Skip to content

Category Archives: politics

alien vs predator: www-style

I finally got around to reading Web Services for Recovery.gov by Erik Wilde, Eric Kansa and Raymond Yee. The authors wrote the report with funding from the Sunlight Foundation, who are deeply engaged in improving the way the US Federal Government provides transparent access to its data assets.
I highly recommend giving it a read [...]

APIs Suck

With TransparencyCamp last weekend, news of the mandated use of feed syndication by Federal Agencies receiving funds from the Recovery Act, recent blog posts by Tim O’Reilly and the Special Libraries Association, an article in Newsweek, news of Carl Malamud’s bid to become the Public Printer of the United States (aka head of the GPO), [...]

public.resource.org to liberate Code of Federal Regulations

good news via the govtrack mailing list

Carl Malamud of public.resource.org, with funding from a bunch of places including a small bit from GovTrack’s ad profits, announced his intention to purchase from the Government Printing Office documents they produce in the course of their statutory obligations and then have the nerve to sell back to the [...]

provide and enable

I got a chance to meet Jennifer Rigby of the National Archives UK at the LinkedDataPlanet Conference in New York City (thanks Ian). Jennifer is the Head of IT Strategy, and told me lots of interesting stuff related to a profound shift they’ve had in their online strategies to:

Provide and Enable

So rather than pouring [...]

How do 26 Nobel Laureates change a light bulb?

I don’t know … but it sure is nice to see that 26 Nobel Laureates at least understand the direction libraries ought to be headed:
As scientists and Nobel laureates, we are writing to express our strong support for the House and Senate Appropriations Committees’ recent directives to the NIH to enact a mandatory policy that [...]

US open access petition

As announced on the jisc-repositories list there is now a US counterpart to the EU Petition calling for Open Access.

We, the undersigned, believe that broad dissemination of research results is fundamental to the advancement of knowledge. For America’s taxpayers to obtain an optimal return on their investment in science, publicly funded research must be [...]

March on Washington

MARCH ON WASHINGTON TO END THE WAR

Begins: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 at 11:00 AM

Ends: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 at 2:00 PM

Location:

Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets

Washington, DC 20002

USA

Link: more info

Mark your calendars, and let me know if you need a place to stay…

Imperiled Federal Libraries

Tim Reiterman has a good article about imperiled federal libraries, and their collections…some of which are already ending up in dumpsters.

I think we are living in a world of digitized information…In the end there will be better access.
(Linda Travers of the EPA)

Which makes me wonder what “end” she is talking about. I think there [...]

miniature earth

If there world’s population were reduced to 100, it would look something like this.
(thanks Jeroen)

iraq

I saw this in yesterday’s Washington Post and just learned it won the Best of Photo Journalism Award for 2006. The picture says it all, but the story is just as harrowing. What a sad mess.