New on FDSys: January 30, 2006 – Industry contacts, capabilities update
In the past week, the volunteers at FGI have observed a new file and a revised document at GPO's Future Digital System (FDSys) web site. The new file is called contact list and appears to be a list of attendees for FDSys' Industry Days in October 2005 and January 2006. Along with this addition, the document FDsys System Releases and Capabilities has been updated to version 2.1. According to its "document change/configuration control sheet", this revision updates Release 0 date and moved Style Tools to Content Submission. According to the document, Release 0 is "Supporting Digital Conversion Services for GPO Access" and GPO expects this version of FDSys to be available by April 2006. We at FGI wish to thank GPO's Office of Innovation & New Technology for posting more FDSys updates and hope this will continue to be a regular process. Continue reading
A bill that would give us more information
This bill puts public information at the forefront of the battle against corruption and influence peddling. It relies on new, more transparent disclosures of information to the public to make Congress more accountable. The press release about the bill (Obama Introduces CLEAN UP Act to Increase Transparency in Government, Decrease Lobbyists' Influence Monday, January 23, 2006) says that it would "require that all legislation introduced in the Senate, including conference reports, be posted on the Internet 72 hours before the legislation is voted on by the full Senate, including specific projects - or 'earmarks' - that under current law are anonymously attached to appropriations bills."
Digital Deposit in Action: Alaska State Documents via LOCKSS
Since July 2004, electronic state publications have represented about half of all documents collected through the Alaska State Publications Program. To eliminate broken URLs and to improve the preservation of electronic publications of state agencies, the Alaska State Library is storing electronic state publications on our web server and turning to a technology called LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). LOCKSS caches (computers), including ones at the Alaska State Library, Stanford University, and Yale University collect the cataloged electronic documents stored on our server at and stores them locally. If something happens to our local server, or if the institution where the LOCKSS cache is based loses access to the Internet, the documents are served from the LOCKSS cache and stay locally available. Further information about LOCKSS can be found at http://www.lockss.org. Two sections of the web site of special interest are Answers for Library Directors and For Librarians. For information about how the Alaska State Library is using LOCKSS, please contact Daniel Cornwall at dan_cornwall AT eed.state.ak.us. Continue reading
NSA: Redact by rewriting.
As reported recently in Secrecy News, "The National Security Agency has issued new guidance to assist officials in redacting (censoring) documents in Microsoft Word format and producing unclassified Adobe Portable Document (PDF) files without inadvertently disclosing sensitive information." (NSA: Redacting With Confidence by Steven Aftergood, SECRECY NEWS, Volume 2006, Issue No. 8 January 20, 2006.) Now, one person who has examined the NSA document says that "it suggest redaction by complete rewriting."
When redaction is done by creating a new document and pasting in old text, opportunities for misbehavior and errors abound. The NSA's suggestions do address one such issue: figures appearing in the wrong place. Continue reading
Privacy
In light of recent developments (the subpoena of search records from Yahoo and Google, the revelations of secret government spying), two recent stories examine the issue of privacy of research and reading on the net.
- After subpoenas, Net searches give some pause, By Katie Hafner, CNET News.com, Jan 24, 2006.
- Privacy for People Who Don't Show Their Navels, By JONATHAN D. GLATER, New York Times, January 25, 2006.