I've had a few comments and questions on the Digital Archive, and I'm going to get to them tomorrow on the last day of my guest month in another instalment on that topic. This will be a fairly quick and short post to let you know about a couple of legislative initiatives that, if successful, should greatly increase access to electronic resources in some of the rural areas of New Mexico. It was prompted by Dan's comment to "share the good news" if the whole state was covered by broadband. Well, we're not there yet, but the Internet to the Hogans Initiative may be one way to get a lot of people there in the near future. State Senator Leonard Tsosie, a member of the Navajo Nation, introduced the bill in the 2006 session of the New Mexico Legislature to "ensure that no New Mexico hogan is left behind in the evolving digital world." The bill would have provided money for Navajo chapter houses to plan for communication corridors, technology education in schools and colleges and other features. The bill died in committee, but there are plans to continue in the next session of the legislature. Another initiative in 2006 was on the House side of the legislature. Representative Janice E. Arnold-Jones sponsored a bill to create the Rural Library Development Fund. It also died in committee, but Arnold-Jones, an Albuquerque businesswoman who is well versed in the IT and audio-visual production fields, plans to continue her efforts. While the bill focused on materials, equipment and furniture, some of the money could probably go toward improving broadband access. It's interesting to note, by the way, that interest in library and information technology access comes from both sides of the aisle -- Tsosie is a Democrat; Arnold-Jones a Republican. In the coming months, NMSL will be participating in various ways in these initiatives and watching closely to see where they will go in the upcoming 2007 legislative session. Continue reading →

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Library of the 21st Century Symposium

Here you can read transcripts of and listen to presentations made at a symposium on the theme of the Library of the 21st Century, hosted by the State Library of Victoria in Australia.

There are some very interesting ideas floated here. I found particularly interesting the talk by UK-based author and corporate strategist Mr Charles Leadbeater on the topic of Libraries and the Creative Economy. Mr. Leadbeater is the author of a 2003 report on public libraries in the UK, called Overdue: how to create a modern public library service and is a leading authority on innovation and creativity in organizations. He has advised the BBC, Channel 4, Microsoft, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, among others.

Here are some excerpts to entice you:

• ...public libraries, at least in the UK, are institutions that are stuck and librarians as a profession are stuck. Now the good news is that you’re not alone because lots of public professions I think are stuck. I think social workers are stuck, I think teachers are stuck, I think a lot of public service managers are stuck and I think a lot of our public institutions are stuck.
• It’s not about technology.... [Google] is a culture which is incredibly flat, very egalitarian, very nimble, very informal and very entrepreneurial. So you’re not up against the technology, you’re up against that. And what you’ve got to imagine is that public libraries could be as entrepreneurial, creative, open, dynamic and exciting.
• ...libraries of course are, in many ways, of this open, communal world. The atmosphere [in a] library ... is ... open, very diverse, people using tools for their own ends, a common resource but used for very private purposes, a public platform; very peer-to-peer because you’re really using things that other people have used. And so in many ways libraries foreshadow and are part of, should be part of, this world that we’re seeing created except there’s something that seems to stop us getting into it...
• So the library is kind of posed with a foot in both camps. Part of its culture is open, democratic, participative and part, I think, quite closed, inward looking and defensive.... [People] do not just go [to libraries] for the wisdom of librarians.
• Well, how should libraries move forward? Well, I think you see quite a lot of the first ‘reform of the traditional’ model. Let’s create some new services, let’s go digital, put some computers in. Let’s add a cafes because people like that.... I think that can do a bit to stem decline but I’m not sure that it’s the kind of re-modeling, re-thinking that’s really required.
• So I think that you need some new models for public services which are radical and different.... And those models should enact very basic library principles about democratic rights to information, knowledge, sharing, common resources for private uses. But it’s going to require very, very different organisational models.
• I think that you would have to see the people who use your services not as users or consumers but as co-producers and co-designers, that it’s not a service you’re delivering to them. You’re giving them tools and a platform in which they can create things themselves.
• ...all of the evidence of Wikipedia, Linux, and even of MySpace, is that actually people like collaboration, participation, sharing knowledge, common platforms, ease of access: all the values that libraries stand for they like. And they like getting more of it through this technology and our task is to try and create a public culture which is as dynamic and open as these private cultures are being and exploiting it and applying it and using it with people to create new value.
• ..if we’re going to create a more integrated, genuinely equal society, actually access to knowledge becomes critical. And if we give up in the developed world on public platforms for knowledge embedded in libraries, if we let them wither, that idea will wither globally as well.

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The Communications Workers of America have a new and very informative web site called Speed Matters where they advocate a "comprehensive national high speed broadband policy to ensure that we all benefit from the telecommunications and information revolution."

One of the areas they highlight is government:

Governments increasingly rely on the internet as the means to provide information and forms for taxes, government programs, eligibility criteria, and other uses. People without access to such information are, in effect, penalized. Enrollment in the Medicare Part D drug plan, for example, relied on web-based communications. High speed interactive broadband should allow citizens to increase and improve their ability to participate in civic life.

The challenge they identify is that "The United States has failed to bring the benefits of this telecommunications revolution to most of our population. While more households are adopting broadband, our relative position in the world is worsening."

They note that there is very much still a digital divide:

There is an income digital divide: more than 62% of households with incomes over $100,000 subscribe to high speed broadband at home while just 11% of households with incomes below $30,000 subscribe. There is a rural/urban digital divide: only 17% of adults in rural areas subscribe to broadband compared to 31% in urban and 30% in suburban areas. And there is a farm/non-farm divide: only 15.8% of farm households have adopted broadband.

They further note that the FCC definition of "high speed" is tool slow and that "what Americans have come to expect from 'high speed Internet' is far slower than connections in other countries around the world." A typical DSL line has a speed of 200 kilobits per second (Kbps) (the FCC definition of high speed). Compare that to the fact that other countries have already established goals of 100 megabits per second (Mbps).

The site has lots of information, a document library, five key principles for improving the US's place in the high-speed Internet economy (U.S. is now 16th), a a blog, a speed test so you can find out how fast your own upload and download speeds are, and more.

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Thanks to Washington State Regional librarian Herrick Heitmann for providing this summary of the recent Depository Library Council discussion on digital distribution to depository libraries.

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Oct. 25, 2006 DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION DEPOSITORY LIBRARIES The discussion was facilitated by Ted Priebe, Director of Library Planning and Development at GPO. A handout (see attached) gave a brief background of the issue, listed general assumptions underlying the topic, and posed questions for the Depository Library Council and the audience to consider. The Council and audience response to the first question (access) was “yes” to all three parts. The value of local digital copies was usually discussed in terms of preservation through “significant redundancy” (Judy Russell’s phrase). (Along with depository libraries, the National Archives and non-government organizations are seen as preservation partners.) Although it was said that FDSys is designed to deliver content in the requestor’s preferred format, the first choice in formats seems be electronic. The second question was about sufficient local infrastructure for hosting electronic documents and supporting public access to them. People want guidelines to show to their Information Technology folk. The FDSys group is working on “system size” demands for local hosting/storing files. The guidelines might have to vary depending on how much digital content a depository will be hosting—the example given was crashing your local system while trying to deliver a large file with streaming video. It was also felt that guidelines should include naming conventions and file formats. The third question had to do with the responsibility Regionals would have to accept digital documents. The question whether Regionals should have to accept and locally maintain all digital publications from GPO was greeted with laughter and eye rolling. That’s the sort of unfunded—or, at best, underfunded—mandate that could drive libraries out of Regional status. Also, while LOCKSS is seen as a good thing, the need for over 50 mirror sites to the GPO servers was questioned. The fourth question was about the distribution of metadata. Depositories want it. The part of the question about what types of metadata depositories want showed me how little I know about the different flavors of metadata. It’s time for Metadata 101. The fifth question was about selectivity or, more precisely, format options. When should a selective/regional select only the digital version. For selectives, whenever they want. For Regionals, it’s a trickier question, especially until the long talked about dark and light archives are up and running. After all, the LOCKSS model can be applied to tangible documents too. The sixth question was on version issues and synchronization, especially what to do about superceded versions. The feedback was that libraries need to provide appropriate versions and sometimes a superceded version is the appropriate one, but the user needs to know it is outdated. Earlier the matter of the FDSys having an automatic update feature was brought up. This was seen as a policy question, not a how-to question. “Significant version control” is being built into FDSys. The final question dealt with ownership. Are digital documents still property of the U.S. Government? Well, yes. They’re much harder to control than tangible documents and usually in the public domain, but they’re still government property. What about recall of digital documents? Procedures for recalling documents are in place at the GPO level, and Judy Russell has told agencies that once something is issued digitally, it’s virtually impossible to expunge it from cyberspace. On the other hand, you have to consider the interagency relationship between GPO and the agency that issued the document. People were uncomfortable with GPO being able to send out automated “delete” commands. The 5 year retention rule was also brought up. Judy Russell explained that rule has its roots in the cost of printing and shipping tangible documents. GPO didn’t want to pay for items that somebody could toss the day after they received it. There is also a service aspect to retaining items—the commitment to making government information readily available.

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If you have summaries, notes or impressions of any activities of the Fall 2006 Depository Library Council, we'd love to post them! Please send your DLC items to admin at freegovinfo dot info and we'll post them. Continue reading →

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Amnesty International is launching a campaign to oppose censorship on the internet:

• Irrepressible

The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments – with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are cracking down on freedom of expression. Amnesty International, with the support of The Observer UK newspaper, is launching a campaign to show that online or offline the human voice and human rights are impossible to repress.

The Irrepressible site has a pledge on internet freedom that you can sign online. You can also get a snippet of code that will "publish irrepressible fragments of censored material" on your own blog or other web site:

• Add irrepressible content to your site

(While our usual focus here at FGI is on U.S. government information, we are interested in issue of freedom on information world-wide.)

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