Open source
Here at FGI, we're really interested in open source -- also called FLOSS for Free/Libre Open Source Software. Open source aligns positively with the philosophy underscoring librarianship in general and documents librarianship specifically -- that is, free and open access to and widespread distribution of information, use and reuse of information, and the leveraging of community resources for the betterment of the community as a whole. For more on open source in libraries, read Dan Chudnov's instructive article, "Open Source Library Systems: Getting Started" (which originally appeared in Library Journal on August 1, 2999) on oss4lib (don't be confused by their look, oss4lib is using Drupal content management system and the same template theme as FGI!). On the lighter side of things and in the spirit of the season, check out the open source gift guide from Make Magazine. The guide lists lots of cool techie gifts for those geeks on your list -- for those keeping score, I'd love a year of ubuntu support, some open source beer, and USB AA rechargeable batteries!) Continue reading
Why we care about privacy
Every now and then, someone asks one of us at FGI why we still care about privacy. The often unspoken assumption is that we don't have privacy anymore and we should just accept the fact and live with it. But we still believe that it is an important right for citizens to be able to examine information collected, compiled, and created by our government without worrying that the government is monitoring who is reading what and what our interests are. Here is a good item that goes into the current state of government spying on citizens and why it is bad. I recommend it. As he says, "If a Government is permitted to collect and maintain vast dossiers on its citizens, that information is going to be abused" and "our democracy can only function if citizens know what its Government is doing."
- The Federal Government's domestic intelligence-gathering on U.S. citizens by Glenn Greenwald, Unclaimed Territory, December 03, 2006.
New Poll: Why are you silent?
Now that we've learned a little about our visitors, we've started a new poll to explore why we don't see many comments here at Free Government Information despite our significant readership. Due to the nature of this poll, we're not asking for comments here, but if you feel very strongly about the reason you don't comment on our stories, please consider making your first comment one on our poll. Otherwise, please use a single mouse-click to give us some much needed feedback. Why do we care? Well, reaching back to our mission statement:
By creating this nexus, we hope to facilitate collaboration among the various stakeholders and participate in the design of a truly robust system for the digital age where government information is freely accessible, fully functional and usable, and preserved in a distributed system of libraries.It's hard to collaborate when people aren't talking much. So help us figure out how to stimulate dialog by identifying the barriers to commenting. Continue reading
New book on web archiving
Web Archiving, Masanès, Julien (Ed.) 2006, VII, 234 p., 28 illus., Hardcover
Julien Masanès, Director of the European Archive, has assembled contributions from computer scientists and librarians that altogether encompass the complete range of tools, tasks and processes needed to successfully preserve the cultural heritage of the Web. This book serves as a standard introduction for everyone involved in keeping alive the immense amount of online information, and it covers issues related to building, using and preserving Web archives both from the computer scientist and librarian viewpoints. Practitioners will find in this book a state-of-the-art overview of methods, tools and standards they need for their activities. Researchers as well as advanced students in computer science will use it as an introduction to this new field with a hopefully stimulating review of open issues where future work is needed.Some of the chapters:
- Selection for Web Archives
- Copying Websites
- Archiving the Hidden Web
- Access and Finding Aids
- Mining Web Collections
- The Long-Term Preservation of Web Content
- Small Scale Academic Web Archiving
The Global Information Grid’ and ‘Net Centricity’.
What is the ‘Global Information Grid’, what is ‘Net Centricity’ (or ‘Network Centric’), and why is it important to the Department of Defense? A starting point to answer those questions is the DoD CIO’s Strategic Plan, released in October of this year, and The DoD Chief Information Officer’s (John G. Grimes) home page. (I went to the Publications and Articles page to find the things I am sharing, today.) From these two resources you can get at the basics of the DOD’s IT transformation -- perhaps the biggest and most ambitious e-Government transformation ever undertaken. In one sense, the Global Information Grid (or “GIGâ€) can be thought of as an organizing concept, an abstraction, enabling the DOD CIO to frame and communicate the department’s plans, architecture, and policies for the transformation of its information technology of the future. The GIG consists of everything that DOD IT touches: Capabilities (including weapons systems and programs), Portfolio Management, Governance, Funding and Policy. A DoD Directive from September 2002 established the Global Information Grid Overarching Policy (available on the DTIC site). That policy statement implements Section 2223 of title 10, United States Code, (b) Section 1401 et seq. of title 40, United States Code, and applies to all DOD components, IT operations, and DoD Acquisitions and procurements of “GIG†assets. It contains the formal definition of the GIG as “The globally interconnected, end-to-end set of information capabilities, associated processes, and personnel for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating and managing information on demand to warfighters, policy makers, and support personnel.†The GIG is not just the "Global Information Google" for the DOD: it is a Big Deal to the department and it affects how it does its business. “Net Centricity†has taken on a kind of buzz-word status. But what it was intended to be was a transformational way of doing things with information in the DOD. Net Centricity is to the GIG what a frame is to a building: it should enable all the parts of the house to connect together. The DoD CIO vision of net centricity is based on the assumption that information is a force multiplier, a source of power. If shared effectively, “(i)nformation can be leveraged to allow decision makers at all levels to make better decisions faster and act sooner. Ensuring timely and trusted information is available where it is needed, when it is needed, and to those who need it most is at the heart of the capability needed to conduct Network-Centric Operations (NCO).†Net Centricity should move the department from dependency on systems and operations “based on individually engineered and predetermined interfaces†to an enterprise that “ensures that a user at any level can both ‘take what he needs’ and ‘contribute what he knows’â€. (See “The Power of Information – Overviewâ€). Continue reading