Part 18: Nonlawyer’s journey through Title 44: Catalog of Government publications
This post, all earlier postings in this series, and my “not a lawyer†disclaimer can be found at http://freegovinfo.info/title44 or through our library under Nonlawyer's Journey through Title 44. Sec. 1711
TITLE 44--PUBLIC PRINTING AND DOCUMENTS CHAPTER 17--DISTRIBUTION AND SALE OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS Sec. 1711. Catalog of Government publications On the first day of each month the Superintendent of Documents shall prepare a catalog of Government publications which shall show the documents printed during the preceding month, where obtainable, and the price. Two thousand copies of the catalog shall be printed in pamphlet form for distribution. (Pub. L. 90-620, Oct. 22, 1968, 82 Stat. 1280.) Historical and Revision Notes Based on 44 U.S. Code, 1964 ed., Sec. 77 (Jan. 12 1895, ch. 23, Sec. 69, 28 Stat. 612).A short section of Title 44 with a major purpose. This section, along with Sec. 1710' which we discussed last time;.designates the Government Printing Office (GPO) as the primary cataloger/describer of government publications, whether or not they fall within the Federal Depository Library catalog. Historically this was done through the Monthly Catalog, which is the direct subject of section 1711. In 1976, GPO began cataloging government publications into OCLC, making them easily machine searchable. Still more recently, the statutory authorities used to justify the Monthly Catalog are being used to plan for a comprehensive National Bibliography. Here is a description of the National Bibliography from GPO's 2005/2006 Information Dissemination Plan:
GPO's National Bibliography of U.S. Government Publications (NB) is a collaborative, comprehensive catalog containing descriptions and locations of U.S. Government unclassified publications in all formats. It is not a traditional national bibliography in the sense of Canadiana , the national bibliography of Canada. Functionally, the NB will be a principal output of the Integrated Library System (ILS), Ex Libris' Aleph 500. GPO will develop one or more relational databases of library cataloging and other metadata records that describe and link to U.S. Government publications in a variety of formats and locations. The NB will utilize metadata resources created by GPO, by other agencies, and by partner institutions. The ILS' metasearch function will provide the capability to search across a distributed set of metadata resources from other institutions and display a combined result set. The public face of the ILS will be GPO's Online Public Access Catalog. Initially the NB database will consist of GPO-produced bibliographic records representing titles cataloged from 1976 to the present. Once the ILS initial implementation is completed in spring 2005, GPO plans to expand the NB database by adding pre-1976 records, records created by cooperative cataloging partners and other institutions, as well as records converted from other bibliographic or metadata formats. Enhancing the NB database with records for historical publications is a project that will span multiple fiscal years, while adding records for new publications is an ongoing effort.The Online Public Access Catalog mentioned in the plan is now available at http://catalog.gpo.gov. A search of the catalog reveals some pre-1976 records, and more are probably being added all the time. I wish them well in their work. Be sure to thank Congress for giving the job of describing government documents to somebody, or we'd be more lost than we are today. Continue reading
Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality
Charles W. Bailey, Jr. of the University of Houston recently published an article that would be well worth the time of FGI readers to look over. The article is Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia?, and the final version appeared in Information Technology and Libraries, v. 25, no. 3, p. 116, September 2006. For ease of discussion and quoting, I have linked to Mr. Bailey's preprint version which he thoughtfully self-archived. Interesting, the final article seems to be around ten pages, while the preprint is 30. While copyright is not normally an issue relevant to government information, DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Net Neutrality are and I believe that Charles Bailey has offered an excellent introduction to both along with some practical examples why DRM and dropping Net Neutrality are bad for libraries and citizens. Some of the library headaches arising from DRM that Mr. Bailey cites are:
Godwin suggests that DRM may inhibit a variety of legitimate uses of DRM protected information, such as access to public domain works (or other works that would allow liberal use), preservation of works by libraries, creation of new derivative works, conduct of historical research, exercise of fair use rights, and instructional use. The ability of blind (or otherwise disabled) users to employ assistive technologies may also be prevented by DRM technology. DRM also raises a variety of privacy concerns.I'd like suggest that we're already seeing problems with accessing public domain works in Google Book Search, which continues to treat most post-1923 Congressional hearings as though they were in copyright. After defining Net Neutrality, Mr. Bailey offers several examples of potential harm to users from losing net neutrality, including this one:
A third example is a comment by William L. Smith, BellSouth 's chief technology officer, who "told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.," but qualified this assertion by indicating that "a pay-for-performance marketplace should be allowed to develop on top of a baseline service level that all content providers would enjoy." About four months later, AT&T announced that it would acquire BellSouth, after which it "will be the local carrier in 22 states covering more than half of the American population."Presumably the "baseline service level" would be too slow for many users or there would be little incentive to pay for faster service. With so many government services and publications only available through the Internet, what would "baseline service level" access mean for most users of e-government, especially the millions of rural users that only have dialup access. Doesn't seem like a pretty picture. The whole article is worth reading and can't be done full justice in a blog posting. Please try to read it over and come back here with any comments. Continue reading
50 State Blue Book guide has new wiki home
Thanks to Denise Johnson of the Bradley University Library in Peoria, IL, the 50 State Blue Book guide has a new home. Please change any page links or bookmarks to the guide to: http://wwwapp.bradley.edu/library_reference/index.php/State_Blue_Books This page is a wiki open to all users for editing. So I invite people from every state to cruise over to the guide and review your state's entry. If something isn't right, just click on the edit tab at the top of the page and fix it. If we all work together, this can be a very useful and extremely up-to-date resource. If you spot an error and are uncomfortable using wikis, please send your correction to dan_cornwall@eed.state.ak.us and I will update the page for you. Now that I can edit the guide outside my home, corrections should be quicker. But do try to edit the page yourself. It'll give you practice in library 2.0 technologies and maybe give you ideas on how to present government information. Be sure to change those bookmarks because this weekend, I will be editing my personal web site to point to the Bradley University copy. Thanks again to Bradley University for helping make this a group project! Together we are strong and have all the answers! Or at least some. - Daniel Continue reading
The suprising users of FOIA – businesses!
I'm surprised I missed a study issued in July 2006 by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government titled Frequent Filers: Businesses Make FOIA Their Business. This study of thousands of FOIA requests made some surprising findings:
The report by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government analyzed 6,439 FOIA requests to 11 Cabinet-level departments and six large agencies in September 2005, the closing month of the last federal budget year. The review found that more than 60 percent of the requests came from commercial interests, including professional data brokers working on behalf of clients who wanted such information as the asbestos level on old Navy ships, cockpit recordings from crashed airliners and background data on prospective employees. The second-largest group of requesters —categorized as "other" and consisting mostly of private citizens—comprised a third of the total. These were individuals from a wide swath of society: a movie producer doing research for The Road to Guantanamo, a divorcee searching for hidden assets and UFO enthusiasts seeking evidence of other worldly visitations. There were also requests from a local police department mining for information on federal grants, a whistleblower trying to shore up a claim of government wrongdoing, historians digging into original source material, a cryptologist trying to recover a Navy intelligence report he had worked on years earlier, and a lawyer in the Texas Attorney General’s office trying to locate parents overdue on child support payments. "Media" requests accounted for 6 percent of the total. Many reporters say it takes too long to get information through FOIA to make it a meaningful tool for newsgathering. It is used more frequently by journalists working on longer, investigative projects.So, at least according to this study the picture of the Freedom of Information Act as a tool for journalists to embarassment the government while wasting its time is another urban legend. Granted, the study was done by reporters, but their methodology looked sound. Pull up the study and judge for yourself. Freedom of information is just as good for Wall Street as for Main Street, or even better. When you're done checking out the study, try looking up their background papers. Lots of good stuff. Continue reading
Counting your chickens…
It's late and I'm just browsing through the NY Times headlines in my RSS reader (I use thunderbird btw), and came across this doozy of a headline that is the epitome of counting your chickens before they're even eggs, much less hatched!
Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital “for commemoration of success†in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.Good night and good luck. Continue reading