Month: September 2004

government legislation concerning access to information

Posted on by jessamyn

Put your reading caps on if you care about access to government information. The Government Reform Committee Minority Office [i.e. the Democrats] have published a big chunky report entitled “Secrecy in the Bush Administration” Covering topics ranging from FOIA to the expansion of “national security” and “sensitive information” classifications to the administration’s reluctance or refusal to provide Congress with information necessary to their research and committee work. The ALA is mentioned on page 67, the USA PATRIOT Act on page seven.

For example, the National Security Archive is an independent research institute and library located at George Washington University, which collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through FOIA. As of early 2004, the National Security Archive had over 300 outstanding FOIA requests submitted in 2001, for which the government had provided no substantive response. [secrecy news]

unintended consequences for econtent

Posted on by jessamyn

The law of unintended consequences, applied to electronic content and how it works for and against information professionals.

he creative info pro will look at any new information resource and think about how to hack, er, repurpose it for other uses. I use the search functionality of the Wayback Machine to track the emergence of a catch phrase or hot-button issue over time. eBay is a great source for images of virtually any object, as well as a way to find old (but often still useful) textbooks. And some of the Whois domain name registries can be used to glean information on emerging customer dissatisfaction by locating what are delicately called “sucks sites,” since many of the domain names are some form of ThisCompanySucks.com. [lisnews]

You do remember libraries, don’t you?

Posted on by jessamyn

What if your search engine really worked like a librarian does?

If only the search engine could stop after a few tries and say, “hey, I’m guessing that you’re looking for something like…” You know, just like any reasonably bright librarian might. (You do remember libraries, don’t you?) Yeah, it’d probably freak some people out, but what if it actually was helpful? [thanks hanan]