Report from Australia: Vanishing Government Information
Report from Australia: Vanishing Government Information History will vanish into the ether, by Toss Gascoigne, Australian IT, MAY 11, 2005. This is an edited version of an address to the seminar, "Digital Amnesia: The Challenges of Government Online" organized by the Australian Library and Information Association at the National Library of Australia on April 21. Toss Gascoigne, executive director of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, notes that "Tracking down government reports is a growing problem for researchers in Australia. Originally published on the web, many reports have become unavailable or difficult to find." Gascoigne reports many examples of documents gone missing and examines the reasons. Of interest to us here in the U.S. is the finding of relatively trivial circumstances that cause documents to go missing. Many of the documents were still available, but such simple things as redesigning or streamlining a website caused the documents, though still available somewhere, to become "almost impossible" to find. Changes in staff and management and making "way for new versions or new publications" was a reason for publications being permanently removed from web sites. Staff would remove publications when a particular publication seemed to "no longer attract much traffic." One person reported that he presumed that "a desire to take a different policy direction" would naturally result in removing a report from an earlier time. Continue reading
LC Consultation with States regarding digital information
This past week I was in Baltimore for the second of three workshops provided by the Albany-based Center for Technology in Government and sponsored by the Library of Congress. This was in support of the Library of Congress Collaboration for Preservation of State Government Digital Information. My feeling about the workshop is that it was better than I expected, but did not live up to its inital announcement. That announcement convinced a number of us state documents folks that the workshop was going to be mostly toolkit and that we would take it home and let LC know how it worked out. Still, I found the workshop as structured to be helpful and encourage anyone going to the final workshop to keep an open mind. The workshop turned out to be an information gathering exercise for the Library of Congress. The day consisted of reports and discussions among state representatives. During the last 15 minutes of the workshop we were given a binder containing "Building State Government Digital Preservation Partnerships: A Capability Assessment and Planning Toolkit," along with a short overview briefing. The toolkit identifies 19 capabilities needed by successful digital preservation partnerships. The toolkit was developed by the Center for Technology in Government and reviewed by libraries and archives at the state level including the Illinois State Library and the New York State Archives. Continue reading
Conference notes and proceedings
Below you will find links to various conferences of interest to FGI -- Depository Library Council (DLC), American Library Association (ALA) and more. Continue reading
Emulation in action, retrieving Malawi census data from 1970s
Emulation is one proposed method of preserving digital information. Below is a case study of using emulation to retrieve 1977 Census data from the African nation of Malawi. FGI obtained the permission of Brian Spoor to post this message here. Emulation may not be practical in all circumstances, but it's nice to see a real world example. This example also shows how time and resource intensive digital preservation can be. >>-----Original Message----- >>From: Digital-Preservation Announcement and Information List >>[DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On Behalf Of Kevin Ashley >>Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 2:05 AM >>To: DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK >>Subject: A practical use for old system emulators >> >> >>I copy below in its entirety a post by Brian Spoor to the newsgroup >>alt.folklore.computers which demonstrates a very practical use for >>old system emulators in rescuing digital data. Brian used the ICL Continue reading
Where oh where did that govt document go?
May 18, 2005 / 1 Comment on Where oh where did that govt document go?
Has anyone got a digital copy of the Overseas Base Closing Commission report that was released a couple of weeks ago? It seems the Secretary of Defense didn't like it so he had it pulled from the Internet. I'd be willing to trade for the May 3, 2005 GAO Report on Military Base Closures. Heck, I'll give you the report up front! If you have a digital copy, please send it to admin at FreeGovInfo dot info. Continue reading →
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