I love love love This_American_Life. It's at the top of my podcast list (along with Studio_360 and Radio_Lab). The 3.28.08 episode, "The audacity of government" is particularly interesting from a govt information viewpoint. Ira Glass once again takes the strange but true anomaly, tells it in the first-person humanly and humanely to show the absurdity of, in this case, bureaucracy and governments. You can download it to your favorite audio player or listen online.

Act One. The Prez vs. The Commish.
Ira Glass tells the story of a little-known treaty dispute with far-reaching ramifications for our understanding of executive power. The dispute is between the President and one of his appointees...to the International Boundary Commission with Canada.

Act Two. This American Wife.
This American Life contributor Jack Hitt uncovers a strange practice within the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. If a foreign national marries a U.S. citizen and schedules an interview for a green card, but the U.S. citizen dies before the interview takes place, the foreign national is scheduled for deportation with no appeal—even if the couple has children who are U.S. citizens.

Act Three. 44.
Ira Glass interviews Charlie Savage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Boston Globe, who's written a book called Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy about the ways the Bush Administration claims executive powers that other presidents haven't claimed.

A recent SirsiDynix Institute presentation by Michael Sauers and Rhonda Trueman titled The Info Island Project on Second Life is a hour long overview of Second Life in general and library/university activities in Second Life in particular.

I was particularly surprised to find that the Kansas State Library has a Second Life branch. I'll try to check it out sometime this week and get back to you if there is a govdocs angle.

This is a great presentation if you want to know what all the fuss is about. The talk even has a set of "reality checks" to help you decide whether you want to check out Second Life.

If I haven't mentioned it before, I have to admit that I haven't been active in Second Life for quite awhile and only just recently reinstalled the software. But I'm glad to see people with more time than I exploring and using these kinds of technology.

This is the first post of what we're calling "Lunchtime listens." The idea being that there's LOTS of good audio/video out there of direct or peripheral interest to the documents community. We're going to post them to FGI to make them more easily findable and give y'all something to do during your lunch breaks (alone or in groups as a brownbag viewing session :-) ) besides staring out the window (not that there's anything *wrong* with staring out the window!). If you come across A/V that you'd like to share with FGI readers, please email us at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info.

And without further adieu, Check out the video from the 2007 code4lib conference in Athens, GA. Day one is online including keynote by Karen Schneider, Emily Lynema's talk on "free the data," breakout sessions and lightning talks. Their plan is to put video from the entire conference online. I know several people who went to Code4lib and were completely blown away by the energy, discussions, and community!

Code4lib is a "group for folks who are interested in the convergence of computers and library/information science." In other words, they're a growing community of library hackers, developers, open source advocates and fellow travelers who have an active listserv, irc channel etc for communication and support.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!! Here's a treat for you:

On February 26, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., was invited to give a sermon for Friday evening Shabbat services at Temple Israel of Hollywood. Unless you listened to this tape in the Temple's archives, or were there that night, this speech hasn't been heard since. Well now the Jewish Journal has uncovered this rare speech and made it available via its Web site (and below). Kevin Roderick of LAObserved adds some context (via an unnamed Proquest database)

King was 36 years old at the time. Selma was heating up that month, and Malcolm X had just been killed in New York, so King arrived in Los Angeles under heavy guard. It was his first trip west since winning the Nobel Peace Prize. King dined with prominent Westsiders at the Beverly Hills home of Dr. Irving Lichtenstein and attended a screening of "The Greatest Story Ever Told" at the Cinerama Dome (now the Arclight.) The theater crawled with police because of death threats and the seizure of stolen dynamite connected to a racist group. King also spoke at the World Affairs Council at the Hollywood Palladium. The Times reported that an "overflow crowd" of 1,500 at the temple gave King a warm welcome. That Sunday he returned to Selma.

• Part I, 27 min., MP3, 3.1MB
• Part II, 14 min., MP3, 1.6MB

And for an added bonus, here's MLK's "I have a dream" speech!

Two important aspects to the preservation of no-fee fully functional access to government information are raising people's awareness of government information and convincing them of the value of having government information. Cash-strapped libraries and librarians have new tools to make these things happen. Libraries such as Fulton County Public Library are using tools like YouTube to put a new face on the library. It is our belief that depositories and their friends can do the same for the somewhat mysterious Federal Depository Library Program. So we'd like to pull together the videos and sound spots (Internet & Radio) you've been doing or will do shortly, along with some resources for producing these spots. Please send us links to video or audio spots that either promote government information in general or Federal Depository Libraries in particular. Promotional Spots Audio Video

• Air Force at Your Library (3 min) - US Air Force documents and other resources set to the official Air Force Song. Hosted by Internet Archive, Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network, YouTube and MySpace.
• Army at Your Library (1 min) - Hosted at Internet Archive, Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network, YouTube and MySpace. Selection of Army resources set to Army Song. First Daniel video to employ four seconds per title.
• Ask the Government! - Approximately one minute PSA video produced by usa.gov to extol the virtues of the information portal. Posted 8/22/2007.
• Best Titles Ever! The Video - 13 titles from FGI's Best Titles Ever page set to electronic music.
• Civil Rights Movement in the United States by Sarah Gewirtz - 3:34 minute video posted 4/14/2007 highlighting civil rights reports set to a MLK speech.
• Communism in the United States by Sarah Gewirtz - 2:37 video of communism related documents issued by various federal agencies in the 1940s and 50s set to a Joseph McCarthy speech. Brillant! Posted August 22, 2007.
• Documents on Parade: Criminal Edition - Web sites and Dept of Justice documents set to music familiar to boomers.
• FDLP - The Final Frontier (Approx 2 min) - Space. The final frontier. Available at your Federal Depository Library since the dawn of the space age. Enjoy these spacy treats and then trek on over to http://catalog.gpo.gov for more great NASA resources. Music by Victor Stellar courtesy of Podsafe Audio. Posted 2/10/2007
• Let's Cook with Government Documents! (2:06, posted 2/9/2008) - Another brillant video by Sarah Gewirtz highlighting recipes for all walks of live and cuisines from government documents.
• Marines Get Around! (approximately 1 min, posted 12/24/2006) - Roundup of documents showing how active Marines have been in our nation's history. Posted to CHBN, YouTube, and MySpace.
• Navy at Your Library (39 seconds) - Hosted at the Internet Archive, YouTube and the Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network.
• Shield of Freedom (2 min, posted 12/30/2006) - USCG documents set to the tune Coast Guard's Chief Petty Officers March.
• You and Your USA - (01:48)A walk through civics pamphlets given to our soldiers and sailors in the 1950s. Produced by Sarah Gewirtz of St. John's University/College of St. Benedict. For more information about this video, please contact Sarah Gewirtz at SGEWIRTZ "AT" CSBSJU.EDU. Posted 1/15/2007.

Production Resources

• Visual Resources
  • Best Titles Ever Flickr Pool - Cover photos of weird and wacky titles issued from the Federal Government
  • Govdoc Covers Flickr Pool - Pictures of web sites, document covers and movie credit slides for reuse in others' videos. Also has a discussion forum.
  • FDLP Graphics - Official graphics from the Federal Depository Library Program.
• Audio Resources
  • On Classical Midi - Creative Commons midi files from Bach to Zimmer.
  • PodSafe Audio - - Modern music in many genres. May be reused under Creative Commons Licensing.
  • Podsafe Music Network - Modern music in many genres. May be reused under Creative Commons Licensing.
  • Public Domain MP3s from 1901-1920 - Public domain.
  • Internet Archive Open Source Audio project - May be reused under Creative Commons Licensing.
• Production Software, Tips and Tutorials
  • University of Wisconsin streaming video creation page - "tips, techniques and resources to help you get started designing and producing streaming media." Includes specific guidance on creating narrated slide shows. Thanks to Amy M Ostrom for suggesting this resource.
• Places to post video - All sites below offer FREE hosting
  • Google Video - Probably the best site to avoid being filtered out in schools and libraries.
  • YouTube - currently most popular video site on the Internet.
  • MySpace - Most likely to get filtered by schools and libraries, special target of Congress, but hey, it has a lot of young people. Need free profile to post your videos.
  • Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network
  • Internet Archive - sign up for free "library card"