(LA) Support of Senator’s staff
We have a standing agreement with one of our Senators' staff members to notify him whenever we receive a new copy of the Report of the Secretary of the Senate. This publication, which lists the receipts and expenditures of the Senate and tends to be quite hefty, seems to consistently arrive in print several weeks before it shows up on the Web. In this case, the depository copy beats the Web edition in both timeliness and usability. Lori Smith Government Documents Department Head Southeastern Louisiana Univ., Sims Library Continue reading
The Dangerous Comfort of Secrecy
New York Times editorial (July12), The Dangerous Comfort of Secrecy, states that "The Bush administration is classifying the documents to be kept from public scrutiny at the rate of 125 a minute. The move toward greater secrecy has nearly doubled the number of documents annually hidden from public view - to well more than 15 million last year, nearly twice the number classified in 2001..." More... Continue reading
Barbara Quint on CRS Reports
Congressional Research Service Documents — Free or Fee? by Barbara Quint. Information Today Newsbreaks, July 11, 2005. An up-to-date report on CRS reports. Quint notes that "the reports—if you can find them—are public domain" but that free internet copies of CRS reports still cannot match the comprehensiveness of some fee-based services. Continue reading
New FirstGov Search Coming…
GCN reports that "The General Services Administration is taking a new approach to pump up FirstGov.gov’s weak search capabilities, and it should be in place by next February." GSA’s FirstGov RFQ shows plan to switch to Web-based searches By Jason Miller, Government Computer News, July 8, 2005. Continue reading
Several new GPO documents to peruse
GPO has recently released several new documents, including ID73 "Harvesting Federal Digital Publications", Digitization Specification 3.0, and three additional segments of the Spring 2005 Depository Library Council meeting in Albuquerque, NM. Please have a look and let us know what you think. Additionally, the GPO is asking for comment on the digitization specification by Monday, August 8, 2005. Comments should be sent to jrussell@gpo.gov, AND ALSO to Ted Priebe, tpriebe@gpo.gov. I will also add these documents to the FGI library.
- ID 73: "Harvesting Federal Digital Publications for GPO's Information Dissemination (ID) Programs." This policy governs both manual and automated harvesting of publications from Federal agency web sites for inclusion in the Federal Depository Library and National Bibliography Programs.
- GPO's Digitization Specification 3.0. This document will be used to Continue reading