LISNews: Librarian News

This week found FGI BOTM Tim Skeers and the volunteers at Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)(FGI) starting the following discussions we hope you will join:

Tim's Posts

• 2 new transportation options in NM
• Congressional documents -- or are they?

Volunteer postings:

• Library of the 21st Century Symposium - James A.
• The Digital Divide: Speed Matters - James A.
• Herrick describes DLC Digital Distribution Session - Daniel
• Amnesty International campaign to combat censorship - James A.
• Federal Trade Commission technology blog - James A.
• Google to index government deep web? - James A.
• When Standards Are Political -- ODF (the Open Document Format) - James A.
• Saving Democracy With Web 2.0 - James A.
• The Technical is Political - James A.
• Former FCC chairman dismisses net neutrality as distraction - James R.
• remix: US congressional staff salaries - James A.
• Sites for election junkies - James R.
• OMBWatch releases database of govt spending - James R.
• Attorney General's Report on FOIA - James A.

We'd like to thank Tim Skeers for his contributions as his month ends as FGI Blogger of the Month on Tuesday. November brings us SLU docs librarian and author Lori Smith to the FGI mike. Welcome Lori!

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

Here's what I've been up to over at Alaskan Librarian for the past week:

• Political and e-communication advice from the Bible
• Great Blue Heron perusing menu
• OPAL Highlight: Meet the Millennials: Risk Takers and Rule Makers
• Try an Alaskan Experience
• Gulls and empty blog

Please comment here or there as I'm still a regular visitor to LISNews.

The random photo for this week is downtown Juneau where I work.

If you'd like to see Alaskan Librarian stories as they are posted, subscribe to my RSS/atom feed at http://alaskanlibrarian.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

If you have a stand alone blog, how about using your journal entry to let us know what you've been up to in the past week or so?

This week found BOTM Tim Skeers and the volunteers at Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)(FGI) starting the following discussions we hope you will join:

Tim's Posts

• The NMSL OCLC Digital Archive project, part 1

Volunteer postings:

• Not Just Blogs: Government Information in the Digital Era: Free Culture or Controlled Substance? - James A.
• Judge orders Cheney's records released - James A.
• Find out how depositories are doing with 2005 biennial survey - Daniel
• Moyers: the net at risk - James R.
• Part 20: Nonlawyer's journey through Title 44: Docs for the White House - Daniel
• Read this week! GPO discussing digital deposit at Fall 2006 DLC! - Daniel
• Act today to ask Bruce and Mike! - Daniel
• Three new items on Digital Rights Management and Government Information - James A.
• Not Just Blogs: Depository Library Council Vision - James A.
• New Feature! News Aggregator brings docs and tech news to FGI - Daniel

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

Since the last time I briefed you, here are the topics I've covered over at Alaska Librarian:

• Experiment with Google Pages - Share Feedback/Experience
• Clark County Public Library does MySpace well
• Ducks on Flickr
• Muslim comic
• I'm writing this entry from Writely, a web based ...
• Hey! I'm talking to you!
• A public to-do list: Want to help?
• Catholic Worker Digest moves

Hope to see you there. If you'd like to subscribe to Alaskan Librarian through your favorite news reader, use http://alaskanlibrarian.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

This week found the volunteers at Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)(FGI) starting the following discussions we hope you will join:

• Part 19: Nonlawyer's journey through Title 44: Use of Documents by Public Printer - Daniel
• Open Educational Resources holds lessons for documents users - Daniel
• New NORAD Podcast - Daniel
• More bad news for EPA scientists - James R.
• Not just blogs: Blogger of the month bios - James R.
• New on FDSys - Capability Statements - Daniel

In addition to starting the stories above, FGI volunteers started a new feature, a news aggregator. We have loaded up a lot of news feeds from online magazines, blogs and a few from the Government Printing Office and brought them together in one place for you to read them. Just look for the "news aggregator" link on the left hand side of the page.

The news aggregator gives you the option of reading all the sources we at FGI find useful, or reading just ones from these four catagories:

• Government Documents Blogs
• Government Technology
• Information focused government blog
• Organizations of interest to FGI

This feature is very much in beta, so please check it out and offer us feedback and new sources, particularly blogs done by government document departments or librarians. Help us build a more useful tool.

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

This week found guest Blogger Tim Skeers and the volunteers at Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)(FGI) starting the following discussions we hope you will join:

Tim's posts

• Timely Internet info for parents and kids

Volunteer postings

• Part 18: Nonlawyer's journey through Title 44: Catalog of Government publications - Daniel
• Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality - Daniel
• 50 State Blue Book guide has new wiki home - Daniel
• The suprising users of FOIA - businesses! - Daniel
• Counting your chickens... - James R.
• DefectiveByDesign's Day Against DRM - Daniel
• Tim Skeers, BOTM for October, 2006 - James R.
• Part 17: Nonlawyer's journey through Title 44: Index of documents: number and distribution - Daniel
• If you read through Bloglines (or not), please vote in our poll - Daniel

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

Want to work in beautiful Juneau?

The Alaska State Library is looking for an outgoing individual to work with our team of librarians on an active program of services and outreach to State of Alaska employees. The successful applicant will be the primary liaison for the Departments of Education and Early Development, Environmental Conservation, Fish & Game and Natural Resources. Additionally the position provides up to 10 hours each week of public desk work.

About a quarter of this position's time is dedicated to supervising a 15% federal documents depository program. The Alaska State Library is a recognized leader in the acquisition and management of digital government information and is a participant in the GPO LOCKSS DOCS pilot project. Alaska has seven Federal Depository Libraries and the successful applicant will be encouraged to explore new avenues to work with them to provide Alaskans better access to federal government information.

The Alaska State Library is located in downtown Juneau and is a member of the Capital City Libraries consortium.

For more information on the Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums and our mission, please review the following web site: http://www.eed.state.ak.us/lam/home.html

BENEFITS
Employment with the State of Alaska includes competitive benefits such as medical, dental, vision and life insurance, eleven (11) paid holidays annually, two (2) days’ personal leave accrual monthly, two (2) retirement plans and other optional benefits. For more information regarding these benefits, please review the following web site:

http://www.state.ak.us/drb/ghlb/insurancebenefitsactive.shtml

For full listing and application, please see Workplace Alaska at http://workplace.alaska.gov/ and look for the Librarian I posting.

Above is an eagle picture for no good reason other than to use a Flickr feature of LISNews!

I missed a week of updating you on my activities at Alaskan Librarian because I spent a lovely weekend in Anchorage last week.

But here is my mostly weekly exercise in shameless self-promotion. Please come over and discuss. Or discuss here:

• Buying Facts, Not Propaganda
• Today's Heroes are Republicans
• Future of media lives in Talkeetna
• Muslim Child and other good books
• Virtually walk among the totem poles
• Librarian 1 Google 0 - Bush pilot bio
• No one felt like critiquing nonviolence

I know other LISNewzters also have standalone blogs and/or web 'zines. How about some of the rest of you sharing your blog topics here?

We have termination dust in Juneau today. Don't have any Juneau dust, but here is some Anchorage termination dust provided by Baggis of Flickr:

Thanks to Baggis for giving his photo an attribution/noncomerical Creative Commons License.

I was off in Anchorage last week, so this "New Discussions" covers the past two weeks.

As the termination dust (Alaskan for snow) appears on the mountaintops of
Juneau, Alaska, Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)
volunteers have been busy saying hello to October BOTM Tim Skeers and waving
goodbye to September BOTM Kris Kasianovitz, blogger of the month for
September, 2006. Along the way we started the following conversations we
hope you will join:

• Lori takes govdocs to MySpace (Daniel)
• Watch a dark video next week! (Daniel)
• Fun Facts from the Alaska State Publications Program (Daniel)
• My kind of people! (Daniel)
• New FGI poll - James R.
• Interview with Ted Nelson (James A.)
• State-by-state list of ballot initiatives (James R.)
• EPA HQ library to close Oct 1, 2006 (Daniel)
• Congressional Staff Salaries Site (Peggy)
• Talk on Socks? No Way! / New Library Page (Daniel)
• Part 16: Nonlawyer's journey through Title 44: Blank Forms (Daniel)
• The Semantic Web + Government Information = Serendipitous Reuse (James A.)
• A long strange trip, ONDCP on YouTube (Daniel)
• Amazing graph of Federal budget spending! (James R.)
• Another supressed FCC report surfaces (James R.)
• Wikis as legislation builders (James R.)
• FCC ordered 2004 study critical of concentration destroyed (James R.)

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader,
consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

Because I've been busy elsewhere, this has been a slow week on Alaskan Librarian, where I've posted on the following topics:

• Eagle feeding
• If President doesn't like Geneva, dump it!
• Who's Afraid of the big bad wolf – Not Alaskans!
• Book Review: Clams on the Beach and Deer in the Woods

Tomorrow (Tuesday 9/19/2006) is the last day I'm accepting examples of failures of nonviolence. So far I've received nothing. So, if you believe I've been cherry picking my recent examples, read the post and consider giving me something to work with.

Note that I've never said that nonviolent resistance always works, so I won't make any assumptions if no one provides me of examples of failed nonviolence.

That's all from Alaskan Librarian for now.

This week found guest Blogger Kris K. and the volunteers at Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)(FGI) starting the following discussions we hope you will join:

Kris' posts

• Communicating with Congress!

Volunteer postings

• Wikis as legislation builders - James R.
• FCC ordered 2004 study critical of concentration destroyed - James R.
• Not just blogs: delicious FGI! - James R.
• "Internet Watch List" of Legislation to be Stopped in 2006 - James R.
• Superintendent of Documents Russell to retire - All
• Digital Preservation Network - Daniel

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

While my intention is to give you weekly updates of my musings at Alaskan Librarian, clearly I don't quite have the schedule down yet.

Still, here's what I've been posting about since September 1st:

• Seldovia has friendly and reasonable gift policy
• Let's discuss failures of nonviolence
• President's 9/11 Anniversary speech
• The other September 11th
• Tip for Spanish students: paginas para ninos
• A winning combination: wild horses & prison inmates
• Gov'ts own reports undercut “fight them thereâ€? meme
• The object of terrorism is terror and we obliged
• January 11, 2008
• September Moon

Hope to see you there. Thanks to pchuck or his plagerizer for visiting and commenting.

After a week hiatus and some interface changes at Free Government Information, New Discussions is back.

This month we bid goodby to August guest blogger Peggy Garvin and say hello to September blogger of the month Kris Kasianovitz. Thanks Peggy and welcome Kris!

Since our last posting of new stories, the volunteers at Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)(FGI) started the following discussions we hope you will join:

• Government Spending Database Bill Approved by Senate - James A.
• Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007 - James R.
• Controversial FRUS volume release -- with a caveat... - James A.
• Report card on government privacy and secrecy - James A.
• Thanks Peggy Garvin and welcome Kris Kasianovitz - James R.
• Not Just Blogs: Issues - Privacy - Shinjoung
• Part 15: Nonlawyer's journey through Title 44: - Prices for sales copies of publications - Daniel
• FTC collects but does not publish Nicotine data - James A.
• The ready.gov saga continues - James R.
• USGS maps ransomed and released into the public domain - James R.
• Apologies for FGI's technical difficulties - James R.
• Congressional Recess and You - Peggy Garvin
• “Google for government spendingâ€? blocked by unknown Senator - James R.

Starting this week, I will will only comment on FDSys activity if it seems significant, or if the main site or blog goes dark for longer than a month. If you don't already subcribe to the FDSys blog at http://fdsys.blogspot.com, you should be.

One of the new features of FGI is being able to see the five most e-mailed items. As of this Monday, the most e-mailed items were:

• “Google for government spendingâ€? blocked by unknown Senator
• GovMine on the Subway
• 50-State Blue Book updated - now includes South Carolina info
• Federal Depository Libraries - GovDocs for Jocks
• Best titles ever!

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

How much further does this Administration have to go to match the previous administration's record on preventing terror? Find out at AlaskanLibrarian.

Since August 21th, I've posted the following items to my blog at AlaskanLibrarian:

• After the Cold War: Living with Lower Defense Spending (summary)
• Go for Flight!
• Isolated paradise - Katmai
• Space News to make your head spin
• If you live in Indiana, get INSPIRED!
• Let the Zodiac Wheel Help Steer You in the Best Direction
• Hang Dissenters? Lincoln Never Said That - Spread the Word!
• Lunar Picture of the Day
• Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Podcast
• Physics for Future Presidents

Please come by and look them over. Maybe even comment on an item or two.

While Best Titles Ever photographer Christine Gray has been busy updating the Flickr Best Titles Ever photo pool, guest blogger Peggy Garvin and the volunteers at Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)(FGI) started the following discussions we hope you will join:

Peggy's posts:

• Two from beSpacific
• Column on Government Documents and the News

Volunteer posts:

• Hardcore Non-Adopters: Another reason for tangible formats - Daniel
• Background on copyright of government documents - Daniel
• What is this thing called "virtual depository"? - James R.
• 9/11 Commission Comic Book - Most Unique Remix Yet - Daniel
• Part 14: Nonlawyer's journey through Title 44: Reprinting of documents required for sale - Daniel
• When putting a report online is NOT Access - Daniel
• All the govt web's a wiki? - James R.

No activity was observed at main FDSys site during the past week. As of this writing, the FDSys Blog has been silent since August 4th, with no new items for over three weeks.

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

During the past week, I've posted the following items to my Alaskan Librarian blog:

• What the President keeps missing
• Tidal range in Douglas
• Veggies with mutant gene!
• Flock of surf scoters
• Visit to DIPAC Hatchery
• A trip to Tracy Arm
• Fighting Terrorism: Law Enforcement vs. Warmaking
• Continue your education with LISRadio
• My Hike Today - August 15, 2006
• Learn art history through a Second Life Library Game

I hope you'll come by and read, view pictures, and maybe comment on a post or two.

This week guest blogger Peggy Garvin and the volunteers at Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)(FGI) started the following discussions we hope you will join:

Peggy's posts:

• GovMine on the Subway
• Open Government Guide - New Edition Posted

Volunteer posts:

• Ontario Documents Repository - Daniel
• FGI getting a facelift - James R.
• RE: HARRIS CORP GETS FDSYS CONTRACT - Paul Schaffer via James A.
• What the U.S. Government No Longer Wants You to Know about Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War - James A.
• Federal court finds warrantless eavesdropping unconstitutional - James R.
• Covers, we need covers! - Daniel
• Not just blogs : Preservation issues - James S.
• Best Titles Ever Flickr group - Now with friendly URL! - Daniel

No activity was observed at either the main main FDSys site or at the FDSys Blog during the past week.

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted.

In light of mdoneil's recent assertions of world peace through annihilation, I thought I'd try one more time to explain how the President's policy of "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here" has been a measurable failure.

I'd prefer comments on AlaskanLibrarian, but I'll check back here Friday to see what discussion , if any is going on here.

Tomorrow, I'll be cruising Tracy Arm (scroll down for images) with my wife and friend from Texas. If you visit Southeast Alaska, it is a journey worth making!

Hi All,

Here is what I've been blogging about since I started my new blog:

• Get the vibe with LibVibe
• Voting records are tricky things
• SIRSI/DYNIX Institute provides easy library CE
• Background on Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse
• Sets on Flickr - Ravens
• Mars Global Surveyor working on the chain gang
• Blue Heron, my second picture uploaded to Flickr
• Two Alaska Library blogs worth reading and emulating
• Book Review: The Only Kayak
• Listen to an Alaska podcast
• New FGI Discussions: August 7, 2006
• Douglas Sunrise, August 2006
• Juneau Douglas City Museum
• OCLC has outdone itself - Open WorldCat
• Looking for a career? Learn what and how much
• Book Review: Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawai'i ...
• Juneau (Douglas) Beach Day
• Welcome to Alaskan Librarian!
• August Stars

If anything intrigues you, come and comment. And consider subscribing to one of the RSS feeds:

• http://alaskanlibrarian.blogspot.com/atom.xml
• http://alaskanlibrarian.blogspot.com/rss.xml

I'm going to try list my blog entries here once a week, so you can see what I'm up to. I won't be posting them as stories like I do "New FGI Discussions", since AlaskanLibrarian is a solo and ecletic blog.