SLA Government Information Division

Creating a Digital Trail for State Legislatures

Pam Greenberg at The Thicket at State Legislatures blog highlights the topic of preserving digital legislative records in today's post, Creating a Digital Trail for State Legislatures.

The post points to the work of the Minnesota Historical Society, in collaboration with the Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), to establish model practices in digital preservation and access for state legislative information. For more information on the project, see:

• Preserving State Government Digital Information, from the Minnesota Historical Society
• Partners: Preserving State Government Information, from NDIIP
• A Model Technological and Social Architecture for the Preservation of State Government Digital Information Project, from NDIIP

GAO Measures Transparency of Recovery Act Reporting

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released their latest analysis of Recovery Act reporting on 28 June 2010. (The report was delivered to Congress on 27 May 2010.)

Available on the GAO.gov/Recovery page, the report is Recovery Act: Increasing the Public's Understanding of What Funds Are Being Spent on and What Outcomes Are Expected [PDF, 344 pp., No. GAO-10-581]. Background and analysis are on pages 1-27; the remainder of the report consists of appendixes detailing methodology and the sample agency award programs that were studied.

Background information in the report can be helpful to those wanting to learn where and how the assistance data are reported. Anyone interested in the specific programs used as examples may gain insight from the appendixes, as well; these cover:

• the Department of Agriculture’s Broadband Initiatives Program;
• the Department of Commerce’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program;
• the Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance and Geothermal Technologies Programs;
• the Department of Transportation’s High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail, Grants-in-Aid for Airports, Highway Infrastructure Investment, Supplemental Discretionary Grants, and Transit Capital Assistance Programs;
• the General Services Administration’s Federal Buildings Fund Program; and
• the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Civil Works Program.

The report's recommendations center around improving the narrative information supplied by assistance recipients.

See the GAO.gov/Recovery page for additional reports, podcasts, charts, and other information on Recovery Act monitoring and analysis by GAO.

U.S. Federal Website Practices: New OMB Policies

On 25 June 2010, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) issued two long-awaited memoranda updating federal web policy guidance:

• M-10-23, Guidance for Agency Use of Third-Party Websites and Applications
• M-10-22, Guidance for Online Use of Web Measurement and Customization Technologies

Aliya Silverstein describes the changes in her 25 June NextGov article, White House abolishes decade-old cookies ban.

IEEE Xplore - Google Issue

It seems that in April Google removed metadata related to IEEE Xplore, with the result that neither Google Scholar searches nor general Google searches returned much in the way of IEEE documents.  Google is apparently reloading the metadata, but search results will still not be complete for a while.

IEEE published a letter about the issue last week - see http://tinyurl.com/2bsbq3r. 

Of course, the best way to search for IEEE content is from the source - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/dynhome.jsp.  --nks

Virtual Convention Center … Virtual Auditorium … Virtual SLA2010!

Did you make it to SLA this year?  I did – from the relative comfort of my home office.  I, and a number of other virtual attendees created avatars and joined SLA2010 for the opening and closing sessions, and for the Spotlight sessions.   

 

There was a 3D and a 2D option, depending on your preferences or computer access limitations.  The 3D experience included being able to see and hear the presenters, and their powerpoint slides, and the opportunity to submit questions to the presenters, just like the live audience could.  And we could communicate with one another via “chat” – without disturbing the people around us!  It wasn't always perfect, but it worked pretty darn well!

 

We also had the added feature of being able to see a continual scroll of “tweets” about #sla2010, and we could move our avatars around.  A bunch of us rushed the stage during the final moments, to dance to the music!  (I understand this was broadcast to the live audience.  Wish we could have seen that!) 

 

For me, highlights were all of the Spotlight sessions on social media, as well as the session on real time search.  Very informative! 

 

I felt vaguely guilty while listening to Nicholas Carr’s closing address, which covered the research that’s been done into how access to the internet and social media tools is affecting our ability to do deep thinking.  I say I was listening to Nicholas Carr, and taking the occasional note, and chatting with others about what we’d just heard, and watching the twitter stream, and peeking at my Blackberry and … yeah, his point is well taken!

 

This was my first foray into a virtual world (“inworld” – my new word of the month), and I’d do it again, when unable to attend the full conference or other meeting.  How about you? -- Nora

 

 

SLA on New IP Enforcement Plan

Thanks to the SLA Public Policy Connections blog for posting the news on the White House 2010 Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement [PDF] announced today.

For a summary of the plan, see today's post: White House Releases Joint Strategic Plan To Combat Intellectual Property Theft.

New Digital Collection of National Strategy Documents

As announced on MERLN (Military Education Research Library Network):

The National Defense University Library is pleased to announce the release of its U.S. National Strategy Documents collection, a comprehensive collection of official U.S. Government strategy documents, including National Security Strategies dating from the Regan Administration to the present day, Military and Defense Strategies, Quadrennial Defense Review reports, and strategies focusing on terrorism, homeland security, cyber security, and weapons of mass destruction. All these strategy documents are brought together in one location, enhanced by a full-text search feature to facilitate in-depth research.

GPO Content Migration to FDsys: Update

The U.S. Government Printing Office is transitioning from its venerable GPO Access website to the new FDsys.gov system. GPO recently announced the status of content migration to FDsys:

"The migration of content from GPO Access to FDsys began with the FDsys launch in January 2009, and as of now, 29 of the 40 collections have been migrated."

"The next collections to be released, coming in early July are:
* Budget of the United States Government (remaining years)
* Constitution Analysis and Interpretation
* GPO Style Manual
* House Practice
* Pictorial Directory (including New Member Pictorial Directory)
* Plum Book
* Riddick's Senate Procedures"

GPO estimates that content migration will be complete by 31 July 2010.

GPO Joins LOCKSS: Update

As announced in our previous post, GPO Announces LOCKSS Support, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has joined the international  digital preservation alliance LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe).

The Stanford University News provides more information on the project in their article Stanford helps to digitally preserve mountains of documents. In the article, Stanford University librarian James R. Jacobs explains,

The more you centralize digital content, the easier it is to change things without anybody knowing. LOCKSS is a safety net. The simplicity and beauty of LOCKSS is that there are lots of libraries which preserve that content.

Jacobs is leading the LOCKSS-USDOCS Project and provides further information in his FGI blog post GPO joins LOCKSS: digital deposit a reality.

GPO Announces LOCKSS Support

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) announced today that the agency has joined the international  digital preservation alliance LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). Based at Stanford University Libraries, LOCKSS is an open source solution that enables libraries to inexpensively collect and preserve their own copies of authorized e-content.

The press release: GPO Joins Digital Preservation Alliance, 14 June 2010

From the LOCKSS website: How It Works

(LOCKSS has long been advocated for use in federal government depository libraries by the bloggers at Free Government Information; FGI has not blogged on this latest development yet.)