Part-Time Policy Wonk

Posted to STS-L:

I am forwarding this message, which you may have received on other lists, on behalf of the STS Government Information Committee. It is a lengthy, and important, message regarding the appropriations proposed (representing a decrease of $2.9 million) for NBII: National Biological Information Infrastructure.

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Thank you very much to those of you who have written support letters. We appreciate your help and your sending us copies. For those of you who haven't yet written, we need your help before May 23rd. Here's why:

As you know, the President's Budget Request for the NBII for FY 2009 is currently under consideration by the House and Senate Interior Appropriations subcommittees. The President has requested a $2.9 million cut to NBII.

Posted by Anne at 08:46 PM | Permalink

This is an interesting approach to getting old UK government documents freely available online. From Times Higher Education:

. . . So, I've taken it upon myself to start an organisation called MLOP, the "Movement for the Liberation of Old Papers". What I do is hack into restricted websites, download the documents I'm interested in, and then use my favourite open-source paint program to remove the copyright statements from each page. Next I assemble the pages into one single pdf file and upload it to the Internet Archive, where it will become universally available to both researchers and citizens. Yes, it does take a bit of time, but it's a very worthy cause (and I have a hardworking research assistant to help me).

I feel strongly about this, and I'm prepared to live with the legal consequences of my actions. This, after all, is the new frontier of civil rights - the right of access to information. How else can corruption be stopped and falsehoods exposed? How else can people in power be held accountable? I'd go to prison for the old parliamentary papers if I had to. Ever after I would proudly brag about having liberated an old House of Commons report from the clutches of market capitalism.

Posted by Anne at 08:44 PM | Permalink

From Public Knowledge:

Public Knowledge, the Internet Archive, Association of Public Television Stations and the Association of Research Libraries joined today to praise the work of Senate and House legislators for introducing legislation that would allow for greater use of “orphan works.”. . .

. . . While there are differences between the bills, the two pieces of legislation generally follow the Copyright Office recommendation that if a user conducts a reasonably diligent search, they are generally free from high copyright infringement damages; if an owner surfaces, they are compensated for the use of their work. The bills also promote creation of industry guidelines for conducting searches to find owners and encourage use of technology through online databases and visual recognition methods.

The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (HR 5889 and S 2913) "attempts to create a system where new creators can use old works without fear of massive lawsuits, provided that a good faith effort has been made to find out if the work in question is copyrighted."

Posted by Anne at 08:39 PM | Permalink

From the National Security Archive:

Responding to the National Security Archive's motion in the pending White House e-mail lawsuit, Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S. District Court today ordered the White House to provide "precise information" about the users of the e-mail system from 2003 to 2005 and how many of their hard drives still survive today.

Citing the "lack of precision" in White House statements and its changing story about which backup tapes have been preserved, Magistrate Judge Facciola also ordered the White House to "resolve any ambiguities … once and for all" and identify the specific dates between March 2003 and October 2003 for which no backup tape exists.

Posted by Anne at 07:11 PM | Permalink

From the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives:

On Wednesday, April 23 2008, at 2:00 pm in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building, the [House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives] will hold a legislative hearing on H.R. 5811, the “Electronic Communications Preservation Act.” The bill will be introduced prior to Wednesday’s hearing and is expected to have both Chairman Henry Waxman of the Full Committee and Chairman Clay as the original cosponsors.

H.R. 5811 will modernize federal recordkeeping by requiring agencies to begin preserving electronic records electronically. The bill requires such electronic preservation for electronic communications such as e-mails, but recommends that agencies preserve all electronic records electronically. In addition, H.R. 5811 creates oversight of the maintenance and preservation of presidential records, including e-mails sent and received by presidential advisors. The bill calls on the Archivist of the United States to establish standards for the management and preservation of these records and to certify that the president is meeting those standards.

Posted by Anne at 08:48 PM | Permalink

From NPR's All Things Considered:

Technology has made it possible to make books accessible to anyone, anywhere. But in the effort to digitize the world's books, there's a fight brewing over who should control tomorrow's virtual libraries, and how open they should be. Some libraries are choosing to pay to digitize their collections rather than accept offers from Google and Microsoft to do it for free.

Posted by Anne at 08:46 PM | Permalink

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

A publisher that distributes books on the legal rights of prisoners sued the chief of the state's prison system Wednesday, claiming he is banning its publications in Massachusetts prisons.

Prison Legal News, a nonprofit publisher, alleges that Department of Correction Commissioner Harold Clarke and other prison officials refuse to add it to a list of approved vendors who can send books to prisoners.

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink

From Scientific American:

The first generation of World Wide Web capabilities rapidly transformed retailing and information search. More recent attributes such as blogging, tagging and social networking, dubbed Web 2.0, have just as quickly expanded people’s ability not just to consume online information but to publish it, edit it and collaborate about it—forcing such old-line institutions as journalism, marketing and even politicking to adopt whole new ways of thinking and operating.

Science could be next. A small but growing number of researchers (and not just the younger ones) have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open tools of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement—yet—their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based “Science 2.0” is not only more collegial than traditional science but considerably more productive.

Note - "Science 2.0 generally refers to new practices of scientists who post raw experimental results, nascent theories, claims of discovery and draft papers on the Web for others to see and comment on."

Posted by Anne at 08:44 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

Microsoft has released its Citizen Service Platform (CSP) designed to help governments of all sizes deliver services to citizens via the internet.

The e-government application comes with free templates to help implement technological solutions to some of the most common issues faced by governments.

The CSP application framework, announced by Microsoft in January, claims to streamline processes and save time and taxpayer money.

A number of local governments, including London, Porto and all the municipalities of Denmark, are already using the technology to interact with citizens.

Posted by Anne at 08:43 PM | Permalink

From Nextgov.com:

Agencies are not preserving e-mail records properly because of depleted staffs, an overwhelming volume of messages, and a reliance on an archaic print-and-file storing process, industry and government representatives told a congressional panel on Wednesday.

“Records management in general is afforded low priority across government,” Linda Koontz, director of information management issues at the Government Accountability Office, told a hearing of the House Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee. “Without a mandate we won’t get too far.”

At the hearing, Koontz released preliminary results from an ongoing GAO study of how four agencies managed e-mail and electronic records. GAO is studying the electronic storage practices at the Homeland Security and Housing and Urban Development departments as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Trade Commission. Koontz said the agencies print and then file e-mails, but about half of senior officials were not following these procedures, and the e-mails for these officials were maintained in e-mail systems that lacked record-keeping capabilities, such as the ability to group the e-mails using a classification system.

See the full GAO Report: Agencies Face Challenges in Managing E-Mail (GAO-08-699T)

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:

An investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency released today found that 889 of nearly 1,600 staff scientists reported that they experienced political interference in their work over the last five years. The study, by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), follows previous UCS investigations of the Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and climate scientists at seven federal agencies, which also found significant administration manipulation of federal science.

• Executive Summary (PDF; 828 KB)
• Full Report (PDF; 2.9 MB)

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Times:

Lawyers for Oregon are accusing a legal publisher of breaking the law for posting the state code on its Web site.

Oregon's Legislative Counsel Committee earlier this month issued a cease-and-desist letter to Justia.com, accusing it of copyright infringement for publishing the Oregon Revised Statutes.

Justia publishes laws, regulations and legal decisions where they can be viewed free. The Palo Alto, Calif., company also offers commercial services helping law firms set up Web sites and blogs.

Oregon does not claim a copyright in the "text of the law itself," but rather in "the arrangement and subject-matter compilation" of the law, Legislative Counsel Dexter Johnson said in an April 7 letter to Tim Stanley, chief executive officer of Justia.com. The letter advised Justia.com that it may link to the law on the state's own Web site, or it must pay for a license to publish it.

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink

From AALL's Washington Blawg:

Last week, AALL signed onto a letter to the White House asking for a public review of proposed new rules governing the designation of Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information.

Sensitive But Unclassified information, sometimes referred to as “Pseudo-Classified Information” or Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), describes unclassified information that is governed by a varying set of restrictions that allow government officials to keep the information out of the public’s reach.

Posted by Anne at 08:26 PM | Permalink

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

More than a year ago, a New York financier pleaded guilty to laundering bribe money for former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in a deal that was kept secret for months.

That closed-door bargain triggered a battle between federal prosecutors and public-access advocates that took secrecy to unprecedented heights.

Posted by Anne at 08:25 PM | Permalink

NARA outlines in detail the reasons why it will not conduct an end of administration web snapshot or harvest of Executive Branch websites nor require agencies to do so:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued a memorandum to agency records officers on March 27, 2008, stating that NARA would not conduct an end of administration web snapshot or harvest of Executive Branch websites nor require agencies to do so. This memorandum did not apply to Presidential records or to records of the Congress.

NARA made this decision for the following reasons. . .

Posted by Anne at 08:23 PM | Permalink

From the ArchivesNext blog:

As I wrote last Thursday, the National Archives has decided not to conduct a harvest of Federal web sites at the end of this Presidential administration. In my post, I referred to this as a “public relations error.” It looks like I was right. . .

. . . After my post went up, I was encouraged to look into this situation more carefully. Many of the issues at stake in this controversy have their roots in key archival principles, and I think it’s our duty as archivists to bring understanding of those issues to the public debate. I’ll provide some basic background first, then discuss some of the appraisal and resource issues.

Posted by Anne at 08:21 PM | Permalink

From the Guardian:

After seven years of legal wrangling, an official, complete and constantly updated list of addresses in England and Wales is about to become available for commercial use. The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), compiled from data supplied by local councils, is being promoted as the best list of property addresses since the Domesday Book.

Free data it is not. Although prices have yet to be finalised, the commercial firm hosting the service said this week it will cost between £15,000 and £20,000 a year. Profits will be shared among local authorities to help them keep data up to date. . .

. . . Technology Guardian's Free Our Data campaign urges a simple solution - that a taxpayer (or otherwise centrally funded) basic database of addresses be made available to all comers, for free. Despite some advances in the campaign, including the support of the Cabinet Office minister responsible for government IT, we have a long way to go.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From Free Government Information:

A few weeks ago, Daniel had a great post, GAO/Thomson-West Contract Raises Questions" in which he expanded on a Boing Boing post "Did the US gov't sell exclusive access to its legislative history to Thomson West?" and analyzed the Thompson-West contract with the GAO for digitizing 20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995. Today, Carl Malamud got an answer to his FOIA request to the GAO seeking access to the digitized images of those legislative histories.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

Based on months of research and the results of an on-line survey, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released a report today, Record Chaos: The Deplorable State of Electronic Record Keeping in the Federal Government, concluding that the federal government is severely mismanaging its electronic records.

Posted by Anne at 08:15 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

Citing "significant deficiencies" in the preservation of e-mail by the White House and federal agencies, House Democrats yesterday introduced legislation to strengthen and modernize electronic record-keeping requirements. But a private watchdog group called the bill inadequate and issued a report describing federal record-keeping as antiquated and chaotic.

The group chided the government for following a "print-and-save policy" in which even e-mail is routinely printed out on paper and filed away to comply with federal record-keeping rules. It said the government needs to be pushed to adopt technology and practices common in the private sector.

Posted by Anne at 08:13 PM | Permalink

From the Baltimore Sun:

The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating why a government-funded, reproductive health database operated by the Johns Hopkins University briefly blocked searches using the term abortion two weeks ago.

Here's a link to the USAID letter.

And here's a link to the Hopkins letter.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From the National Security Archive:

Today, the White House sought clarification from the court concerning its ability to restore missing records from backup tapes that are currently being preserved. The White House inquiry comes as the National Security Archive continues to await a ruling by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on its pending motion to extend an e-mail preservation order against the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and to depose relevant witnesses about the state of the White House’s e-mail archiving system. A new bill to establish procedures to assure the preservation of electronic federal and presidential records was introduced this week by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO), and Rep. Paul W. Hodes (D-NH) (H.R. 5811), but that bill would have no effect on the e-mails that are the subject of the pending lawsuit.

Electronic Communications Preservation Act (H.R. 5811)

Posted by Anne at 06:10 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

A memorandum of understanding (pdf) signed this month by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Archivist is expected to enable the transfer of many permanently valuable historical CIA records that are 50 years old or older to the custody of the National Archives (NARA), officials of both agencies said today.

Posted by Anne at 05:59 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced changes to its process for assessing the human health effects of common chemical substances. The revised process will allow the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to play a larger role in the evaluation of the substances.

Posted by Anne at 05:58 PM | Permalink

From Free Government Information:

Last month we posted a story about the Iraqi Perspectives Report being available only by mail from the U. S. Joint Forces Command. Lo and behold, today I received a CDROM in the mail with the 5 volumes of the report in PDFs. I just uploaded the whole thing to the Internet Archive. Catalog away!!

Iraqi Perspectives Report Saddam And Terrorism: Emerging Insights From Captured Iraqi Documents. January 2007. IDA Paper P-4287. 5 volumes.

Posted by Anne at 05:55 PM | Permalink

From the Austin American-Statesman:

The Government Accountability Office recently issued a new report indicating that more work is needed to improve access to government records.

The report shows uneven progress in reducing the delays in processing Freedom of Information Act requests.
While some progress is being made, five federal agencies have experienced an increase in request backlogs and two agencies have demonstrated no change in processing times, according to the report.

That sure has the ear of Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Posted by Anne at 05:53 PM | Permalink

From the AALL Washington Blawg:

What kinds of information do you look for from EPA and how do you use that information? What words do you use when you search for environmental information? How would you like to receive the information you need? Those are some of the questions EPA is asking as part of their National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information, a new project that will help EPA develop a strategy to improve access to their diverse body of environmental information. Through June, EPA is inviting comments on their public discussion board or via email.

Posted by Anne at 09:12 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which claims that National Security Letters (NSLs) take too long and that it needs the authority to conduct surveillance without judicial oversight, delayed its own investigation of a student suspected of links to terrorism by employing an improper NSL to seek information on the suspect, at the direction of FBI Headquarters. The FBI failed to report the misuse for almost two years.

Posted by Anne at 09:11 PM | Permalink

From the Dallas Morning News:

Looking back almost 40 years, the director of Texas' first presidential library says he should have been tougher on Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Harry Middleton, 86, said he and fellow staffers in the 1971 opening of the LBJ museum at the University of Texas at Austin were too close to the former president to give a highly critical account of the controversies that defined his tenure – especially the Vietnam War.

It wasn't until 1982, when historians and other outside experts helped redesign the museum, that it fully explored how the war split the country.

"We really wanted to do a good job, but we also surely wanted to make sure it was OK with him," he said.

The second effort, made after LBJ died, was more objective than the first, Mr. Middleton said, convincing him that an advisory panel should have been used at the start.

The evolution of the LBJ library frames the task ahead for curators of the President Bush library at SMU in Dallas as they shape the legacy of another wartime president about to leave office with low approval ratings.

Posted by Anne at 09:10 PM | Permalink

From Science Progress:

Earlier this month the National Research Council released a Congressionally-mandated report, “Science and Security in a Post 9/11 World,” which recognizes that the 9/11 attacks provoked a misallocation of United States security resources and led to counter-productive security measures. The NRC warns that the widespread practice of labeling scientific research as “sensitive but unclassified” has had grave consequences for our security and our economy. In order to encourage more sensible science-security policymaking, the NRC has recommended the creation of a new high-level Science and Security Commission to give scientists and government security officials a place to deliberate and negotiate security policies as they relate to science and engineering research.

To better understand the relationship between scientific research and national defense, Science Progress spoke with security technologist and author Bruce Schneier about why secrecy makes for bad policy in science and engineering, and whether or not a new institutionalized science-security dialogue would be helpful or simply theatrical.

Posted by Anne at 09:10 PM | Permalink

From the Association of Health Care Journalists:

More than two-thirds of health care reporters taking part in a First Amendment survey have had stories held or left unpublished because the Food and Drug Administration did not respond to FOIA requests in a timely manner.

Only a third of reporters said they received a response within the required 20 days called for in the federal Freedom of Information Act. Many waited months or years – or never received requested data, according to the survey and analysis conducted for the Association of Health Care Journalists by graduate students at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Posted by Anne at 09:10 PM | Permalink

From Computerworld:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is coming under fire for discontinuing its policy of taking a "digital snapshot" of all federal agency and congressional public Web sites at the end of congressional and presidential terms.

NARA, which until this year had collected a "harvests" of federal Web sites at the end of presidential and congressional terms, said in a recent memo that it would discontinue the practice at the end of George W. Bush's presidency.

A spokeswoman for NARA Friday asserted that the content is already saved by each agency as permanent records.

Posted by Anne at 09:09 PM | Permalink

From Boing Boing:

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

The State of Oregon is sending out cease and desist letters to sites like Justia and Public.Resource.Org that have been posting copies of Oregon laws, known as the Oregon Revised Statutes.

We've sent Oregon back two letters. The first reviews the law and explains to the Legislative Counsel why their assertion of copyright over the state statutes is particularly weak, from both a common law perspective and from their own enabling legislation.

The position of the Legislative Counsel is that their public access obligations have been fulfilled by their web site. However, their web site has over 500,000 HTML errors, does not meet Section 508 accessibility requirements, has no metadata, as our second letter points out.

Posted by Anne at 09:09 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Times:

Disclosure in government frequently discomfits, but it also illuminates and guards the public trust. The latest row over the Capitol Hill Web firm LegiStorm is no different.

Founded in late 2006, LegiStorm offers easy and free public access to the salary information of Capitol Hill staffers. This information is already public record. It used to be difficult to access, but LegiStorm changed that. This year, the firm started to offer much more detailed personal financial disclosure information on senior staffers. Investment portfolios, bank information and home addresses are among them. House staffers have cried foul, citing a fear of identity theft. One went so far as to accuse the company of aiding and abetting the burglary of his home.

Staffers should get used to this level of scrutiny. They should purchase identity-theft protection if they fear fraud or erect window bars to guard against burglars. Those who require private-sector levels of anonymity should decamp to the private sector. The dominance of Capitol Hill by a select group of well-paid staffers commanding legions of twentysomethings is one of Washington's most noteworthy open secrets, one which has begged attention for some time. It is due for a change.

Posted by Anne at 09:08 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

Freshman Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R) is a stickler for rules, a plus of sorts when you are one of six lawmakers serving on that quaintest of House entities, the 18th-century-vintage Franking Commission, which decides whether lawmakers' constituent communications pass ethical muster.

He is also a Californian, a believer in the latest communications technology, especially video links to his own House performances. So when he discovered that embedding YouTube videos on his official Web site violated his commission's prohibition on links to commercial sites, he brought the issue to the commission's chairman, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.).

Capuano's response may have been a tad cavalier -- "just go ahead and do it; everyone else does" -- but it did set the antiquated Franking Commission on a technological journey. The result is that within a month, that most modern of institutions, YouTube, plans to create a government ghetto, free of advertising, where lawmakers can post the videos of their choice.

Posted by Anne at 09:00 PM | Permalink

From the Beaufort Gazette:

For the 23 years Saddam Hussein reigned supreme in Iraq, the bloodless field of library science wasn't a priority. Preserving authorial manuscripts and ensuring Baghdad residents had access to the latest Pynchon novel sagged at the bottom of the to-do list.

When the U.S. military invaded in 2003, things worsened for Iraqi librarians: Their places of work became targets. Libraries were looted, and librarians resorted to sneaky tactics like erecting fake walls to hide books. Even so, rioters delivered a severe blow to the nation's literary history. . . .

. . . With a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, [Harvey Varnet, the new University of South Carolina Beaufort's library director] brought 10 of Iraq's academic leaders to Amman, Jordan in October 2007 to update them on modern library science curriculum, including electronic cataloguing -- a great departure from Iraqi libraries' old-school paper card-cataloguing systems. When Hussein took overin 1979 and dedicated most government money to a war against neighboring Iran, Iraqi library science screeched to a halt. Varnet calls it the "Rip Van Winkle effect."

Posted by Anne at 08:41 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal judge Monday to allow an important government surveillance lawsuit to have its day in court, despite the government's attempt to bury the case using the state secrets privilege.

The case is Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Bush, which alleges that federal agents illegally wiretapped calls between the charity and its lawyers. The government has asked U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker to dismiss the case, contending that the litigation jeopardizes state secrets. But in an amicus brief filed Monday, EFF argues that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was written to allow cases like this one to proceed with appropriate security precautions.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From the Austin American-Statesman:

There is nothing unusual about an open-government group advocating new legislation that would shine a light on the secretive ways of Congress and the executive branch.

But rather than hire an army of lobbyists to push the proposal, as is the custom in Washington, the Sunlight Foundation is taking its measure directly to the public.

The foundation has posted its Transparency in Government Act of 2008 on the Web at publicmarkup.org and has invited the public to tweak, add to or criticize any aspect of the proposed bill. The goal, said Ellen Miller, executive director of the foundation, is to change the backroom, secretive way that legislation is typically passed in Washington.

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

When FBI investigators probing New York prostitution rings, Boston organized crime or potential terrorist plots anywhere want access to a suspect's telephone contacts, technicians at a telecommunications carrier served with a government order can, with the click of a mouse, instantly transfer key data along a computer circuit to an FBI technology office in Quantico.

The circuits -- little-known electronic connections between telecom firms and FBI monitoring personnel around the country -- are used to tell the government who is calling whom, along with the time and duration of a conversation and even the locations of those involved.

Recently, three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including Chairman John D. Dingell (Mich.), sent a letter to colleagues citing privacy concerns over one of the Quantico circuits and demanding more information about it. Anxieties about whether such electronic links are too intrusive form a backdrop to the continuing congressional debate over modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs federal surveillance.

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

From Stuff.co.nz:

A bill that brings copyright laws into the digital age was passed by Parliament yesterday.

The Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill changes the Copyright Act 1994 to clarify its application in the digital environment and to take account of international developments.

It does not change the balance between protection and access to copyright material, but makes sure the balance can continue to operate when new technologies are involved.

Posted by Anne at 08:33 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

A British Library (BL) survey published this morning found that 93% of UK researchers believed, “access to online research material should be the same as for books”. The BL said this means that “those involved in non-commercial research should be allowed to copy parts of electronically published works such as online articles, news broadcasts, film, or sound recordings.

The survey forms part of the British Library’s official response to UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) consultation on copyright. The scheme was launched earlier in the year following a year-long examination of copyright and Intellectual Property law in the UK by Andrew Gowers.

Posted by Anne at 08:26 PM | Permalink

From the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:

On Friday, April 4, I learned that the administrators of the POPLINE family-planning database had blocked the term "abortion" as a keyword, which made it more difficult for users of the database to find information on the topic. When I learned of this decision, I immediately reversed it. Full access to the database was restored within hours. I was also determined to find out why the restriction was instituted in the first place. I am reporting today on the results of my inquiry.

Posted by Anne at 08:24 PM | Permalink

From the Google Blog:

As the 2008 election progresses, more and more voters are tuning into YouTube to stay on top of the action. Our You Choose '08 platform now features content from candidates, news organizations, and voters, and we've made it easier than ever to see where the candidates stand on each of the major issues in this election. The next big stop on the campaign trail is Pennsylvania, so we're partnering with C-SPAN to collect videos from voters across the country who will answer the question, "What is the most important issue to you in this election?"

Posted by Anne at 08:22 PM | Permalink

From the Institute for War and Peace Reporting:

Political leaders should seek full and open access to tribunal archive rather than debate its final resting place.

As the tribunal moves closer to its mandated closure in 2010, a public debate has erupted over the final disposition of the institution’s rich archival collections.

In recent weeks, the three members of the Bosnian presidency have been deadlocked over a chorus of popular demands to house the tribunal’s archive in Sarajevo after the court completes its work.

They have been debating the wrong issue.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From VoterWatch.org:

In preparation for VoterWatch’s upcoming program, we’ve spent some time analyzing C-SPAN’s coverage of Congressional hearings. Since our primary interest is in creating a video record of what occurs in House and Senate meetings, access to footage is paramount. Unfortunately (and as many of you know), our government doesn’t offer adequate access to video, audio, and transcripts, as the quality and availability of these items greatly differ among committees.

Since C-SPAN is the main hub for Congressional footage, we decided to examine one week of network coverage to see exactly what the C-SPAN channels are covering—and what they’re not. While we are not attempting to fault C-SPAN for missing hearings (after all, covering all of the committees is an arduous and expensive task), we think it’s important to understand what we’re not seeing.

We’ll be expanding on this examination next week, as we explore a second week of coverage. For now, please read on for an analysis of the week of February 4-10, 2008!

Overall, C-SPAN covered 28% of all committee hearings held during the week of February 4-10, 2008. This does not include the four closed hearings that occurred.

Posted by Anne at 08:19 PM | Permalink

From