Government Docs

GAO releases some of America's legislative history, but the rest is only available for pay from Thomson West

Anonymous Patron — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:21:18 -0500

BoinBoing Notes they have released 619,000 pages of histories, which were the pilot project scans they conducted. Looking at this data shows just how incredibly valuable these legislative histories are and how wonderfully talented the government employees are who compiled the information. The bad news is the government *gave* millions of dollars worth of help to Thomson West which is raking in the bucks with the big database.
This Site Has All the details.

The Department of Forgetting: How an obscure FBI rule is ensuring the destruction of irreplaceable historical records

Blake — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:36:03 -0500

Alex Heard, the editorial director of Outside magazine at Slate:

But isn't the FBI destroying only junk? I doubt it. Ernie Lazar, an independent researcher in California whose particular interest is in far-right groups, sent me a list of "destroyed" responses he's received over the years from FBI headquarters and field offices. There are dozens. We'll never know if they were significant—they don't exist anymore—but they sure look interesting to me.

SLA Lauds Government Report On Closures of EPA Libraries

Blake — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:38:05 -0500

SLA has applauded the U.S. Government Accountability Office's recent report on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's library closures. The report was requested by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last year following an outcry by the public and the library community over the destruction of sensitive documents and restriction of access to public health information contained in the EPA libraries. "SLA was the first library association to denounce the closures in February 2006, and we have continued to work diligently to ensure that the concerns of our members and the public's best interest are considered and appropriately addressed in the EPA's strategy and operations plans going forward," said SLA CEO Janice R. Lachance.

Keeping it digital

Blake — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:21:27 -0500

In response to the revelations about White House e-mail practices, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have introduced the Electronic Communications Preservation Act. The bill would direct the Archivist of the United States to issue regulations that require federal agencies to preserve electronic records — especially e-mail messages — in an electronic format.

Current National Archives and Records Administration regulations permit agencies to preserve electronic records by storing them in an electronic format or printing them on paper and saving the paper. Agencies almost universally choose the paper option if they preserve their electronic records at all.

How can EPA meet the public's information needs?

Bibliofuture — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:32:13 -0500

The EPA is seeking comment of how they can best work with the public to share information. The person that passed on this story had the following comment:

Thought you all would be interested to see this. Given EPA's haste in closing many of their libraries and how goofy they are being about reinstating them - well it doesn't appear that the "public" is responding very quickly.

EPA call for input here.

Link to comment from person that suggested this story for LISNEWS is here.

What are You Doing for the Next Eight Years?

Blake — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:02:18 -0500

The next eight years will be critical ones for the National Archives. As they prepare for a Presidential transition that will add to the more than 10 billion pages of documents they already hold, they'll also deal with funding issues and technology advances that will change the way they do business. The Archives says their mission is "to ensure the public can discover, use, and learn from the records of their Government," and they are circulating a document of their own to plan to keep doing just that.

A Strategy for Openness: Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State

Blake — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:53:23 -0500

Ithaca Journal reports A report released last week demands the attention of our state Legislature and governor as New York moves forward in the digital age.

The report, “A Strategy for Openness: Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State,” sets a game plan for the state to ensure New York's government documents are accessible to citizens as the state continues to produce information electronically.

The "Big Scrape": This Time, You're on Your Own

Blake — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:06:07 -0500

The "Big Scrape": This Time, You're on Your Own: The "big scrape" of government web sites won't be happening this year. And watchers of government records collection are not happy.
The National Archives announced that they will not conduct an "open harvest" of federal agency web sites, as they did in 2000 and 2004. Each of those years, NARA "scraped" agency sites to record what those sites looked like and what information they contained at the end of a presidential term (the second Clinton and first Bush 43 terms). Now NARA is saying that they won't do such a chore in 2008.

US Army Library Helps in Burma Relief Planning

Lee Hadden — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:03:23 -0500

The Engineer Research and Development Center and the Topographic Engineering Center (TEC) Library has prepared a Web page at: http://www.tec.army.mil/Burma in support of the U.S. Navy/U.S. Marines/U.S. Department of State relief efforts in Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma. Flooding in the Irrawaddy delta caused by Cyclone Nargis with winds of 120 miles per hour, hit Yagon, Myanmar, (formerly known as Rangoon) May 3, and devastated the country. Current estimates are incomplete, but it is thought that there are more than 22,000 deaths, more than 40,000 people missing, and almost one million people homeless due to the high winds and flooding.

These maps and documents concern the geology, hydrology and geography of the country, and help the disaster engineering teams plan for establishing the supply dumps, hospital locations, transportation bottlenecks, landing zones and other areas needed in the relief efforts.

Agency under fire for decision not to save federal Web content

Blake — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:50:10 -0500

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.