Spring 2006 DLC: A mostly electronic FDLP Collection – NOT!
While the heart attack, coma and subsequent death of my mother sent me to Los Angeles instead to the Spring DLC meeting in Seattle, I was fortunate to meet with a librarian who did attend the Depository Library Council meeting. In addition to talking with this librarian, I got to review the librarian's notes and make copies of handouts, most of which can be found inside the 72 page council handout, which I want to commend GPO for posting in a timely fashion. Over the next week or so, I'm going to write about what I heard and read. Bear in mind this is second hand, except for the handouts. If you have any first hand notes, please send them to admin AT freegovinfo or comment on these entries. Today I want to express my disappointment over the handout and presumably session on "Transition to a Mostly Electronic FDLP collection." This handout is on pages 47-52 of the council handout. I'm disappointed because the Council Briefing Topic makes it clear that GPO STILL believes that one can be a depository without deposits. The entire four page document only talks in terms of linking to library-external gov't resources. Doing so is a good idea and provides a public service, but it is not being a depository in the sense of having physical custody (though not ownership) of publications. Linking to external resources does not protect the end user from information disappearing or being quietly reclassified. It doesn't help them when the 'net goes down. A library that only links to external resources cannot operate independently if something bad (terror attack, killer hurricane, etc) happens to the servers providing the information. You can have decent government information service certers without deposit, but you can't have the century and a half worth of depository protection without deposit. If our society doesn't want dispersed information storage anymore, we shouldn't confuse people by implying that we have that by calling non-collections "depositories." UPDATE 4/22/2006 - GPO has posted what looks to be complete proceedings. This is a better link for the Electronic Depository document discussed above. There is also a "tips" document on how to "build" an "electronic collection" that makes no mention of building local digital collections. It's just advice on getting rid of locally owned copies in favor of links to external resources. Continue reading
Germany agrees to open Holocaust records for use by historians, survivors
Germany has agreed to work with the United States to open records on 17 million Jews and other victims of the Nazis and allow historians and survivors access to some 30 million to 50 million documents.
Continue readingBlog highlighting file format issues
Although not directly related to government information, I'd like FGI readers to make note of the File Formats Blog available at http://fileformats.blogspot.com/. This blog is written by Harvard software engineer Gary McGath and provides "News and comments about technical issues relating to file formats, file validation, and archival software." Recent entries have included how third party fonts might jeopardize the successful preservation of PDF documents. Highlighed by the latest issue of RLG DigiNews, this blog is good reading for people concerned about digital preservation, and I hope the contractors working on the Government Printing Office's Future Digital System pay attention to it. Continue reading
Secret Agreement Reveals Covert Program to Hide Reclassification from Public
This is truly mind-boggling. According to the National Security Archive, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the agency charged with assuring public access to government records, "secretly agreed to a covert effort, led by the Air Force, the CIA, and other still-hidden intelligence entities, to remove open-shelf archival records and reclassify them while disguising the results so that researchers would not complain." FGI originally reported on this story here and here. Scott Shanes at the New York Times, who's been following this story, wrote a piece yesterday entitled "Why the Secrecy? Only the Bureaucrats Know" (registration may be required). There's also more background, as well as copies of the CIA and USAF mou's, at Secrecy News.
"Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret. Secrecy is a source of power, nothing is so fanatically defended." --Max Weber "Economy and Society." 1914Continue reading
Maine Seeks to Opt Out of GATS Library Agreement
Maine Seeks to Opt Out of GATS Library Agreement According to a recent post on American Libraries, the state of Maine has petitioned the Bush administration to have the state excluded from the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Library Agreement that is currently being negotiated in Geneva, Switzerland. Maine Governor John Baldacci wrote, “Libraries are important sites of free and democratic exchange of information. For this reason few developed countries have committed libraries to the terms of the GATS. By committing libraries to the GATS and not specifically exempting public funding from GATS rules, we compromise the support that taxpayers give to ensure that public libraries continue to serve as valuable democratic spaces. Please carve Maine out of the libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural services sector.†Public Citizen notes that "the U.S. has never specified that public funds for libraries are limited to public institutions only and, 'since aspects of these services are provided in competition with other service providers,'they may be subject to claims of unfair competition by the commercial sector." What exactly does that mean? Well, libraries could be sued for offering videotapes and dvds, and even ostensibly for loaning materials since all of those services could be viewed as unfair competition. SPOCK! .... must .... get...utility belt.....SPOCK!!! Continue reading