CIA’s CREST declassified database is now online. Thanks MuckRock and others!
The CIA’s CREST database of declassified records is gradually being made publicly available online, thanks to the efforts of MuckRock, Michael Best and others. Prior to MuckRock’s lawsuit, CREST was *technically* available, but only Monday through Friday from 9 Am to 4:30 PM at the National Archives facility at the University of Maryland. Some CREST […]
Using Government Data
Back when I helped teach new data librarians about data, one of the themes my colleagues and I liked to repeat was that “data should tell a story.” By that we meant that raw facts are literally without meaning until we analyze them and understand the stories they tell. “Understanding” is more than facts. As […]
How a complex network of bills becomes a law: GovTrack introduces new data analysis of text incorporation
Here’s a fascinating new way to look at US Congressional legislation from our friends at GovTrack.us. As Josh Tauberer explains, GovTrack’s new service “Enacted Via Other Measures,” their new data analysis of text incorporation, will now provide connections between bills — when a bill has at least about 33% of its provisions incorporated into one […]
The Fake News Attack on the U.S. Census
A lot has been written about “fake news” in the last few months. Too much of that writing has (IMHO) muddled the differences between just-plain-lies and everything else that divides the country at the moment. But the basic issue of politicians who distort the truth because they are more interested in the zero-sum game of […]
The Shame of Bad Digitizations
In a recent thread on the Govdoc-l mailing list about a Congressional Publications Hub (or “pub hub” — more of the thread here), one commenter said that The American Memory project’s digital surrogates of the pre-Congressional Record publications "probably aren’t salvageable" because the TIFFs were captured at 300 ppi resolution and then converted to 2-bit […]