LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Jackson Clarion Ledger - Jackson,MS - Without any official guidance from the state, some local governments are destroying untold numbers of public documents by hitting the "delete" key.

Presidential records act passes Congress: A bill aimed at creating a public-private grant matching program for the preservation of presidential papers passed Congress last weekend.

I scanned a government report called Failed promises : insurance company insolvencies (Report by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce). I thought others might have patrons that are looking for this document. You can download the PDF here.

Note: Report is from Nov. 1990 and deals with previous insurance company failures. People are looking for this document because it addresses what happened in the past.

Someone sent over a link to This Federal Register Notice from the EPA: SUMMARY: EPA is enhancing access to library services for the public and Agency staff. EPA will open previously closed libraries in its National Library Network, with walk-in access for the public and EPA staff. Other library locations will expand staffing, operating hours, or services. This notice provides information regarding how members of the public can access the libraries and services beginning September 30, 2008.

The National Archives and Records Administration has established a workable plan to develop an information system to preserve electronic records, but the agency should consider a way to manage the possibility that it will not be able to process records from the Bush administration in time for the January 2009 transition, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Friday.

A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction yesterday ordering Vice President Cheney and the National Archives to preserve all of his official records.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's order came in response to a lawsuit filed this month by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group, joined by several historians and open-government advocates, warned that Cheney might destroy or withhold important documents as the Bush administration winds down if he interprets the Presidential Records Act of 1978 as applying to only some of his official papers.

The ResourceShelf Notes Edgar, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s electronic database of corporate filings, will be replaced by a new system dubbed IDEA, or Interactive Data Electronic Applications, the SEC announced Tuesday.

Data Lost in Rush to Close Libraries: Facing massive budget cuts, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2006 decided to close some of its physical research libraries and make the data available online instead. However, in its haste to do so, the EPA may have lost some files, according to government auditors. Testifying before the House Science and Technology Committee's Investigations and Oversight Committee, Government Accountability Office (GAO) auditors said the EPAs push to digitize its libraries led to hasty closings, which lawmakers criticized.

How does the government manage data that was born digital, meaning it was created in electronic form? Organizations as varied as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the White House, open-government groups, and House members have recently offered recommendations for managing the growing volume of such information. Their approaches underscore the differences of opinion about how much responsibility and power various entities should have over future federal recordkeeping.

News For The EPA Libraries... Beginning in 2006, EPA management began a stealth campaign of closing its regional and technical libraries, ultimately eliminating library service in 23 states and scattering invaluable scientific collections. In December 2007, Congress ordered EPA to re-open the libraries, but by this spring it became apparent that EPA would only grudgingly comply, restoring only minimal holdings in small spaces, in some cases no larger than the lavatories in the buildings they occupied.