NLA 2005 “50 States Blue Book” guide updated, need help
As part of my "finding state government information" talk at the 2005 Nevada Library Association annual conference, I presented a "work-in-progress" guide to "blue books" produced by state governments. That guide has now been updated with 10 new state guides and is available at http://web.acsalaska.net/~dcornwall/NLA2005/BlueBookList.html. Please let me know either by comments below or to e-mail to dnlcornwall AT alaska.net if you have information about other Blue Books/Almanacs/Government guides, etc published by state governments. Corrections are welcome as well. For those of you not familar with them, Blue Books are publications produced by SOME states that function as state almanacs. They will always have current information on the organization of state government, and will often have statistics, local history and more. Some states, like Alaska, used to have Blue Books, but had to stop publishing them for budgetary reasons. Sometimes related products will continue, like guides to government and directories of state officials. Continue reading
Open Access to Government Information: 2005
One entry in Peter Suber's wrapup of Open Access in 2005 in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter (issue #93 January 2, 2006) is on government information:
In 2005 we saw more profit-seeking (or "surplus"-seeking) businesses demand that the government stop providing public access to publicly-funded information. This is a demand to profit at the expense of taxpayers or a demand that taxpayers pay twice in order to guarantee a revenue stream for a private-sector organization. In support of their demand, the organizations argue that free information from the government is unfair competition, as if what they really wanted was a free market. The leading example was the American Chemical Society's attempt to shut down or scale back PubChem, the OA database launched by the NIH. Congress denied the ACS request to defund PubChem and now the ACS and NIH are working out the terms of their coexistence, with the NIH holding all the cards. Continue reading
How many justices does it take…?
So, Guy Walks Up to the Bar, and Scalia Says... By Adam Liptak, NY Times, December 31, 2005. This one's on the light-hearted side. A new study shows that Justice Scalia is the funniest justice. Starting in October, 2004, Supreme Court transcripts started identifying laughs by name. Jay D. Wexler, a law professor at Boston University, used the new data to analyze the relative funniness of the justices. Happy new year from the folks here at FGI! Continue reading
White House says its web-tracking is OK
Here is a followup to the story earlier today that the White House web site uses web bugs. White House Says Web Site Counts Visitors, By ANICK JESDANUN, The Associated Press, December 30, 2005.
The White House said Friday its Web tracking technology is consistent with federal rules because it only counts the number of visitors anonymously and doesn't record personal information.Note that wikipedia says that web bugs "are used when monitoring has to be done by a server that is different than the one holding the Web pages; this is necessary for example when the Web pages are served by different servers, or when the monitoring has to be done by a third party." See also EFF's web bug FAQ. Continue reading
Access to Government Information, pre and post 9/11
December 31, 2005 / Leave a comment
Access to Government Information, pre and post 9/11. By James A. Jacobs An examination and discussion of the impact the events of Sept. 11 have had on Government Publications and libraries. A presentation at the event Intellectual freedom in libraries post 9/11 April 9, 2002 Sponsored by Librarians Association of the University of California Riverside […]
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