Wow, today is a convergence day of holidays! Not only do we have May Day, International Workers' Day, and Loyalty Day, but now there's also RSS Day! RSS (aka "rich site summary") is the little XML file that could; that is, RSS can help librarians and readers in general collect and read the stuff in which they're interested. See the video below for a really good, straighforward description of RSS. And don't forget to register for the GODORT preconference at ALA Annual '08 entitled, Docs2.0: emerging web technologies for the government documents community. FGI will be there with Jim Jacobs presenting about RSS and James Jacobs moderating and presenting about del.icio.us.

We at FGI are trying to get the word out about the GODORT pre-conference "Docs2.0: emerging web technologies for the government documents community" at ALA Annual conference in Anaheim, Friday, June 27, 2008, 9:00am – 12:30. Registration is now open and seating is limited to 35. So do it now! (FGI is bringing speakers and refreshments!!). For further questions, email James at jrjacobs AT stanford DOT edu.

This program will highlight tools like wikis, blogs, social tagging, custom search engines, flickr and other Web services, and will focus on how these new technologies can enhance library services. Speakers will highlight projects and give hands-on training to set up and administer these services. Attendees will leave the program with knowledge of tools to help them collaborate, build Web collections, and better connect with their users, as well as having real examples of projects to use as templates. Transportation will be provided from the Convention Center.

Speakers:

• James R. Jacobs, International Documents Librarian, Stanford University. "Social tagging for building subject portals"
• Amy West, Interim Head, Government Publications Library, University of Minnesota. "Integration of 2.0 tools like Instant Messaging (IM) for reference"
• Jim A. Jacobs, Data Librarian Emeritus, University of California at San Diego. "RSS for documents librarians"
• David Oldenkamp, International Studies Librarian, Indiana University. "Custom search engines with GoogleCSE"
• John Wonderlich, Program Director, Sunlight Foundation. (keynote) Open House Project

Tickets:
Advance: GODORT Member: $100; ALA Member: $125; Non-Member: $175; Student/ Retired Member: $75.
Onsite: GODORT Member: $125; ALA Member: $150; Non-Member: $200; Student/Retired Member: $100
Event Code: GO2

Go here to register. You'll be glad you did!!

While updating my Twitter account recently, I noticed that womenshealth.gov created their own Twitter account and added me to their network. Kudos to the government agencies who are jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and getting their information out to the community!

That got me wondering what other government agencies have created Twitter accounts, so I did some hunting and found a previous FGI blog entry and an article from CNET News stating that NASA wants to tackle Web 2.0 initiatives in order to "save itself from turning into a dinosaur in the Internet age". It took awhile, but I finally found the official NASA Twitter account, which I stumbled upon via the NASA Edge website and their Twitter page.

The U.S. Department of State created a dipnote Twitter account for alerting users to new posts on their DIPNOTE Blog.

Many non-profit organizations, such as the American Red Cross, created "tweet" alerts during the recent tornado outbreaks in the south.

The Sunlight Foundation is "tweeting" public laws as they are signed.

And of course, FGI is on Twitter as well!

Even Presidential candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton update their Twitter accounts. I can't find one for John McCain, but it looks like Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul joined the Twitter bandwagon too.

If you find any other government agencies using Twitter, please post a comment to let everyone know.

twitter.com/HouseFloor has live updates from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, updated every five minutes with any new information from:
clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor.html .

This is in beta testing mode...

During this past spring, I had the pleasure to teach a Government Information Sources course at San Jose State University.  The course was taught solely online via BlackBoard, which is a great tool for many basic class maintenance tasks, such as grading and posting assignments, however because it is proprietary, BlackBoard creates a silo of course data that doesn't readily support open and participatory modes of communication that are associated with Web2.0.  Subsequently, I decided to use BlackBoard for the basic functions (grading & assignments) and use Web 2.0 tools to support course interaction, communication, and content creation.  What follows is a review of the tools I used in the course and how the class used them. I've also included the links to the resources.

Social Bookmarking

Connotea is an excellent tagging tool because it does some things other social bookmarking tools don't. First, it supports SFX & openurls, which means it integrates with your library's link resolver.  It also has a group feature that allows collecting, browsing and viewing multiple users' library of tagged bookmarks at once.  Lastly, each user or group can create a wiki (called a 'community page') that is attached to the user or group's  bookmarks.   Other major social bookmarking tools don't have these features and, collectively, they are definitely a big sell for someone teaching a course.

In class, I used the Connotea wiki extensively as the class syllabus and weekly course notes.  I also tagged course materials with a unique week tag ( e.g. libr221-wk1) so students could filter on each week's materials easily. Additionally, as part of a class assignment, each student was required to bookmark and annotate a number of government information resources based on certain criteria.  Since Connotea provides a RSS feed for each account, a feed for each student could be set up in  my Google Reader account, so I could easily monitor (and grade) their tagging.

• Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/
• Course Group on Connotea (libr221): http://www.connotea.org/group/libr221
• Course wiki on Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/wiki/Group:libr221

Mapping

MapBuilder is a cool mapping too that uses both Google & Yahoo maps APIs. Users can create and share a map, add locations to the map, and annotate those locations with textual descriptions or images.  As part of the first assignment, students were asked to map their location along with their local FDLP libraries.  Google maps now offers a similar product called 'My maps', which offers many of the same features. 

• MapBuilder: http://www.mapbuilder.net/ 
• Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/ (Google MyMaps now offers most of the functionality of MapBuilder minus the collaborative piece.)

Video

I created a course introduction with a very inexpensive webcam and added it to my YouTube account. Additionally, I used Camtasia to create screen casts of government information resources or lectures and shared these with the class by uploading them to my web site.  I found this to be a very easy and effective means of one-way communication with the class.

For augmenting existing course material or for finding interesting 'retro' education resources, the Prelinger Archive, a public domain collection of over 60,000 ephemera videos (government & corporate PSA from the 50s, etc.), is a great teaching resource. I tried to select material that corresponded with the class topic, but sometimes chose material for just levity value. For a sampling of the
titles I used in the course, check out  The Powers of Congress, Japanese Relocation, and  Meet Your Federal Government.  When time permitted, I would actually download the videos from the Internet Archive and then upload them back into YouTube. The benefit of getting it in YouTube was to take advantage of their superior video compression and the provided code that nicely embeds the videos in a course web page.

• My YouTube account: http://www.youtube.com/user/jt14den
• Prelinger Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

Google Apps

Google Groups, a mail list service, provides a nice web interface and archive to the basic listserv. I created a google group for the class primarily because the email and discussion features in BlackBoard have big usability issues. A nice added feature in Google Groups is that it allows you to add web pages to the group, which is great for adding course information or a syllabus.

Google Documents and Spreadsheets is a browser based productivity suite that also allows for document sharing and collaboration.  In the course, we used this site primarily for the final class paper.  I let students submit their papers in whatever format they wanted (all students chose Word). I then uploaded, graded and shared my comments with them in Google Docs.  This allowed me to provide in-line comments and feed back on their papers in a convenient way. 

• Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/
• Google Documents & Spreadsheets: http://docs.google.com
  

Feed Aggregator

I used Planet Venus  to aggregate multiple blogs or feeds into one interface. In our class instance of Planet Venus -- called GovInfo Planet -- we pulled in other govinfo blogs (FGI, DocuTicker, etc.) and related news along with our own course blog entries and Connotea lagging.  This is a nice approach if you want to aggregate a number of information sources for a course. It also supports filters.

• Planet Venus: http://intertwingly.net/code/venus/ (requires server
  installation)
• GovInfo Planet: http://www.romanuslonginus.com/venus/govinfo/

IM

Meebo is a popular free web-based multi-protocol chat service. It also provides nice chat widgets that can be embedded into a web page.  for the course, I embedded a meebome chat widget into the SJSU faculty page and on the course syllabus page in BlackBoard.  This allows access for those students who don't have an IM account on one of the services.

• Meebo: http://wwwl.meebo.com/
• Info on meebome chat widget: http://www.meebome.com/learnmore.html

Easy Forms and Polls

Wufoo makes it very easy to produce and distribute webforms. I used it to poll the class a several times during the semester. It is very convenient since you can embed the form in a web page (or blog entry) and have the results pop into Wufoo.

• Wufoo: http://wufoo.com/

Social Software

Fantasy Congress takes the very popular Fantasy Football game and applies it to politics.  Users can select teams of members of congress and join a 'league'.  The application also allows users to trade members.  In my course, I required students to select a team and join the course league. The great aspect of this application is that it pulls in information on current legislation.  Users can rate bills and explore educational information about how Congress works.  However, this application didn't really take off with the class (or the teacher).  I think it is because there is a big difference between trying to assess and select the 'best athlete" from selecting politicians.  For one, I bet most people know their representatives and a few big names, but beyond that most members of congress are unknown.  Secondly, there is a bit of a cringe factor applying the sports analogy to politics.  Maybe it comes
too close to the truth about perceived cynical aspects of politics. 

• Fantasy Congress: http://www.fantasycongress.com/
  

-- Tim Dennis

Panelist notes politics of putting agency information online, by Aliya Sternstein, National Journal's Technology Daily, June 19, 2007 PM edition. (reprinted in GovExec and available without subscription)

Patrice McDermott, executive director of OpenTheGovernment.org, chose to participate in a Tuesday workshop sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Web Science Research Initiative because she wants to convince techies that the government's underutilization of the Internet has a lot to do with politics.

...She said that at the workshop, attendees told her that government agencies just need to make their databases available on the Internet, and others in the online community will reformat the contents so the information is compatible with new technologies. "Others will create the [topical] tags" that allow the content to be integrated into advanced Web technologies, they said.

McDermott's reply: The policy is already there to do that. "It's been there for years. It's just not being enforced. It takes leadership from the White House."

Web2.0 beautifully explained. Mashups and remixes, XML, repurposing information, connecting people to ideas, images, data etc. This is exactly why we here at FGI are so passionate about demanding digital govt information that is freely accessible, not tied down by DRM, and is preserved in a distributed fashion and in open, non-proprietary formats. Let us know what you think in the comments!