. This will happen by the 4th quarter of 2007 hopefully. Next up is Matt Brosius: Matt will talk about what it took to get Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) into the digital realm with their e-books. OECD publishes @ 150 book titles/year plus 20 serials and 40 statistical databases. They're mandated to recover their costs of publishing. The process of shifting to online started in 1998, launched December, 1999. They decided on an e-journal infrastructure that could recoup costs. All books are in PDF format. Metadata for almost all chapters of almost all books (abstracts by authors) make access very good. Matt noted that the OECD search engine is not very good. They're moving into XML in order to be more flexible in the future. Online access has risen every year. Bibliographic information is listed on every page so that users will know where they are. They also have several thousand excel spreadsheets of data, and will soon have citation management integrated into the SourceOECD system, videos and podcasting. Matt mentioned GAPMINDER, but I haven't had a chance to look into that further. If anyone does, please leave a comment with your thoughts. Next up is Judy Russell: Bruce James retired on 1/3/07. there's no news on a replacement for Public Printer. GPO is in waiting mode in terms of appropriations. The shift to a democratic majority means that things are in a holding pattern. It will probably take a month or more for the Senate appropriations com to get together. GPO has been talking with the administrative office of the US courts to provide access to US courts' PACER system (public access to court electronic records). It is expected that this will happen through the FDLP (I didn't get the whole gist here because the mic was not very close to Judy. Sorry!). Expectation is that this will go through by 3rd quarter (sept?) 2007. Also a project going on with NTIS to give access to their bibliographic records. Depositories will be able to download at no charge their documents connected to these records. There will be a beta phase of this project. Send an email to epruszko@gpo.gov if you're interested in being in the beta rollout. Legacy digitization project is continuing as well. Web discovery project is going forward. GPO has 2 vendors crawling, identifying and targeting documents on the EPA Web site. 3 crawls were done. A huge amount of content was harvested and now GPO will be looking through to deal with it. A large amount of individual assessment, cataloging and purl creation will need to be done before these documents will be available. Continue reading
ALA briefing on EPA library closings
Hi gang. It's saturday AM and I'm at the ALA Washington Office briefing. On the agenda are updates on the 110th Congress, participatory networks in libraries, Gates Foundation Connectivity Project, and EPA *and other federal libraries* closures. That's right, OTHER FEDERAL LIBRARIES!! Not only is EPA under fire, but other agency libraries are going the way of the Dodo. I've come in in the middle of the briefing, so missed the first few items on the agenda. Below are some things said during the briefing. Any errors in misquoting are purely mine. Sometimes these fingers just type what they want :-) Mike Flynn, Director of Office of Information Analysis and Access, EPA. He made a joke about having his bodyguards outside the room. I'm glad that librarians are becoming known as rough and tumble! Maybe we need some leather jackets. Anyway, Mike says that his office is trying to provide access to information, GIS data... to EPA employees and the public. Blah, blah, blah, great respect for libraries and librarians. Mike will Address 3 questions: --where are we headed? --how do we plan to get there? --What are we doing (or not doing) now? "EPA's vision is to be the premier environmental library network that provides timely and quality information and services to its employees and the public." (JRJ) Ok, the first several slides are clearly PR fluff. More from Mike: How do we get there? Factors include a demand for information faster, and an expanded role of the internet. EPA is increasing its reliance on electronic delivery, but that's not to preclude their physical presence of 26 libraries. They are not on a road to closing all EPA libraries. but want to maintain a physical presence across the US and maintaining library services for EPA employees and the public. Services include: --ILL --Access to online library system --Access to EPA publications via the National service center website --Recently instituted FAQ system Implemented these steps and are now in the process of seeking input as we move forward. Ok, now it's the Q&A session. Several librarians emphasized the fact that EPA library closings have great effect on libraries in the region. Kathy Hartman at U North Texas offered to house the regional EPA Dallas library's collections but the offer was turned down. EPA officials said they wanted to assure that EPA documents were kept within the EPA library network. 3 repositories will be maintained. How can libraries continue to get access to documents via ILL? and are any EPA documents being disappeared? Each of the libraries which have closed, EPA has gone through their collections to identify documents for retention. EPA has NOT destroyed documents. Documents from regional libraries have been sent to repositories. What are your next steps? Who else beyond the library community are seen as stakeholders? Science community is very important as is the library community. Questioner strongly suggests that EPA contact the academic, medical and legal communities. What is the "original inventory"? EPA will complete digitization of documents in several categories by 1/31/07. There are other categories which are being worked on. Mike says, EPA is engaged, and wants to talk with stakeholders. they are committed to digitization and welcome input. So what I'm hearing is EPA wants to talk with stakeholders (libraries, scientists...) but they're going ahead with their plans. This was classic doublespeak IMHO. EPA has already committed to closing libraries, digitizing documents, consolidating collections in 3 repositories, cutting funding for journal subscriptions etc. So what good will it do for them to go and talk with stakeholders? Librarians have been VERY vocal, both at this meeting and over the last year, that what the stakeholders NEED is libraries, services and collections throughout the US. Any thoughts? Continue reading
More about multi-touch screen technology
As we mentioned last week, Apple's iPhone may bring multi-touch interface to the masses. But the iPhone is only the first step, the one that will make more people aware of this technology. "Researchers have bigger plans for multi-touch screens than the novel interface on Apple's iPhone."
- Touch Screens for Many Fingers by Kate Greene, Technology Review January 18, 2007
Rheingold: “I’d be in the penitentiary today if not for librarians!”
Hi all! Shinjoung and I are at ALA in Seattle this weekend (did you see that ALA's got a conference wiki!!) and we just attended the OCLC Symposium: "Who's Watching YOUR Space?" We largely went to hear the talk given by Howard Rheingold, who we've had the great good fortune to be able to get to know at Stanford. Here's our stream-of-consciousness notes on Howard Rheingold's talk. Any errors are completely ours! Howard talks a lot about virtual communities and media literacy. Howard's panel was about social software and "virtual space." Other panelists were Michael Stephens, Danah Boyd, and Marc Smith. All the speakers were most engaging, but we ran out of battery power after Howard's talk ;-) Here's a flickr set of Howard's talk. You might not think much about this as you use a library, but the Internet has brought a tremendous impact and challenged the roles of librarians and libraries. Howard provides historical context of social networking. He pointed to 2 significant changes of importance:
- Emergence of new media literacy. Internet changed the location of text authority from publishers to readers. This brought about the importance of media literacy which most often happens outside of educational institutions.
- Emergence of a moral panic generated by the Web such as 1996 telecommunication act and DOPA.
Attorney General Mum On Spy Program Court Orders
Kevin Taglang has assembled a good set of links to news stories about the the FISA court/Wiretap issue: Attorney General Mum On Spy Program Court Orders, Kevin Taglang, Communications-related Headlines, Benton Foundation, January 19, 2007. Continue reading