Open Educational Resources holds lessons for documents users
While not squarely on the topic of government information, I think this new article on Open Educational Resources will be of interest to FGI readers and government policymakers: Title: THE PROMISE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES. Authors: Smith, Marshall S. and Casserly, Catherine M. Source: Change; Sep/Oct2006, Vol. 38 Issue 5, p8-17, 10p If you have a subscription to the service, you can access the completed article on EBSCOhost. If you don't have a subscription to EBSCOhost, you can read a Creative Commons licensed preprint produced by the authors. All quotes from the article will be from the preprint. The main thing that struck me about this article was its discussion of the market for educational materials (lectures, syllabyi, etc) and how similar it sounded to the situation for government information:
Many prestigious American universities originally applied a capitalist model to the Web, imagining that they would make a great deal of money by selling some part of their knowledge through Internet-based delivery systems. By 2001 this idea had foundered in the face of market realities. With the specter of riches growing dim, there emerged substantial support among academics for using the Web to provide open access to educational materials. After all, most published professors know that they are not going to become rich on their royalties, that their books and articles will probably be out of print within five years, and that academic progress is nourished by the free flow of information. And most faculty, proud of their work and wanting to share it, provide links to their scholarship on their own Websites. So MIT boldly changed the model: in late 2001, it announced its OpenCourseWare initiative, an ambitious project to share with the world the content of its courses. Access to knowledge and the capacity to use it are critical to both individual and collective prosperity in a world of knowledge economies and global interdependence. In The Future of Ideas Larry Lessig argues that if some have access to the wealth of information on the Web while others do not, creativity will be constrained and inequalities heightened. And that argument does not simply apply to the widening economic gap between the developing and developed world. We only have to compare the resources of the libraries and laboratories of the top twenty universities in the United States with the thousands of colleges and universities that are among them to see such inequalities here at home.Doesn't the first paragraph remind you of the Government Printing Office's first attempt to sell electronic information back in the early 1990s? And perhaps the second paragraph reminds of the differing levels of access that people have to information produced by their government? The article also contains examples of the benefits of full open access. In its most dramatic example:
Finally, we hear stories about people and organizations that are in the business of selling content but who also place their content on the Web for open access. Then, instead of destroying their market, the free access increases their sales and revenue. In one example, after the South African Human Sciences Research Council Press (HRSC) embraced open content publishing and made many product freely available online, print sales increased over 300 percent. Other less dramatic examples abound.This article is a good example of what we document librarians can learn by seeing what people in other fields are doing. Its something we should do more often. It is also an example of how progress isn't always served by a strictly free-market model. That is something that GPO and Congress should consider in providing future access to government information. People wishing to know more about Open Educational Resources in general should visit the researcher's web site. Continue reading
New NORAD Podcast
It's been awhile since we've updated our page of government podcasts, but today we welcome NORAD into the podcasting fold. Those looking for a quick and plain-english explanation of podcasting would be well served by reading the NORAD podcasting page. So what can you expect to hear from the North American Aerospace Defense Command? Here is a listing of their first three podcasts:
- Sept. 25, 2006 - The Jeopardy "Clue Crew" visits NORAD and USNORTHCOM to tape video clues for upcoming shows.
- Sept. 11, 2006 - Adm. Timothy J. Keating discusses the importance of having a disaster preparedness kit.
- Sept. 7, 2006 - Mr. Michael B. Perini introduces the new NORAD and USNORTHCOM podcasting service.
More bad news for EPA scientists
As many of you know, FGI has been tracking this issue of library closings at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I wish I had good news to report (Like EPA budget reinstatement!), but unfortunately not. Today, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) had a news release stating that, due to EPA budget shortfalls, the EPA is, "sharply reducing the number of technical journals and environmental publications to which its employees will have online access." This after an all EPA employee email memo from CIO Linda A. Travers (PDF) touted:
Linda A. Travers Acting Assistant Administrator and Chief Information Officer TO: All Headquarters Employees EPA is in the process of implementing a new library plan to make environmental information more accessible to employees, researchers and the general public. As part of our efforts, the Agency is posting physical library collections on-line and enhancing electronic library services. At present, more than 15,000 journals and publications are available on-line and Agency documents can be obtained via interlibrary loans.How does closing EPA libraries and sharply reducing access to scientific journals make information *more* accessible?! Perhaps if the EPA became a faith-based organization, they'd get their funding back. *sigh* Continue reading
Not just blogs: Blogger of the month bios
Although this is actually about blogs (!), I'd like to continue our "not just blogs" series by highlighting Blogger of the month biographies. This page is linked from our FGI library. Go to the BOTM biographies page to check out bios of Cindi Wolff, Jessamyn West, Kris Kasianovitz, Peggy Garvin, Shane Mackey, Tim Skeers, our current BOTM. Bloggers of the month (AKA BOTM) are our attempt to expand the discussion going on on FGI. Each month since April, 2006, we invite a guest to post whatever s/he wants -- loosely having to do with govt information of course! We hope that by giving others a chance to post to FGI, we'll start conversations and share ideas that perhaps wouldn't be posted or were missed by regular FGI volunteers (Jim Jacobs, Daniel Cornwall, Shinjoung Yeo and James Jacobs). We hope you enjoy the variety. If anyone would like to be BOTM in the future, please contact us at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info. BOTM's get showered with fame (but no fortune ;-) ) and our eternal gratitude. We hope some of our readers will consider being a BOTM. We know you're dying to become a blogger! Continue reading
New on FDSys – Capability Statements
Although we at FGI missed it when it first came out in early September, the main FDSys site now has a page for vendors wishing to work with Harris Corp, the FDSys Master Integrator. On this page you can currently find requests for vendor capabilities on Search and Enterprise Application Platform (EAP). The next request for capabilities will be for content management systems. I highly recommend looking at the Excel formatted "matrix documents" as I find them easier to understand than the FDSys System Requirements documents. I'm happy to report that the following features are explictly requested in the search matrix:
- The system shall allow users with an established user account and profile to enter or store queries, preferences, and results sets or portions of results sets.
- The system shall provide the capability to automatically execute saved searches on a schedule defined by the user.
- The system shall provide the capability to notify users when automatically executed searches return results.
Thursday, August 31, 2006 Capability Submissions Over the next several months, GPO will be requesting capability submission statements for components of FDsys. This information will be conveyed via GPO's FDsys Web page and this blog. Vendors interested in receiving notifications of submission statement requests are encouraged to subscribe to the FDsys blog's Atom feed, as the blog and Web page will be updated simultaneously.A quick glance at the FDSys Blog shows only one posting between 8/31 and 10/8, and that is a September 15, 2006 FDSys Update. The update does mention capability assessment requests, but offered no links to the request page. Also, this language made it sound like FDSys hadn't posted them yet, despite appearing on the FDSys web site September 3, 2006:
The FDsys team has updated the technology capability statement process, and meetings with key suppliers are being scheduled. Initial focus areas will include Search, Infrastructure, and Content Management Systems.While I'm not saying that FDSys was hiding anything, more complete information on the blog would be very welcome since they promised to update the blog and the main web page simultaneously. Maybe they could put an RSS feed on the main FDSYS page like they do for FDLP Desktop and then close down the blog, which hasn't gotten many comments anyway. Then there would just be one source to check for new FDSys news. Even if the FDSys blog closes, it was still a noble effort on the part of GPO staff. It wasn't their fault that neither documents librarians nor vendors seem to be much inclined to comment. Continue reading