Part-Time Policy Wonk

From YubaNet:

Unannounced Move Hampers Agency Scientists' Review of New Chemicals

Without any word to the public, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has closed its specialized library for research on the effects and properties of chemicals, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The library's unique technical collection is being offered for dispersal, with the remainder kept in storage.

The Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA's Washington D.C. Headquarters, had provided research services to EPA scientists who review industry requests for the introduction of new chemicals into the market. Among other holdings, the library contained:

* Unique toxicological studies on the potential effects of pesticides on children;
* Up-to-date research on genetically engineered chemicals and other biotech products; and
* Extensive literature on emergency planning and chemical risk assessments.

Posted by Anne at 09:31 PM | Permalink

Posted to SRRTAC-L:

The U.S. Army command in Hawaii closed Tripler Army Medical Center's Hospital (patients') Library on 31 August. Now neither patients or staff have any library service of any kind. It ended a tradition that went back to the first Tripler located at Fort Shafter after WWI. The present Tripler was built during the 1940s and a top-rate library was set up then on the first floor looking toward the ocean. There were doors that led out onto lanais or porches where patients/staff/visitors could go and relax and read or rest or enjoy the view. Many years the Kodak Hawaiian Show would come up to the lanais and entertain everyone as patients could watch the hulas and other parts of the show from the wards as well as the library.

The library facility had beautiful koa wood walls and shelving to match. I had the honor of being the third librarian there. The first was a young woman who served into the 1950s and then tragically died of leukemia. Elva Ludwig was the second and served until she had to retire for health reasons in 1974. I came next and was there for 5 years from 1974 to 1979. NEVER should have left. A succession of librarians followed.

In the 1980s, the administration of the hospital decided that the area of the library was just too nice to be a library and took it for the commanding general's offices. Everything was destroyed pretty much. In the end, the library was relegated to a small room or rooms, but it was still very active.

Administrative control of the library had been with Tripler through Health Services Command until the 1980s when it was tranferred to the command that controls Shafter and Schofield Barracks. That's when the changes began, unfortunately.

The closure was made despite the fact that many members of the hospital staff did not want to see the library go and still feel badly about it and miss it. I wish there was some way we could revive interest in a library there--perhaps under Tripler's control again. I would happily come out of retirement and go there to set it up!!!!!!!! The library was more than a tradition; it was the ONLY recreational activity available at the hospital.

Elizabeth R. Snoke, U.S. Army civilian librarian retired; past president (3 times) of AFLS/AFLRT

Posted by Anne at 09:29 PM | Permalink

From the NARA Staff Bulletin:

As you know, NARA is operating under a new strategic plan that will take the agency through 2016.

The new plan—with its focused objectives and clear priorities—sets forth goals and explains the strategies developed for achieving them. It also gives all of us at the National Archives, as well as customers, stakeholders, the White House, and Congress, a yardstick by which to measure progress and success—or failure.

Most important, the new strategic plan, Preserving the Past to Protect the Future, offers some major changes to previous plans that will make NARA an even more efficient, customer-oriented Federal agency than it is today.

You can read the plan on our web site, at www.archives.gov/about/plans-reports/strategicplan.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From United Press International:

A special panel set up last year to reduce excessive secrecy in government is being labeled toothless after its chairman told lawmakers he could not act except at the request of the president.

"The statute under which we operate provides that the president must request the board undertake such a review before it can proceed," wrote L. Britt Snider, chairman of the Public Interest Declassification Board to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Posted by Anne at 08:26 PM | Permalink

From the BBC:

A [UK] think-tank has called for outdated copyright laws to be rewritten to take account of new ways people listen to music, watch films and read books.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a "private right to copy".

Posted by Anne at 08:24 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

A long-simmering dispute over whether the U.S. government has too much control over the Internet's underpinnings will heat up again next week at a United Nations summit in Greece.

Starting this weekend, about 1,200 diplomats and technology ministers will gather at a hotel in the outskirts of Athens to resume a debate that has often pitted the Bush administration and a handful of its Western allies against Brazil, India, China and African countries.

Posted by Anne at 08:23 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The American Civil Liberties Union has dropped a three-year-old lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act, months after Congress rewrote parts of the law.

The ACLU said Friday it is withdrawing the lawsuit because of "improvements to the law."

Posted by Anne at 08:21 PM | Permalink

ACLU Press Release:

Defense Department Tracked Quakers, Student Groups

Documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal new details of Pentagon surveillance of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, including Quakers and student groups. The documents show that the Pentagon was keeping tabs on non-violent protesters by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From Library Journal:

In another case of a federal agency downsizing library service, the General Services Administration (GSA) closed its inhouse library in Washington, DC, on October 1, but in this case, GSA officials say there have been no complaints. "With Internet usage increasing, the utilization rate has diminished," Gail Lovelace, chief human capital officer, told LJ.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

From Government Executive magazine:

Officials from the leading Internet search engine are working to remove barriers that prevent their technology from reaching vast troves of information buried in government databases.

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Bloggers across the Internet have shown that you don't have to be part of the mainstream media to uncover an important story and tell it to the world. But how do you start investigating a big story for your blog?

Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released tips for bloggers who want the inside story on government agencies. The Bloggers' FAQ on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) outlines how to use open government laws to get access to records kept by federal agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

For the Bloggers' FAQ on the Freedom of Information Act: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-FOIA.php.

For the complete Legal Guide for Bloggers: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From the American Library Association Washington Office Newsline:

Senators Barbara Boxer and Frank Lautenberg have drafted a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee stating their concern that EPA is dismantling their unique library system.

Call your senators today and ask them to sign onto Boxer-Lautenberg "Dear Colleague" letter! The letter asks the Appropriators to direct EPA to maintain access and research expertise at all of EPA's regional and headquarter libraries until the Agency solicits adequate public and Congressional input.

The deadline for signing the letter is November 1st, so call today! Tell your Senator's Office that they can arrange to sign the letter by calling Grant Cope (4-7931) or Daniel Rosenberg (4-7225) and that they must do so before November 1st.

Status of EPA Regional Library Closures and Reductions in Service:

(Specialized Libraries Not Included)

1. Closed

* Region 5, which served Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
* Regions 6, which serves Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Iowa.
* Region 7, which serves Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.

2. Closed to the Public with Reduced Hours to EPA Staff

* Region 2 Library, which served New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

3. Reduced Access to EPA Staff and the Public

* EPA Region 1, which serves Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
* EPA Region 9, which serves Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific Islands, and Tribal Nations.
* EPA Region 10, which serves Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Native Tribes.
* EPA Headquarters

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From Reporters Without Borders:

New countries have moved ahead of some Western democracies in the fifth annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index, issued today, while the most repressive countries are still the same ones.

“Unfortunately nothing has changed in the countries that are the worst predators of press freedom,” the organisation said, “and journalists in North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Burma and China are still risking their life or imprisonment for trying to keep us informed. These situations are extremely serious and it is urgent that leaders of these countries accept criticism and stop routinely cracking down on the media so harshly.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From the Open Society Institute:

This report details the results of a study undertaken by the Justice Initiative and its partners to discover how government offices and agencies in fourteen countries—Argentina, Armenia, Bulgaria, Chile, France, Ghana, Kenya, Macedonia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, South Africa, and Spain—respond to specific requests for information.

Posted by Anne at 08:14 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

As expected, online retailer Amazon.com Inc. has objected to providing details about its book search feature to rival Google Inc., which says it needs them to fight copyright infringement allegations from a group of authors and book publishers.

Posted by Anne at 08:07 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

A Democratic takeover on Capitol Hill would be good news to those who say the government should prohibit telecommunications giants from playing favorites with Internet content.

Posted by Anne at 08:06 PM | Permalink

From the Guardian:

Vietnam is controlling the use of the internet by encouraging providers and users to spy on each other and turn informant if they suspect politically 'subversive' activity, according to a report today by Amnesty International.

Posted by Anne at 08:04 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

The Internet Society of China has recommended to the government that bloggers be required to use their real names when they register blogs, state media said on Monday, in the latest attempt to regulate free-wheeling Web content.

The society, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, said no decision had been made but that a 'real name system' was inevitable.

Posted by Anne at 08:01 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

Universities in the US have become embroiled in a letter-writing war over a proposed public access research law.

Posted by Anne at 07:59 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

Microsoft said on Friday it would remove links to articles in Belgian newspapers rather than be sued for copyright violation like Google was.

Microsoft received a cease and desist letter last week from Copiepresse, which represents French and German-language Belgian newspaper publishers, with complaints similar to a lawsuit the organization filed against Google and won. Copiepresse argues that posting article text violates copyright, even if the text is very short and the accompanying link drives traffic to the publisher Web site.

Posted by Anne at 10:05 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

A Boy Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc., etc.

If he's in the Los Angeles area, he also respects copyrights.

Tens of thousands of Boy Scouts here will be able to earn an activity patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music.

The patch shows a film reel, a music CD and the international copyright symbol, a ``C'' enclosed in a circle.

The movie industry developed the curriculum as a way of emphasizing the ills of piracy to a generation that has grown up finding free music and video clips on the Internet.

Posted by Anne at 10:00 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

The law on copyright has come under attack from the British Academy , which says its misuse is impeding new ideas.

A report on copyright from the scholarly body for the arts and humanities said copyright holders were obstructing many academic researchers by trying to stop them quoting from their work or demanding substantial payments. It accused commercial rights holders, particularly in the music industry, of being over-aggressive in defending their rights.

Posted by Anne at 08:02 PM | Permalink

Posted on GOVDOC-L:

EPA continues to put its libraries out of business but now tries to conceal the fact. EPA did not announce the closure of this library. I got this information about the latest closure from someone at another agency.

The Headquarters Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances Chemical Library is being shut down and the word is that the collection will be gotten rid of. This includes the laying off of three librarians and two technical staff as of next Wednesday.

I am not sure but I think the only headquarters libraries left are the Office of General Counsel Law Library and the Legislative Reference Library. There is a collection of publications at headquarters considered a respository not available to the public.

Posted by Anne at 08:00 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

Iran's Internet service providers have started reducing the speed of Internet access to homes and cafes based on new government-imposed limits, a move critics said appeared to be part of a clampdown on the media.

An official said last week that ISPs were now "forbidden" by the Telecommunications Ministry from providing Internet connections faster than 128 kilobytes per second (KBps), the Islamic Republic New Agency, Iran's official news outlet, reported. No reason was given for the restriction.

Posted by Anne at 08:25 PM | Permalink

Abstract:

Social norms regarding the copying, distribution, and use of expressive works (copynorms) are essential to understanding how copyright law affects society. By mitigating how stringently copyright owners and users actually enforce and observe copyright law, copynorms - whether those of librarians or file sharers - moderate, extend, and undermine the effect of copyright law. Yet, scholarship and public policy debates all too often overlook this phenomenon. This paper addresses this gap in the literature.

To be published as a chapter in Praeger’s Intellectual Property and Information Wealth (Peter Yu, ed., forthcoming 2006)

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

The EU is to network research papers across Europe to create a free public information resource.

The Driver project will use simple internet-based infrastructures to make accessible scientific and technical reports, research articles, experimental and observational data, rich media and other digital objects.

Posted by Anne at 08:11 PM | Permalink

Columbia Journalism Review:

Copyright in recent years has certainly become too strong for its own good. It protects more content and outlaws more acts than ever before. It stifles individual creativity and hampers the discovery and sharing of culture and knowledge. To convey all this to readers, journalists need to understand the principles, paradoxes, licenses, and limits of the increasingly troubled copyright system. Copyright is not just an interesting story. As the most pervasive regulation of speech and culture, the copyright system will help determine the richness and strength of democracy in the twenty-first century.

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

DOJ Press Release:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales submitted to President Bush today the Department’s report regarding the government-wide administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Today’s report is the result of the first of three Justice Department reviews required under Executive Order 13392 titled, “Improving Agency Disclosure of Information.”

Attorney General's Report to the President on FOIA Administration

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

October 18 Online Forum:

Government Printing Office chief executive officer and public printer Bruce James and chief technical officer Mike Wash will answer questions about how they moved the agency into the digital age. James, the GCN 2006 Civilian Executive of the Year, and Walsh will be available online on Oct. 18 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET.

You can submit questions ahead of time at http://www.gcn.com/forum/qna_forum/42282-3.html. You will need to give your name and State OR your City and State. You can give your e-mail address if you want the host and/or guest to contact you directly. The Q&A will be archived.

Posted by Anne at 08:29 PM | Permalink

From InfoWorld:

Looking to avoid the kind of legal tangle that Google has found itself in, Microsoft's MSN division in Belgium is in talks with a group newspaper publishers over the rights to publish their content on its Web site.

The newspaper group, called Copiepresse, wrote a letter to MSN Belgium earlier this week, asking it to stop posting Belgian newspaper articles to its Web site without permission, said Margaret Boribon, the group's secretary general.

Posted by Anne at 08:06 PM | Permalink

From the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a law that would have facilitated public records requests on the Internet and empowered the attorney general’s office to mediate freedom of information disputes. The bill had passed both houses of the California State Legislature unanimously.

The law would have required the state attorney general to review an agency’s denial of a public record request and provide a written opinion on the validity of the denial within 20 days of being asked by the requester. Open government advocates had pushed for the measure as an alternative to costly litigation.

Posted by Anne at 08:04 PM | Permalink

From The Globe and Mail:

Data bases compiled by newspapers and other publishers cannot simply reproduce freelance work without the specific agreement of writers, photographers and illustrators, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled this morning.

The ruling was a partial victory for writer Heather Robertson, who launched a class action suit in 1996 against The Globe and Mail and its then-owner - Thomson Corporation - for copyright infringement.

Posted by Anne at 07:53 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

The University of Wisconsin has agreed to take part in Google's bid to scan book collections of the world's great libraries, joining a second wave of backers for the controversial project, the two organizations said late on Wednesday.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google plan to provide access to hundreds of thousands of public and historical materials from the UW-Madison libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library, they said.

Posted by Anne at 07:51 PM | Permalink

From ALACOUN:

This status report on the EPA library closings and ALA's work to reverse the decision was prepared by Lynne Bradley, Director of our Office of Government Relations.

Posted by Anne at 07:49 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Congress adopted legislation that limits the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to withhold so-called "sensitive security information" (SSI), which is a category of restricted information related to transportation security.

The 2007 Homeland Security Appropriations Act would, among other things, require "the release of certain SSI information that is three years old unless the Secretary makes a written determination that identifies a rational reason why the information must remain SSI."

The measure was signed into law by the President on October 4.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From Yahoo! UK News:

Tech-savvy Singapore will offer free wireless broadband service in public areas from next year, the government said.

The program will increase the number of wireless hotspots from 900 currently to 5,000 over two years, allowing Singaporeans wireless connectivity beyond homes, offices and schools where the service is currently available, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore said in a statement late Tuesday.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From BBC News:

The internet could one day be broken up into separate networks around the world, a leading light in the development of the net has warned.

Nitin Desai, chair of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), set up by the UN, warned that concerns over the net's future could lead to separation.

Posted by Anne at 08:11 PM | Permalink

"The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act: Background, Overview, and Implementation Issues" (pdf), October 6, 2006.

This report summarizes the legislative history and key provisions of P.L. 109-282 (S. 2590), compares it to H.R. 5060, and discusses challenges that are associated with implementing the new law’s proposed database and that may prove to be areas for future congressional oversight. This report will be updated as events warrant.

Posted by Anne at 08:01 PM | Permalink

From Editor & Publisher:

The online interactive reference site Wikipedia announced Tuesday that the site had apparently been made accessible in China, after being blocked for just over a year by the country's government.

Wikipedia reported on its site that it had received word from multiple users in the country on Chinese-forums.com that the site had been restored, as first pointed out by the Flumesday blog on Tuesday. The most recent blocking was the third such outage reported by Wikipedia.

Posted by Anne at 08:00 PM | Permalink

From Bloomberg:

Google Inc. will subpoena information from Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. to help fight copyright lawsuits over its book-scanning project.

Google, the world's most-used search engine, is seeking information on rival projects by the companies, including book lists, costs, estimated sales, dealings with publishers and possible benefit or harm to copyright owners, according to papers filed in U.S. District Court in New York.

Posted by Anne at 07:54 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

Microsoft and Google have joined forces with the British Library in calling on the government to radically overhaul the intellectual property (IP) law.

Posted by Anne at 07:53 PM | Permalink

From Reuters:

Publishers are starting to report an uptick in sales from Google Inc.'s online program that lets readers peek inside books, two years after the launch of its controversial plan to digitally scan everything in print.

Google has been enlisting publishers to voluntarily submit their books so that Web searchers can more easily find titles related to their interests, but some fear the project could lead to piracy or exploitation of their copyrighted content.

"Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers," said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.

Posted by Anne at 07:52 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

Content providers have given a guarded response to Google’s latest toe in their waters – a news archive search.

Posted by Anne at 07:51 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

Biomedical funders strongly support open access (OA) publishing, according to a survey by an OA publisher.

A poll by open access publisher BioMed Central found that 31 of the 33 funding agencies that responded to a survey of 75 international biomedical funding bodies confirmed they were willing to fund the processing charges for OA publishing.

Posted by Anne at 07:49 PM | Permalink

Posted to GOVDOC-L:

"Knowledge Will Forever Govern: A Vision Statement for Federal Depository Libraries in the 21st Century" is now available at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/council/dlcvision092906.pdf. The Depository Library Council has finalized it vision document, - "Knowledge Will Forever Govern: A Vision Statement for Federal Depository Libraries in the 21st Century". The document represents the collaborative efforts and talents of four Council classes (2006 through 2009) and the many volunteers that helped with the draft statement issued in April 2006.

It is the Council's hope that this vision statement will act as a catalyst to move the program into a 21st century information service that links the people of this country with the information resources available from and produced by its federal government. The public's need to access government information in an open, free, and easily accessible form must continue to be guaranteed. In addition, information from our government must also remain accurate, unmodified, official and authentic.

To these ends, the Council has identified eleven issues related to a more electronic depository library program and seven goals that the depository community, national library associations and federal information providers, including the Government Printing Office, can use to more effectively transition this key public program into the future.
These are exciting and challenging times in the information environment and when these challenges intersect with the public's ability to govern these issues become key to our democracy's ability to function.

This document should not be read alone but in conjunction with Public Printer Bruce James statement on the future of GPO issued in December 2004 (http://www.gpo.gov/congressional/pdfs/04strategicplan.pdf). The Council would like to thank Mr. James for challenging both the Council and the community to step-up and face the issues of an FDLP in the electronic environment. The Council also wants to thank Judy Russell, Superintendent of Documents, for time and staff support not only during Council meetings but throughout the process of producing this document.

Finally, the Council again challenges its colleagues, in both the Federal Depository Library Community and non-depository libraries to work with the federal community, including Congress, to incorporate this vision into a future of no-fee, permanent access to our nation's government information. We urge all of our colleagues to work with Council, their respective institutions and the library associations in which they participate to come up with action plans to help make the vision real!

Posted by Anne at 07:47 PM | Permalink

From American Libraries Online:

Almost three years after initial arguments were presented, a federal judge in Detroit has refused the government’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act. The lawsuit, filed July 30, 2003, was the first legal challenge to the controversial antiterrorism act passed by Congress after the September 11 attacks.

Posted by Anne at 07:46 PM | Permalink

As announced earlier through FOIA Post, the Office of Information and Privacy is planning to publish the 2006 edition of the Department of Justice's Freedom of Information Act Guide next month. The 2006 edition of the FOIA Guide is scheduled to be published through the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) in November, with a delivery date most likely in December.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/foiapost/2006foiapost13.htm

The 2004 edition is currently available at http://www.usdoj.gov/04foia/foi-act.htm.

Posted by Anne at 07:44 PM | Permalink

Posted to GOVDOC-L:

It has come to the attention of our Library staff that effective October 1, 2006, the U.S. General Services Administration Library has been permanently closed and its resources are be disbursed throughout the agency. It is not yet clear what will happen to its collection of Federal Depository Library materials, which technically, I believe, belongs to the Federal Depository Library Program under the Superintendent of Documents, not GSA. The Library (Depository Library No. 0092C) is currently listed as selecting and receiving 11% of all federal publications available in the Depository Program. The library is also listed as being one of the few sources in the world for certain compiled legislative histories to U.S. public laws (we were seeking one such compilation - that's how we found out). Helen Davenjay at GSA is the current contact for questions about the Library.

Posted by Anne at 07:42 PM | Permalink

From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

Cuts in Subscription Budgets Take Scientific Journals and Eco-News Offline

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sharply reducing the number of technical journals and environmental publications to which its employees will have online access, according to agency e-mails released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). This loss of online access compounds the effect of agency library closures, meaning that affected employees may not have access to either a hard copy or an electronic version of publications.

Note an all EPA employee memo dated 9/10/2006 from CIO Linda A. Travers states:

EPA is in the process of implementing a new library plan to make environmental information more accessible to employees, researchers and the general public. As part of our efforts, the Agency is posting physical library collections on-line and enhancing electronic library services. At present, more than 15,000 journals and publications are available on-line and Agency documents can be obtained via interlibrary loans.

Posted by Anne at 07:40 PM | Permalink