Amnesia or Panic?
Tim Rutten writes one of the best media columns in the nation and this week he addresses the redesign of The Wall Street Journal. with an article that examines some of the key issues of information delivery of our time. Though he doesn't specifically address preservation and long term access (two of the primary concerns of those of us at FGI), he does write thoughtfully about the advantages and roles of print versus online access.
- Updated Journal writes its future, by Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times (January 6, 2007)
Some quotes to tempt you to read the whole article:
New media triumphalists and old media traditionalists have for too long insisted that newspaper journalism's future has to belong almost entirely to [print] or [online]. What the redesigned Journal strongly suggests is that newspapers will be of greatest service to their readers by taking a simultaneous and complementary stance in both venues.... This balanced, and rather convincing, notion of how to proceed through this era of wrenching journalistic transition is like a breath of adult sobriety in an ongoing discussion of the journalistic future that usually seems to demand that we all choose between amnesia and panic. ... the Information Age is really a "data age." We're literally bathed in data, especially on the Web, but painfully short of information, which is data verified and set in a comprehensible and useful context.
See also: Overview -- Frequently Asked Questions: So What's Different About the Newspaper? [Proquest link, subscription required] Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition) Jan 2, 2007. pg. G.3
Continue readingAnthony Weller on BookTV January 6 and 7
Anthony Weller, author of "First Into Nagasaki" is on BookTV this weekend. U.S. Eastern Times for the broadcast are: On Saturday, January 6 at 9:00 pm On Sunday, January 7 at 6:00 pm and at 9:00 pm After Words: Anthony Weller, author of "First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and its Prisoners of War" interviewed by Norman Hatch See also: New book reveals perils of censorship Continue reading
Depository CD-ROMs Project
There's an ongoing project to deal with depository CD-ROMs (and other legacy formats). Read more about recent pilot projects and a pending NSF proposal to test emulation and initiate migration activities. For more, please contact: Julie Linden --julie.linden@yale.edu, Gretchen Gano --gretchen.gano@nyu.edu, and Geoffrey Brown --geoffrey.brown@acm.org Continue reading
Congressional Committees Project
Note: News of this project was originally posted on the govdoc-l list. The Congressional Committees Project is a wiki who's main goal is to "facilitate participatory democracy by encouraging an informed citizenry through the advocacy of legislative transparency and the gathering of legislative information." Contributors are asked to organize information on committees, and to share resources and information. Although this is hosted on the wiki section of dailykos, a democratically partisan blog, the project is deliberately *non-partisan* and "does not imply the endorsement of daily kos or its creators." I'm adding this to our list of remixes. This would be a very valuable project for govt documents librarians to get involved in. After all, who better than docs librarians to know about the workings of the US government and to share that information! To get the ball rolling, I just edited the section on the House Committee on Science, noting the name change because of Deb Liptak's post earlier today about that news!! [Thanks to Patrice McDermott, director of Open the Government for originally posting to the list!] Continue reading