I was pleasantly surprised to see an article about the wonders of the Statistical Abstract in the Jan. 18, 2010 issue of Newsweek, entitled "Suicide, Sex, and SUVs: This book covers them all—and more." The author, Robert J. Samuelson, states:

I confess to being an avid fan of the Statistical Abstract, published annually by the Census Bureau, because it tells so much so quickly. The just-published 2010 edition, as always, bulges with information. For me, the Stat Abstract is often the first go-to source for a story, because it substitutes evidence for speculation.

Of course, in the print version of the magazine's article, the author doesn't mention where you can find this document at your local library and/or Federal Depository Library and he doesn't mention that it is also available online for free via the federal government, and the online article links to a copy of the Statistical Abstract that you can purchase at Amazon. Huh?! I made a comment with the link to the free online version and provided a link to the FDLP Directory for those that want to look at a print copy of the document at their local FDL.

But it is good to see government documents in the news!

Today I attended the "Chat with GPO" OPAL session, which focused on authentication and authentication for FDLP partners.Ted Priebe, GPO's Director of Library Planning & Development (LPD) and Lisa Russell, the Manager of LPD's Content Management unit presented material and answered questions.

Basically, LSCM wants to partner with Federal Depository Libraries and find ways to authenticate content hosted by the FDL partners. The digital signatures of authentication will indicate partnership with the FDL institution and the contact information for that institution. This is great news, especially for those FDLs also interested in hosting digital content in partnership with GPO.

The authentication session is archived on the GPO OPAL site.

The Economist has an online article "The Internet's Librarian" that is also in the March 5th, 2009 print edition.

...the founder of the Internet Archive explains what has driven him for more than a decade. “We are trying to build Alexandria 2.0,” says Mr Kahle with a wide-eyed, boyish grin. Sure, and plenty of people are trying to abolish hunger, too.

It would be easy to dismiss Mr Kahle as an idealistic fruitcake, but for one thing: he has an impressive record when it comes to setting lofty goals and then lining up the people and technology needed to get the job done. “Brewster is a visionary who looks at things differently,” says Carole Moore, chief librarian at the University of Toronto. “He is able to imagine doing things that everyone else thinks are impossible. But then he does them.”

This is probably my favorite quote:

“Come back when you have a warrant,” reads the floor mat underneath his office recliner. It was a gift from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (an activist group on whose board Mr Kahle sits) after Mr Kahle refused to hand over information about one of the Internet Archive’s users to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2007.

I only wish more interviews with Brewster would discuss the plethora of government documents that are in Internet Archive. It's a valuable resource and it keeps growing!

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."

My previous post got me thinking about how other countries are handling government information and/or e-Government service and comparing it to our situation. Then I started reminiscing about my recent travels to London. While I was there, I paid a visit to the Parliament Bookstore and browsed their shelf of "Daily Parliament Publications". It made me smile to see how similar it was to the GPO Bookstore! So when I returned home, I did some investigating online to see how they handle printing of their official government publications and initiatives of e-government services they are working on.

According to the Brookings Institute study, Great Britain's e-Government status ranks 35 out of 197 which I find hard to believe. I would've ranked them much higher, but then again, I'm not an expert and didn't conduct the study. The study praises their government web portal, Direct Gov, which puts "public services all in one place" according to their logo. Their promotional video cracks me up but it makes some great points! In some ways it's quite similar to USA.gov.

I also enjoy looking at their Parliament homepage and the online Bills and Legislation section. To learn more about Great Britain's progress in e-Government, go to governmentontheweb.org and read the status reports by the National Audit Office. The report states that "The Office of the e-Envoy (OeE) should be more active in monitoring and reporting departments' progress in putting services online, their take-up by the public, and the quality and use made of departments' websites" and "Digital certificates are used by some organisations for authentication but they can be costly and time-consuming for citizens and business to obtain. The OeE should work with IT industry to ease this process". Surprisingly, there is little mention of digital preservation of government information but there is a whole page devoted to the issue at the UK National Archive's site.

Also, the nearest British equivalent to GPO would be the Office of Public Sector Information(formerly known as Her Majesty's Stationary Office) and The Stationary Office Not sure if they have a depository library system like we do though...but they mention that "all local authority funded public libraries are eligible to receive a subsidy on official publications. The subsidy is given to facilitate public access to legislation, Parliamentary and Government materials".

Anyway, I just thought that was interesting and wanted to pass the information along. Do you know of any other countries that have spectacular e-Government services? I want to check out what the German government is doing online...thank goodness Ich spreche Deutsch!

While searching at the USGS Publications Warehouse, I noticed one of the available tabs was MIA.

Clicking on this tab brought me to the MIA Publication page, where USGS asked the public's help in tracking down missing publications. Here's their explanation:

Listed below are all the USGS series that are currently or will soon be loaded into the Publication Warehouse. Each series may have missing report numbers or unverifiable citations.

Missing report numbers are gaps in the numbering sequence of a series. We do not know if the report was ever released or if there is a reason why the report number was skipped. These reports may have been cancelled, recalled, or destroyed. Report numbers may have been issued in blocks and some may never have been used.

Unverified citations Unverified citations are citations for any publication where there was some information about the publication available but that information could not be confirmed, the publication itself has not been found, and we are not sure if the publication was actually released. Many of the unverified reports were found referenced by other publications as "in press".

Please visit the site for a list of the missing and help out if you can. You'll be responsible for putting more government information on the web.

Here is a pre-print (not-final version) of a paper with fascinating ideas about distribution of government information:

• Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P and Felten, Edward W, "Government Data and the Invisible Hand" (2008). Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008.

They say that "the federal government must reimagine its role as an information provider" and more specifically, that the next administration should...

...reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility.

While the paper does not address preservation and long term access explicitly, it does suggest that the government should provide a "permanent location" with a permanent URL for "each piece of government data." It also implies (I think) that something like LOCKSS will ensure authenticity and permanent access ("As long as there is vigorous competition between third party sites, we expect most citizens will be able to ?nd a site provider they trust.") I believe that oversimplifies the problem and relies too much on hope and not enough on a social commitment to preservation through public funding of memory organizations.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Joshua Taubere (GovTrack.us) for pointing to this article. He describes and comments on the paper in a post on the Open House Project blog: (Government Data and the Invisible Hand June 6th, 2008 by Joshua Tauberer).

The Internet Archive has many fans here at FGI. If you're not familiar with this project, go check out the slide show at Wired magazine about the mechanics of the Internet Archive Book-Scanning project.

"While Google has made headlines over the last two years for scanning thousands of copyrighted works for its Book Search project, the Internet Archive is quietly digitizing around 1,000 public domain titles every day...the text collection on archive.org is the world's largest online collection of free books, with nearly 350,000 titles and growing."

I wrote about creating a digital government documents library with Google Books a few weeks ago, but the Internet Archive also has a plethora of digitized government publications, as pointed out to me in the comments. Since then, I've been happily "bookmarking" government documents of interest to my patrons and my depository. These bookmarked documents can be shared via a wiki subject guide or a social bookmarking tool of your choice.

However, unlike Google Books, there is no RSS feed for recently bookmarked documents, and your bookmarks are not arranged via topic or title order, but by the date you bookmarked them. Maybe these features could be suggested to them or brought up in the forum? You can also contribute or donate to the Internet Archive as well. Nevertheless, the satisfaction you get from using and marketing this non-profit, actual library should be rewarding enough!

The most recent issue of Dttp:Documents to the People (Winter 2007) had two very good student papers that used government documents in a major way to tell history. I found them engaging and informative and hope you'll find a copy and read them through:

Space Tourism: These Trips Are Out of this World by Alex Bertea on page 19.

Waterfowl and Wetlands: A History of the Federal Ducks Stamp Program by Marcy Carlson on page 23.

Both Bertea and Carlson are library school students. I'm glad to see LIS students researching well and able to communicate their hours of research that made me care about their subject.