Privatization of Environmental Health Perspectives proposed
NIEHS is considering privatizing the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) (http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS1466 -- http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/allpubs.html). It is a monthly open-access journal published by the NIEHS and is read in nearly every country of the world. It covers environmental news, environmental medicine, and children's environmental health. It is available on the web and made available to Pubmed Central, Medscape, and JSTOR. Its highly successful monthly Student Edition "sponsors development of teacher lesson plans based on environmental news articles." It is ranked second of 132 environmental sciences journals and fifth of 90 public, environmental, and occupational health journals.
The announcement says that, NIEHS has not reached a final decision about potential privatization of EHP. Nor has an implementation plan for carrying out such a decision been developed. Implementation, if executed, would address several core issues, which are listed below with questions for which public input is sought in developing agency strategy. It poses several questions including: How should EHP's current open access policy and commitments to provide content to public archives be addressed in a potential privatization? and Overall, how would a privatization of EHP be an advantage or disadvantage to the NIEHS and to environmental health science?
Continue readingFOI disclosures via RSS
Here's news from the UK that may be of interest here as well. Martin Stabe at UK Freedom of Information Act Blog reports that the UK Department of Education and Skills as well as the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust now are using RSS to distribute freedom of information act disclosures. If US agencies were doing that, we librarians could collect those feeds and create a robust collection of FOIA information for our users! Continue reading
Justice department database kept offline
Timely, Effective and Fair? Justice Department makes a valuable public database all but inaccessible By Bob Williams, Center for Public Integrity, September 13, 2005.
It is a detailed database that could be shining a constant light on the shadowy and complicated world of Washington lobbyists working for foreign governments and overseas companies, a potentially invaluable tool for promoting government transparency, honesty and accountability. Instead, the Foreign Agent Registration Act database housed at the Justice Department— which is a public record by law—is a shadowy, complicated beast. And that seems to be just fine with the government officials in charge of it.Continue reading
Fall 2005 Depository Library Council Meeting October 16-19, 2005
Free Government Information is once again providing "grassroots proceedings" and audio recordings of sessions from the Fall 2005 Depository Library Council meeting in Washington, DC at the Hyatt Regency Washington. The meeting will begin Sunday, October 16, 2005 and end on Wednesday, October 19, 2005. This meeting is especially important because there will be many discussions about the vision for the future of the FDLP! If you are either attending or presenting at this conference, we want to hear from you! If you are interested in providing notes or audio recordings of any of the sessions below, please drop me a line at dnlcornwall "at" alaska.net. If you will be presenting at the Fall DLC Meeting, we would be honored to host any handouts you have. Just e-mail them to dnlcornwall "at" alaska.net with a note of which session your handout(s) belong to and we will post them within a day of receipt. Continue reading
EPA posts floodwater testing
The EPA has posted on its website the results of their testing of stagnant floodwaters. The waters contain high levels of E. coli bacteria and more than 100 pollutants including metals, pesticides, lead and herbicides. [Story from Rob Thormeyer, Government Computer News, 09/12/05] Continue reading