LISNews: Librarian News

Washingto Technology has an article on a new report from the National Archives and Records Administration. “We need to streamline the multiple, inefficient and, at times, ineffective independent agency reviews of the same material,†according to the report, which was published by NARA’s Information Security Oversight Office.

There are an increasing numbers of documents being classified, primarily for counterterrorism activities and critical infrastructure protection, at the Homeland Security and Justice departments.

The total number of classifications dropped to 14.2 million in fiscal 2005, a decrease from 15.6 million the year before. That reversed an upward trend that had been occurring since 2001, with 8.7 million classifications that year. In 2002 there were 11.3 million, in 2003 14.2 million, and in 2004 15.6 million.

This week was a light one for our guest blogger Cindi Wolff and our regular Free Government Information volunteers, but we still managed to post the following stories: Cindi's postings:

• OA Debates Among OA Advocates
• NLM Link Out

Volunteer postings:

• FDSys Blog - RIP? - Daniel
• All Title 44 musings in one place - Daniel
• Pt. 5: Nonlawyer's journey through Title 44: Distribution to depositories - Daniel

As always we hope that you will stop by and join our conversation. If you haven't already, please vote in our poll on archiving gov't e-docs at http://freegovinfo.info/node/476. We've got 87 votes and nine comments, and we'd like to see all 229 depository libraries who gave a positive response to question 65 to weigh in. No FDSys related activity has been observed either at the main FDSys site 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.

The Hartford Courant Says EPA libraries are a mother lode of scientific and regulatory information. Used by developers as well as federal, state and local regulators, they hold information about emerging environmental technologies, the health risks associated with hazardous chemicals, hazardous waste sites, water quality data and regional ecosystems. Although many of the documents can be found elsewhere, locating them will become harder, more time-consuming and more costly.

Information is essential to smart regulation and good development. The Bush administration's proposed budget cut is shortsighted and poorly conceived. Ultimately, it would hamper environmental protection, not help it.

This week found our guest blogger Cindi Wolff and our regular Free Government Information volunteers quite busy with the following stories: Cindi's postings:

• Open Access Legislation and Some Other Health Sciences Sources
• Open Access: It's Not Just PubMed

Volunteer postings:

• Pt. 3: Non-Lawyer's Journey through Title 44: Distribution, Costs of Printing and Binding - Daniel
• FDLP in the past tense - James A.
• Pt. 2: Non-Lawyer's Journey through Title 44: Availability of Government publications - Daniel
• More legislation that would restrict online access in libraries - James A.
• Why DRM is bad for Government Information - James A.
• More on Network Neutrality - James A.
• A non-lawyer's journey through USC Title 44 - The law that guarantees information Pt. 1 - Daniel
• New FGI poll - James R.

As always we hope that you will stop by and join our conversation. As of May 12, 2006, a couple of users have emailed to say that they're having problems posting comments. We are looking into this problem. If you experience a problem posting a comment, please email us at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info and we'll post the comment for you. Don't let our technical difficulties keep you from contributing to the discussions. If you haven't already, please vote in our poll on archiving gov't e-docs at http://freegovinfo.info/node/476 No FDSys related activity has been observed either at the main FDSys site or at their blog, which has been dormant since January. If someone from GPO knows whether the blog at http://fdsys.blogspot .com has been officially abandoned, I'd appreciate hearing from them. 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.