GPO hunts fugitives

fugitives and RSS
The GPO’s going to throw $$$ at some private vendor, when all they really have to do is convince the various agencies to set up an RSS feed. That way, cataloger(s) at GPO could collect those nasty fugitives quickly and easily!

Re:fugitives and RSS
Good points. Here’s my spiel. I’ll be at GODORT in Orlando if you want to talk more.

RSS is an xml technology that can be generated automatically (like for blogs and news sites). It is most often parsed as html, but can also be parsed into different formats (PDF, doc, txt…). That’s not really the point though. I envision something on agency websites that says “what’s new” or some such. When a user follows that link, s/he would get the list of new documents, announcements and the like. This list would be available as an RSS feed as well. It wouldn’t be the actual document, just a link to the document regardless of its format. It would need a real live person on both the agency- and GPO ends. That means there’d have to be buy-in and perhaps a shift in technology use on the agency end. I haven’t checked all agency websites, but the EPA for one already has a newsroom link and a way to sign up for email alerts. It would be fairly easy and painless to create an RSS feed.

I may be wrong, but I think it is GPO’s duty to hold agencies accountable for their legal responsibilities in terms of public information (title 44 and all that). After all, the GPO is working for all citizens and FDLP libraries. GPO would really be able to help the fugitive cause if, in conjunction with individual librarians finding fugitives serendipitously, they would inform and help the agencies create rss feeds. Those fugitives would then go right into GPO’s cataloging workflow. Of course, GPO could scrape agency websites, but that’s like fishing with a seine. You get the good fish, but you also get plenty of rubbish. With RSS, GPO would only get the sushi-grade tuna, and wouldn’t have to deal with the rubber boots and tin cans.

Here’s an RSS primer in case you’re interested: http://www.eevl.ac.uk/rss_primer/

James R. Jacobs