All the govt web’s a wiki?
I meant to blog about this last week, but things got hectic. Anyway, here's an interesting story regarding the Department of Homeland Security's recently redesigned and updated ready.gov site that was designed to disseminate disaster preparedness information. It turns out that the site is full of inaccuracies and incomplete information so the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) set their intern to analyzing the site. Emily Hesaltine created ReallyReady.org, modeled after Ready.gov, that addresses the inaccuracies and incomplete information on the DHS site. Read the analysis. Granted, this is only one govt Web site, but wouldn't it be cool if the public could analyze govt sites and give suggestions/make changes that made those sites more informative and accurate? Can you say wiki-gov-opedia? [Thanks BoingBoing] Continue reading
UPDATED – Ontario Documents Repository
A chance meeting with a tourist at my library led to a fruitful exchange of information and ideas with staff at the Ontario Legislative Library (OLL), which is developing an Ontario Documents Repository. Annemarie Toth-Waddell of OLL was kind enough to send me a presentation she made on the respository to the Canadian Library Association in June 2006. She gave me permission to post it her at FGI and I think you'll find it well worth browsing through. A few highlights to whet your appetite for the Powerpoint file:
- As of June 5, 2006, the Library has archived 10,915 monographs, 710 serial titles and 3,203 press releases.
- Only PDF files are stored in archive. Library will convert if not already in PDF.
- Access to repository is currently through catalog.
Monographs are stored on a dSpace server, but serial titles are stored on a dedicated server.- All documents are stored on library-controlled servers. Copies of monographs will eventually be stored on a dSpace server sponsored by the Ontario Council of University Libraries.
- OLA appears to view future as one of cross-jurisdictional repositories.
Delicious FGI
Below is FGI's delicious tag cloud and latest 10 posts (I've also put it in the lower right column). We started our delicious experiment a while back. If you use delicious, please consider sending us sites that you tag by adding the "for:freegovinfo" tag (here's more info on the "for:username" tag). Also, if you're using delicious and would like us to add you to the freegovinfo network email us at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info. You can also participate in our IAdeposit delicious project where we tag fugitive documents and then upload them to the Internet Archive's US Documents collection.
For background on delicious, see Melissa Rethlefsen's article in Library Journal and check out the delicious-iana I'm collecting. Jump right in. The more the merrier!
And here are our ten latest del.icio.us bookmarks! Know of something we should have? Tag it on del.icio.us and use the for:freegovinfo tag! Continue reading
FGI getting a facelift
(August 22) FYI: Blake, our fine host at lishost, is working on upgrading the drupal software for the FGI site, but our theme was breaking the upgrade. So just to let everyone know, FGI will be getting a facelift in the coming few days. If anyone's interested, you can see drupal's themes and leave a comment if any of them particularly jazz you. I would be very interested to know what our users think the site should look like, what colors/fonts/layouts are preferred? I won't necessarily choose a theme based on comments, but here's your chance to let us know how you'd like the FGI site to look and feel. Comment away!! Continue reading
GovMine on the Subway
We have weird ads on the DC Metro subway system. They advertise things like fighter jets, the Coast Guard Integrated Deepwater System, or some sort of "government solution." These are not goods the typical consumer can buy. Often I can’t tell what it is they are selling, I only know the target customer is someone who influences federal agency procurement, not me. Convera has been advertising its new government search engine on the subway since sometime in July. That is how I heard about it. For once, something I could relate to! The search engine, called GovMine, was launched on August 14. Convera is looking to sell its solution to federal agencies, but we the people get some immediate benefit with another free .gov/.mil search engine. GovMine follows quickly on the heels of Google U.S. Government Search, which followed (kind of) on the heels of the new FirstGov search engine, which used solutions from Microsoft and Vivisimo. I have not had time to take GovMine through its paces, but I can tell you that it seems to bring to the surface some relevant pages that Google and FirstGov do not. That’s the beauty of this competition for federal eyeballs. Another site to try, another possible route to the answer. Take a look at GovMine. Try a simple search and explore the options that pop up with the results screen. I have written in the past about Google’s product and FirstGov Search for LLRX.com. A new player entered the arena after Google and before Convera: search guru Tara Calishain at ResearchBuzz is offering a tool built on Google Government Search that narrows results by state. Continue reading