Official proceedings from the Government Printing Office posted 11/3/2006. To comment on either the official proceedings above or the FGI/community-based coverage below, please either use the comment form or e-mail us at admin AT freegovinfo.info and let us know whether we can post your comment and what level of attribution you'd like. ---------------------------------- FGI and Community coverage SUNDAY OCT. 22

• 9:30 New Attendees Orientation
• 1:00 Plenary Session: Public Printer
[audio] James Staub's notes Virginia Rigby's notes
• 2:30 Library of the Year Award Presentation
• 4:00 Council Session: Keynote Speaker, José-Marie Griffiths [audio]

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MONDAY OCT. 23

• 8:30 Plenary Session: Superintendent of Documents, Operational, and GPO Agency Updates [audio]
• 10:30 Plenary Session: Panel Discussion with Program Management Office Directors, Master Integrator & Program Management Team [audio]
• 1:30 Council Session: Web Harvesting [audio]
• 1:30 Government Documents and Blogs: One Library’s Perspective (1:30-2:15)/Historical Data on the Hispanic Population in the U.S. Census - A Case Study (2:15-3:00)
• 1:30 Serial Set
• 1:30 Pre and Post Fire Recovery: What you can do before and after a fire strikes your library (1:30-2:15)/Ben's Guide: A train-the-trainer's program for reaching out to school librarians and teachers (2:15-3:00)
• 3:30 Council Session: Immigrants and Federal Depository Libraries
Virginia Rigby's notes
• 3:30 Web-Based Military Newspapers in War: Providing Soldiers’ Perspectives on Military Developments (3:30-4:15)/Depository Library Access to Online Resources from Library Home Pages: Using the Depository Logo on the "Front Door" (4:15-5:00)
• 3:30 Increasing Access to Electronic Documents as well as Older Print Materials - A Tale of Two Projects
• 3:30 CD-ROM Migration

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TUESDAY OCT. 24

• 8:30 Council Session: Vision Document [audio]
• 8:30 Agency Update: Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
• 8:30 Access: Security & Reference Merge
• 8:30 GPO Operational Open Forum
• 10:30 Council Session: Cataloging and Metadata Initiatives at GPO [audio]
• 10:30 Agency Update: STAT-USA
• 10:30 Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs of Transitioning Depository Collections
• 10:30 GPO Online Services Open Forum
Virginia Rigby's notes
• 1:30 Council Session: Access Assessment and Marketing
• 1:30 Agency Update: U.S. Copyright Office
• 1:30 Managing Tangible Collections in an Electronic Environment
Virginia Rigby's notes
• 1:30 Open Forum: CGP/ILS (Catalog of U.S. Government Publications/Integrated Library System)
• 3:30 I Want…YoURLs! Practical Ways for Teachers and School Librarians to Incorporate Government Information Resources into Classroom Curriculum
• 3:30 Agency Update: FirstGov (3:30-4:15)/Agency Update: U.S. Department of Education (4:15-5:00)
• 3:30 Virtual Reference
• 3:30 GPO Operational Open Forum
• 6:00 Recognition of Service for Judith C. Russell: Presentation [audio]

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WEDNESDAY OCT. 25

• 8:30 Council Session: Regional/Selective Issues
• 8:30 Using IT and Team Teaching to Promote Government Information
• 8:30 Documents Data Miner 2 and Collection Development
• 10:30 Plenary Council Session: Digital Distribution [audio] PDF scan of GPO's "Digital distribution to depository libraries: exploring the issues Herrick Heitmann's summary Virginia Rigby's summary

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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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