Check out my cousin Gabriel Troy's artwork using government documents.

He says about this sculpture, "Federal Paperwork Burden": "I wanted to make these Government documents accessible and inaccessible at the same time. The books are fixed by tension without a back or shelf."

He also took pages from government documents and painted over them: "These pages were cut from documents pertaining to business, agriculture, industry, and domestic issues. I have added structures to house the information."

A blog post by Coby Logen was brought to my attention in the comments from my previous post about Government agencies using Twitter, called "Agencies Block YouTube, Shoot Themselves in the Foot" (great title!). When I was hunting fervently for the NASA Twitter account, I almost jumped to the conclusion that perhaps they never did create one because of this article I stumbled upon, discussing how some Government agencies block access to Twitter on Government computers.

I found a recent news report on GovTech.com entitled, "Don't Block Web 2.0 Access", urging businesses to "resist the temptation" to block their employees' access to Web 2.0 technologies . I wish the author had urged the U.S. Government to resist the temptation too, but perhaps this is implied.

This quote from Coby's blog post sums up the issue nicely:

"It is humorous that the Secretary of Energy invites us to explore the Solar Decathlon MySpace page while he doesn't trust his own employees to do so. And you've got to chuckle a little as you watch the Secretary of the Interior on a field trip to learn about "technology and collaborative science" via the collaborative technology that his department banned. But I hope no one in the Coast Guard or FEMA (both in DHS) would benefit from NOAA's environmental visualization channel on YouTube, because they aren't allowed to watch it."

I wasn't even aware they had closed it, but the Army reopened their Reimer Digital Library to the public a month after it decided to close it behind a firewall.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) filed a FOIA request for all of the library's contents and then posted these documents to the FAS website!

The FAS Secrecy News blog documented the experience on the following blog posts:

Army Blocks Public Access to Digital Library
Army Says It Will Restore Public Access to Online Library
Army Will Restore Access to Online Library Within 2 Weeks
The Reimer Digital Library is Back

Thank goodness for organizations like the FAS who are keeping tabs on and taking a stand on disturbing occurrences like this. Be sure to check out the FAS Project on Government Secrecy website and blog.

It gives me the chills to think how many other resources are "closed" or simply vanish without our knowledge. I've been working as a Government Documents Librarian for a little over a year and I've only read about restricted access...but I dread the day I have to actually experience it. At least I feel more prepared after reading about the FOIA request filing procedures and I know where to get support if I have questions (yes, I'm talking about you, my fellow FGI readers!).

The Directorate of Legal Research at the Library of Congress: A Treasure Hidden Under a Bushel Basket, By Michael Ravnitzky, LLRX.com, November 12, 2006.

Michael Ravnitzky, a Washington, D.C. area attorney and journalist, has published this useful article about this "little known but well-regarded and highly influential research department contained within the Library of Congress." The mission of the Directorate of Legal Research is "to provide high quality, timely, and innovative research, analysis, and reference services on issues of international, and foreign and comparative law."

But obtaining reports from the Directorate is very difficult. No overall list of DLR reports has ever been produced or released and the Directorate itself says that it has no comprehensive list of its own publications. While the Pennyhill Press sells copies of 66 DRL reports, there are evidently many more that it does not sell.

Ravnitzky does an excellent job of digging into the sources that do exist to track down this useful information. Bookmark this article for future reference questions!