Draft plan for EPA libraries available
An anonymous poster sent this to me and asked that it be distributed. Please see the attached "EPA FY 2007 Library Plan: National Framework." All are encouraged to send comments to the new head of the EPA environmental information center, Molly O'neill.
The Office of Environmental Information (OEI), in collaboration with the Library Steering Committee (comprised of senior managers from Program Offices and Regions) has assembled a document (attached below) entitled "EPA FY 2007 Library Plan: National Framework." This draft "framework" document is designed to convey the new paradigm this Agency plans to deploy so as to perpetuate high quality delivery of library services to employees and the general public. Development of this plan has been necessitated by projected budget cuts affecting library services beginning in FY 2007. Implementation of this framework will vary by Region and at the headquarters level. This is why "impact and implementation" bargaining of actual library service changes will take place separately in the Regions and at HQ. However, before final decisions are made with respect to composition of the framework document and, thus, prior to it being sent out for further action in the Regions and Headquarters, OEI would very much like to have input from the Unions representing the Agency's bargaining unit employees. Additionally, for the benefit of the Unions, OEI plans to brief and field questions on the issue of pending library service changes at the National Partnership Council (NPC) meeting scheduled for June 13, 2006 in Washington, DC.Continue reading
Proposal for Australia to mandate research article deposit
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum. Short version see also the article recommended: Research with purpose -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On Behalf Of Arthur Sale Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 8:56 PM To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG Subject: Proposal for Australia to mandate research article deposit Apologies for cross-posting – Arthur Sale I have yesterday forwarded a submission to the Australian Research Council (one of Australia’s two public research funding councils, covering all but biomedical research) regarding requiring grantees to deposit their published articles arising from the grant in an OAI-PMH repository. The ARC asked for submissions on its Funding Rules and Funding Agreements. I have extracted below the Executive Summary and the signatories. My personal thanks to all those who provided comment or agreed to support the submission. I hope for a good outcome. If you are interested in reading the full submission, please see http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/archive/00000277/. Executive Summary The submission is addressed to making a change in the reporting requirements for all funded schemes, which will make it a requirement of receiving the grant to deposit an electronic copy of any refereed research journal or conference articles deriving from the grant with the institution administering the grant. Minor changes are needed in the Funding Rules and the Funding Agreements. Precise wording is supplied to eliminate any concerns by publishers and to make the implementation easy. The benefits to Australia are that Australia’s ARC publicly funded research is made visible to all through the Internet, and in the majority of cases publicly accessible. This will raise Australia’s research impact and is consistent with Australia’s espousal of a level playing field in the dissemination of research, and with activities currently underway or implemented in the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. 5 Signatories Submission prepared by Arthur Sale Professor of Computing (Research), University of Tasmania. Previously Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Information Services), University of Tasmania, and National Vice-President of the Australian Computer Society Inc. Recipient of the 2004 Individual Achievement Award from the ICT Industry, and recipient of the 2001 ANCCAC Award for best Australian paper in ICT. See also http://www.comp.utas.edu.au/app/staff_profile.jsp?user=ahjs. Stevan Harnad Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science at Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada, and Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton, UK. He is an External Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Founder and editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (a paper journal published by Cambridge University Press), Psycoloquy (an electronic journal sponsored by the American Psychological Association) and the CogPrints Electronic Preprint Archive in the Cognitive Sciences. He is also moderator of the American Scientist Open Access Forum. See also http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/vita.html. Alma Swan Director, Key Perspectives Ltd. Alma held a faculty position at the University of Leicester until 1985, when she moved into science publishing. In 1996, she jointly founded Key Perspectives, a consultancy serving the scholarly publishing industry. Since 1991 she has been tutor for two business strategy courses on Warwick Business School’s MBA programme and holds honorary roles as business mentor and teacher for the Institute for Entrepreneurship (part of the School of Management) at Southampton University. Peter Suber Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Open Access Project Director at Public Knowledge, and Senior Researcher at the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). Author of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, the Open Access News weblog, and principal drafter of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Other support Many other members of the Open Access community have expressed their personal support for the recommendations in Section 3. Their names are listed in the open access forum post by Arthur Sale. Continue reading
Dorothy Day and FOIA
How can I connect Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement with the Freedom of Information Act? Because Dorothy Day had an FBI file! While her 581 page file is not available on the FBI FOIA Electronic Reading Room site, you are welcome to review the documents at the FBI's physical FOIA reading room at: 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC; hours, 8:30 am to 2:30 pm. You are required to make appointments 48 hours in advance of arriving; please call 202-324-8057 to make your appointment. If you'd rather not make the trip to DC, try reading the Catholic Worker article A Look Back at the Bureau by Robert Ellsberg in the March/April 2006 issue, which reviews the file of the Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day's file from the time the Catholic Worker first attracted Bureau attention in 1948 through its activities in the Vietnam War. This decades-long investigation of a completely nonviolent organization came to light because Ellsberg and Day used FOIA back in the late 1970s. This serves as an example of how government openness can be used to try and press for greater accountability. I say try because some Catholic Worker houses are still under investigation. It makes the final part of the article ring true today even though it was originally written in 1979:
Our own file simply contributes a small part to a portrait of the Bureau already available: an organization caught in the web of its own delusions, no longer capable of distinguishing personal criticism from treason; a secret police force, answerable to no one, monitoring the beliefs and associations of American citizens, rating them by some private standard as to "dangerousness," making secret threats on the basis of people's "unconscious" motivations, attempting to inhibit people from free thinking and free speaking. To use a Bureau term, it was dangerous. It was also foolish.At least we still have FOIA to continue to highlight these kinds of abuses. Continue reading
FDSys Blog Lives! Now how about some content?
A few days ago, I wrote the obituary of the FDSys Blog. The rumors I started of its death were premature. June 1st they posted an item providing an update of their Request for Proposal. I still think that six months without a blog entry is inappropriate for an active blog. The new technologies office could be using this blog to educate the documents community. For example, they could do a series on the FDsys Requirements Document, going through it section by section and trying to render it into plain English for us. Or they could talk about how they are working with agencies to get content into FDSys, or how the push mechanism might work. If they could just find something to post once a week or even once a month, the FDSys Blog could be a great educational tool. If they're going to stick to erratic postings separated by months, then the FDSys folks would be better off just having a "What's New" section on their main site. Continue reading
Digital Preservation and the Open Web
Computers in Libraries recently posted presentation slides and handouts from the 2006 Computers in Libraries conference. While I thought several presentations above would be of interest to FGI readers, I think that Digital Preservation & the Open Web should be read by all documents librarians and Government Printing Office (GPO) staff. This presentation is a report on the web at risk project and focuses on the role that libraries have to play in identifying and preserving important web content that the commercial sector might not have an interest in mainitaining for us. Looking through the project partners, I was interested in seeing eight FDLP (depository) libraries from the UC system on the list. I hope that someone from one of those libraries can write in with what their involvement is. Decentralization is beautiful. Thanks to the "Web at Risk" project for helping to make it happen. Continue reading