Timely Internet info for parents and kids
First, thanks to James Jacobs and the rest of the crew at FGI for the privilege of being guest blogger for October. And what a time to be blogging about government information! I can't say it better than Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who asked yesterday
Is it me, or is all hell breaking loose in this country's politics? We're in the last month of an election cycle and there are maybe four or five stories, each of which could totally dominate the national political news on their own. And each is flaming out of control at once ...So, I was going to talk about the New Mexico State Library's OCLC Digital Archive project (and still will), but the timing on this was too perfect. My bio mentions that we receive and process state agency pubs for distribution to our state depositories. Fresh out of one of the boxes yesterday was Internet safety guide for parents / Internet safety guide for teens from the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General. You can view the titles separately in PDF or HTML format on the New Mexico AG's website. The print version is a single, 6.5-in.-square booklet with the two titles printed back-to-back and upside down to each other (known to catalogers and hardly anyone else as a tete-beche, in case you need some cocktail-party trivia). While I'm aware of some NGO sites dealing with Internet safety, I haven't taken the time to search for other state or federal government pubs on the topic. Anyone know of others? Now, one reaction I have to something like this is to be a little nervous that government, at any level, takes this much interest in the Internet and what people are doing with it. Librarians have been tirelessly speaking out about the possible negative effects of CIPA, DOPA, etc. On the other hand, kids surfing the Internet can run into problems, and I'd much rather see government pubs and websites giving people tips about how to educate and monitor their kids on their own rather than passing lots of laws and imposing regulations. This being election season, I can't resist pointing out a political tie-in to one of the most closely watched House races in the country. Patricia Madrid, New Mexico's state AG, whose name appears on this booklet, is running as a Democrat against the four-term, Republican incumbent, Heather Wilson, in New Mexico's 1st House district. Madrid has made child Internet safety a centerpiece of her campaign from the beginning, months before the Foley scandal broke. And somewhat awkwardly for Wilson, this morning's Santa Fe New Mexican reports that she served on the board overseeing the House pages from April 2001 to January of 2005. The latest Albuquerque Journal poll showed them tied at 44 percent each. Sounds like an interesting race to watch. Continue reading
DefectiveByDesign’s Day Against DRM
A tip of the FGI hat to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation Deep Links blog, which has alerted readers to DefectiveByDesign's Day Against DRM taking place today. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and in practice means crippling the functionality of digital files to discourage or prevent any copying, even if that copying would fall under fair use provisions of copyright law. Additionally, DRM technology can track users across the Internet or even expire documents to make them unreadable. We at FGI are very concerned about DRM because the Government Printing Office (GPO) has never publicly pledged to keep DRM'd documents off their Future Digital System (FDSys). GPO does not have any current plans for DRM that we're aware of, but GPO insistance on a policy neutral FDSys leaves open the possibility that future federal documents will be subject to DRM. So we wish the folks at DefectiveByDesign well in their efforts to foil DRM for legal purposes. Continue reading
Tim Skeers, BOTM for October, 2006
I'd like to welcome Tim Skeers from the New Mexico State Library to the blogger podium. As his bio shows, Tim's been around in the docs world for a while, and is a UIUC alum like me! Take it away Tim!! And for all of you out there chomping at the bit to join the blogosphere, we're always looking for volunteers to be guest bloggers. Got something to say, leaks to leak, ideas to disseminate, documents news to contextualize? Drop us a line at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info. It's fun and easy :-) Continue reading
Tim Skeers, BOTM for October, 2006
Tim Skeers from the New Mexico State Library is out blogger of the month for October, 2006. Here's his bio in his own words: My interest in government publications was first sparked as an undergrad at Drake University when I took a research writing class. The professor had a more-than-average interest in them as research materials herself, and she made sure to include several exercises using Drake's depository materials. That meant I was already interested and had some exposure when I was investigating financial aid for library school at the University of Illinois and interviewed for (and got) an assistantship in the Government Documents Department there. Librarians seem either to hate government publications or love 'em, and I found myself hooked into the latter group. I returned to Drake after library school as the serials librarian, but kept looking for documents positions. I was in the documents department at Northern Illinois for a while where I also got an M.S. in geography, followed by an odd sort of interregnum in my library career while I worked briefly at the Iowa Emergency Management Division in a GIS position and later as photo librarian and a writer for a gardening magazine. After a time at UNLV working with state and local gov pubs, I came here to the New Mexico State Library. My focus here is on cataloging the New Mexico state agency publications for our state depository program and federal publications from regional offices that don't make it into the FDLP but which are important to our community. Like everyone else, I'm concerned about how born-digital material will be disseminated and preserved. Fortunately, we have the OCLC Digital Archive that we're using to do that -- talking a little about this will probably be on of my first guest blogs. Continue reading
Part 17: Nonlawyer’s journey through Title 44: Index of documents: number and distribution
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. 1710
TITLE 44--PUBLIC PRINTING AND DOCUMENTS CHAPTER 17--DISTRIBUTION AND SALE OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS Sec. 1710. Index of documents: number and distribution The Superintendent of Documents, at the close of each regular session of Congress, shall prepare and publish a comprehensive index of public documents, upon a plan approved by the Joint Committee on Printing. The Public Printer shall, immediately upon its publication, deliver to him a copy of every document printed by the Government Printing Office. The head of each executive department, independent agency and establishment of the Government shall deliver to him a copy of every document issued or published by the department, bureau, or office not confidential in character. He shall also prepare and print in one volume a consolidated index of Congressional documents, and shall index single volumes of documents as the Joint Committee on Printing directs. Two thousand copies each of the comprehensive index and of the consolidated index shall be printed and bound in addition to the usual number, two hundred for the Senate, eight hundred for the House of Representatives and one thousand for distribution by the Superintendent of Documents. (Pub. L. 90-620, Oct. 22, 1968, 82 Stat. 1280.) Historical and Revision Notes Based on 44 U.S. Code, 1964 ed., Sec. 76 (Jan. 12, 1895, ch. 23, Sec. 62, 28 Stat. 610).When I first came across this law, I thought that it might be the statutory authority to create the US Serial Set, and I still believe this to be the case. It is more. According to chapter one of the Federal Depository Library Manual, 44 USC 1710, together with 44 USC 1711 are the statutory authorities for the the Cataloging and Indexing Program which provides for bibliographic control of Government documents. This is a surprising situation for me. Cataloging government publications seemed to be tied into sales program law (chapter 17), while shipping government publications is under a different section (chapter 19). We librarians so strongly association cataloging with libraries that it's hard to picture cataloging as formally part of the Sales program; at least in statutory authority. I have to confess that I don't know where all the serial set volumes go. It seems like the House and Senate are getting twice as many as each individual Representative or Senator would need. Additionally, I'm not sure that 1,000 are still produced for distribution by the Superintendent of Documents. According to a recent FDLP-L posting, the Serial Set is only distributed to regionals in each state plus one copy per state without a regional. So I'd suspect that the others are not being produced. If someone with more information could comment, feel free! Next time we will examine the other surprising piece of sales program law, the Catalog of Government Publications. Continue reading