Radreffies' blogs

Steven Aftergood reports that The Government Printing Office is blocking public access to some previously released records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. PURLs may not link to the documents that the catalog record describes.

• GPO Suspends Public Access to Some NASA Records, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (May 16, 2013).

  The Government Printing Office is blocking public access to some previously released records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, while the records are reviewed to see if they contain export-controlled information. The move follows the controversial disabling and partial restoration of the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) (NASA Technical Report Database Partly Back Online, Secrecy News, May 9.)

• NASA Technical Reports Server Has Limited Content Availability Until Further Notice, FDLP (May 16, 2013).

  Affected classes are:

  NAS 1.15: 0830-D
  NAS 1.26: 0830-H-14
  NAS 1.2/2-2: 0830-H-26
  NAS 1.60: 0830-H-15

See also our earlier comment on this issue.

author:  Guy, Rosa

West Indian immigrant Phyllisia Cathy has been plopped down in Harlem with her proud, larger-than-life father, dying mother and pretty, compliant sister.

reviewdate:  May 18 2013

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author:  King, Lily

Jeune fille is French for nanny. 19-year-old Rosie is spending a year in France escaping her life by taking care of three kids with an exacting mom and a physician dad on a houseboat in Paris. Ooh la la. While the storyline might make this book sound like chick lit, it's really not.

Quotations: 

Today I thought of the first time I realized you [older sister] were not me. I was five and you were setting that red alarm clock and I watched you and I knew that you weren't having the same thoughts. That you wouldn't dream the same thing that night. And that we would die at different times. And that you might die first. It was the first time I ever felt alone. I feel that all the time now.

Three rows down [at a bullfight in Spain], Americans were pushing their way through, boys in backwards baseball caps and T-shirts advertising universities or pubs in other countries. They were boys with wide shoulders and loud laughs, boys oblivious to their foreignness, their wealth, and their freedoms. I felt a sudden compassionate, maternal contempt for them.

reviewdate:  May 15 2013 isn:  0-87113-754-2

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The past two weeks have been active ones at the State Agency Databases Project (http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases). For a full listing of activity during the past two weeks, see http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d. Here are some highlights:

DATABASES ADDED

ALASKA (Daniel Cornwall)

Alaska Geologic Data Index - From the website: “AGDI includes information about industry reports and maps, field notes, drill logs, and other unpublished geology-related data. The archived data are held and controlled by government agencies, institutions, and private companies; the index points to the physical location of the data, provides a basic description, and contains information on accessibility.” Data can be selected by clicking on a map or conducting a search. The "more options" search allows one to search by keyword, author, title, project, year range and location. The search may be limited by data source, data set type, themes or commodity.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (Susan Paterson)

Legislation Information Management System - The Council’s Legislative Information Management System (LIMS) is available for the public to view the status of a Bill or Resolution, Legislation by Council Member, Legislation by Committee, Text of a Bill or Resolution, A Council Member’s Voting Record, Contract Summary, Legislation by Co-Sponsor, A List of Legislation, Text of an Act, Legislative Meeting Agendas. You can search for legislation by keyword.

MARYLAND (Siu Min Yu)

Attorney Listing - Search for attorneys admitted to practice in the State of Maryland by name.

MISSOURI (Annie Moots)

All Contributions & Expenditures Search - Search for campaign contributions, expenditures, and committee to committee contributions multiple ways back to 2002.

WEBINAR USING PROJECT PAGE POSTED

This past week project volunteers were happy to see a presentation on Alaska agency databases and other information resources that relied heavily on our Alaska project page. The webinar is titled Databases By Alaskans and the archived version is viewable at http://library.alaska.gov/is/video/databasesbyalaskans2013.html.

Not Your Grandfather's Web Any More, a project briefing from the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) spring 2013 member meeting by David S.H. Rosenthal of LOCKSS and Kris Carpenter Negulescu of the Internet Archive, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/uIqU2Cr2Kjs
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/66175352

What are the practical and theoretical archiving problems posed by the newer parts of the Web, like social media, scientific workflows and Web services? How can the challenges of these latest developments be met, if at all? This presentation reports on the results of a workshop held at the Library of Congress under the auspices of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, where practitioners of Web archiving reviewed these questions. More information about this talk, including presentation slides, is available on the CNI site.

The webcast for public comments on Public Access to Federally Supported R&D is happening today and tomorrow (14 – 15 May 2013), starting at 9:00 a.m EST. Here's the agenda and already-submitted written statements. In a few days, the video archives from the webcast will also be available (same URL), and eventually the full transcript of the meeting will also be found on the same page. Check it out. It's heartening to hear so many scholars, academics, policy wonks etc coming out in support of open access to scientific information and data.

This message is just a reminder that the Public Comment meeting on Public Access to Federally Supported R&D: Publications will occur tomorrow and Wednesday (14 – 15 May 2013), starting at 9:00 a.m. The agenda is attached.

The link to the webcast is on the front page of the agenda, but here it is again: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/DBASSE_083052

If you are interested, the written statements that were received as part of the registration process can also be downloaded from a link on that page. In a few days, the video archives from the webcast will also be available (same URL), and eventually the full transcript of the meeting will also be found on the same page.

We look forward to seeing all of you who will attend in person, and hope that those who watch by webcast find it a useful meeting.

Meredith
Meredith A Lane, PhD
Director, Board on Environmental Change and Society
Project Director, Committee on Population
Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
National Research Council
Keck Center, 500 Fifth St NW, Washington, DC 20001

Over the last several years, the US Census (including the American Community Survey and the Statistical Abstract of the US) have been under attack -- see "Fear, uncertainty, or doubt? Why the Census and ACS are critical to a well-functioning democracy" and "OMB Watch on Census Cuts" for more context. Budgets and funding, only part of the problem mind you, have been the cause of closing down the Census Bureau's Statistical Compendia unit and ostensibly of the Census Bureau's recent plan to drop the question on "number of times married" from the American Community Survey (see the single sentence at the end of an otherwise harmless Federal Register notice of request for comments).

Social conservatives and others on the right/libertarian political spectrum have long worried about -- if not outright feared -- the collection of demographic and other statistics by the US government. So it should come as no surprise that there's a new bill working its way through the US House of Representatives. H.R. 1638: Census Reform Act of 2013: The bill would eliminate the Census of Agriculture, the Economic Census, Census of Government, any mid-decade Census surveys, and any survey (including the American Community Survey) using survey sampling that does not tie directly to the decennial census of population. The Bill was introduced in the House by Jeff Duncan of South Carolina.

Great news: now there's a digital archive to access the historically important "Freedom Summer", a seminal moment in the US civil rights movement. The Wisconsin Historical Society has just released the 1964 Freedom Summer Project. Not only are there 25,000 manuscripts and key documents, but there are finding aids to help users access the information and instructional materials for teachers.

Dear colleagues,

We've just released an online collection of 25,000 manuscripts related to the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project. It's free and open to anyone for non-profit educational purposes at

www.wisconsinhistory.org/freedomsummer

Besides thousands of archival documents from COFO, CORE and SNCC and papers from dozens of individual activists, the site includes a downloadable Powerpoint about Freedom Summer and a PDF Sourcebook of key documents for teachers.

I'd be grateful if you'd forward this note to colleagues and educators who might be interested. As the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer approaches, we want teachers, students, historians, librarians, museum curators, the media, and anyone else to use these primary sources in their 50th anniversary programming.

We'll be adding a few thousand more pages this year, so please "like" us on Facebook and follow along:

www.facebook.com/WHS.Freedom.Summer.collection?fref=ts

Best wishes,

Michael Edmonds

Deputy Director,
Library-Archives Division
Wisconsin Historical Society

Greenbelt 50k might be a week after Bear Mountain 50 Miler, but it's only a short trip away, AND not too far from my parents (Okay, so it's probably not THAT close, not that much further than to my house....), why not? Good trails, fun times, let's do it!

I got out there and the skies were grey and we thought, "Maybe the weather will hold out?" They were predicting rain. Lots of it. And just before we started, it began to rain. Yuck. Rain=chafing. And grossness.

I was wondering as I ran, at how I smelled so hideous. Why did the rain make me smell horrendous? UGH.

The course is a lot of fun - you do a short out and back on roads - about 2 miles. Then you do two out-and-backs on this nice trail. It's fairly runnable - lots of short steep ups and downs, lots of roots, some road crossings (including the annoyingly busy Jericho Turnpike), but pretty, single-track, lots of flowers in bloom, green bushes everywhere, and a nice view of the Sound when you get far enough north. Three aid stations, fairly basic, but with those delicious butter cookies you get in those blue tins. YUM! I'll run faster with those in my belly!

I started out pretty hard, 8 and 9 minute miles, feeling good. The hills can kick your butt, and with the rain, some were a lot slicker than I would've liked. I got lost twice early on, losing a few minutes, but what's a few minutes in a 50k? A few extra minutes FUN!

I was pouring sweat in the gross rain and humidity and feeling pretty disgusting. I kept my food intake low - I had 5 gels and a bunch of those delicious butter cookies and a small bit of watermelon. 

When I went out for my second out-and-back, it began POURING. Raining cats and dogs and rhinos, as I like to say. I joked with passing runners, "I forgot my lifevest," and "Nice day for a swim." It was miserable and I grew cold and worried I'd get cold. But then it stopped and everything began to be a lot better.

Crossing Jericho Turnpike SUCKED. I ended up dancing as I ran across, partially bc I had Madonna's "Hung Up" in my head, partially because I was hoping if I danced, the cars might stop.

They did.

The last few miles I hammered it. I WANTED TO BE DONE. I ran on the roads to get to the finish, pushing like a maniac. There were cars, but I was finishing.

And then I did...across the finish line. Quite a bit slower than last year, but my PF was hurting a lot, and my asthma sucked every uphill....so keeping a fast pace was really hard. Or as fast as I wanted.

I baby-wiped it up, and put deodorant and lotion and a change of clothes on. And then I really lived it up Long Island-style...I spent the afternoon shopping w my mom (who was there to cheer me on at my finish) at a giant mall named after a poet. FUN!

author:  Trujillo, Carla

Marci Cruz has an abusive father, a mother who is blinded by love for her husband, and wants to be a boy so she can love girls. The story can be hard to read sometimes because Eddie Cruz really is a champion cabrón (there's a ton of Spanish in the book), but seeing 11-year-old Marci and her seven-year-old sister Corin fight back is satisfying.

reviewdate:  May 11 2013 isn:  978-188068494-8

author:  Graham, Lauren

Like with First Spring Grass Fire, you wonder of Someday, Someday, Maybe how much of the story of a young aspiring actor in NYC written by a former young aspiring actor in NYC is autobiographical. While reading it I was thinking that it's possible that fictionalizing one's life might make it easier to tell the emotional truth.

Quotations: 

I grasp onto the nearby silver pole, steadying myself as the train lurches along, my hand slipping on the smooth surface, vying for a safe position along with half a dozen other hands. Today, everything about New York leaves me feeling like I'm competing for space, and just barely hanging on.

reviewdate:  May 8 2013 isn:  978-0-345-53274-9

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author:  Spoon, Rae

Spoon's book is listed as a novel but reads like a memoir, told in nonlinear episodes with the protagonist sharing the author's name. I suppose I shouldn't care about the distinction, but I can't help wanting to know what I'm reading. Regardless, one should treasure the rare opportunity to read about the real or fictionalized life of a genderqueer child growing up in a religious family in the Canadian prairies.

reviewdate:  May 5 2013 isn:  978-1-55152-480-1

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Two new databases were released this week. Both are worth checking out!

• Nonprofit Explorer. ProPublica.

  In April 2013, the IRS released structured data culled from the tax returns of almost 616,000 tax-exempt organizations. We've made this into a searchable database where you can look up organizations and see details like their executive compensation, revenue and expenses, as well as download their tax filings going back as far as 2001.

• Medicare Provider Charge Data. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

  The data provided here include hospital-specific charges for the more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals that receive Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) payments for the top 100 most frequently billed discharges, paid under Medicare based on a rate per discharge using the Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2011. These DRGs represent almost 7 million discharges or 60 percent of total Medicare IPPS discharges.

  More links at InfoDocket.

Steven Aftergood reports that some reports have been restored to the NASA Technical Reports Server:

• NASA Technical Report Database Partly Back Online by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (May 9, 2013).

  ...many of the NTRS records have been restored, including open literature publications, magazine articles, and other documents that were already in the public domain in any case. But hundreds of thousands of others still await a formal export control review to certify them for public release.

See also: When we depend on pointing instead of collecting.

Update: We've added more links to this post with more official links and more commentary. Hat tip to Gary at InfoDocket and The Open House Project.

The White House has issued a new Executive Order on open data:

• Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information. EXECUTIVE ORDER, May 09, 2013.

  To promote continued job growth, Government efficiency, and the social good that can be gained from opening Government data to the public, the default state of new and modernized Government information resources shall be open and machine readable. Government information shall be managed as an asset throughout its life cycle to promote interoperability and openness, and, wherever possible and legally permissible, to ensure that data are released to the public in ways that make the data easy to find, accessible, and usable. In making this the new default state, executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall ensure that they safeguard individual privacy, confidentiality, and national security. [emphasis added]

• Open Data Policy-Managing Information as an Asset. Memorandum For The Heads Of Executive Departments And Agencies M-13-13, Office of Management and Budget (May 9, 2013). [pdf. 12 pages]
   
• Landmark Steps to Liberate Open Data. by Todd Park and Steve VanRoekel White House Blog (May 09, 2013)

John Wonderlich at the Sunlight Foundation has an excellent analysis and commentary:

• Open Data Executive Order Shows Path Forward, by John Wonderlich, Sunlight Foundation Blog (May 9, 2013).

  [T]he new policies take on one of the most important, trickiest questions that these policies face -- how can we reset the default to openness when there is so much data? How can we take on managing and releasing all the government's data, or as much as possible, without negotiating over every dataset the government has?

  How can the public (or policymakers) request what they don't know exists? How can CIOs manage what they haven't surveyed?

  ...Today's Executive Order demonstrates a new approach to open data, moving beyond rhetoric and aspiration, requiring agencies to publicly report on what data can be made public, building a new backbone for federal open data policy, and setting an example for other governments to follow. [emphasis added]

• New Open Data Memorandum almost defines open data, misses mark with open licenses. by Joshua Tauberer (May 9th, 2013).
   
• President Obama’s New E.O.: Open Data, Not Government Transparency by Jim Harper, Cato Institute (May 9, 2013).

Press Release:

President Obama Announces Intent To Nominate Davita Vance-Cooks As Public Printer

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 9, 2013 No. 13-21

PRESIDENT OBAMA ANNOUNCES INTENT TO NOMINATE DAVITA VANCE-COOKS AS PUBLIC PRINTER

WASHINGTON - The White House has released the following announcement:

Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key Administration post:

Davita Vance-Cooks, Nominee for Public Printer, Government Printing Office

Davita Vance-Cooks is currently Deputy Public Printer of the Government Printing Office (GPO), a position she has held since December 2011. Ms. Vance-Cooks has served in a number of other roles at GPO since 2004, including Chief of Staff, Managing Director of the Publications and Information Sales Business Unit, and Deputy Managing Director of Customer Services. Prior to joining GPO, she was the General Manager at HTH Worldwide Insurance Services from 2001 to 2004. Previously, she served as the Vice President of Consumer Services at Digital Insurance from 2000 to 2001. From 1993 to 2000, Ms. Vance-Cooks served in several roles with NYLCare Health Plans of the Mid-Atlantic, which was purchased by Aetna during her tenure. Ms. Vance-Cooks received her B.S. from Tufts University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

Link to White House announcement: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/08/president-obama-an...

Link to Davita Vance-Cooks' bio: http://gpo.gov/pdfs/about/Vance-Cooksbio.pdf

For those of you that willl be in Washington DC next week, please consider attending the 2013 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference (RSVP required). There will be several interesting panels with House and external stakeholders like the Sunlight Foundation and the Cornell Legal Information Institute -- including a panel on electronic archiving and one on "missing data" and what to do about it ("missing" meaning not effectively on-line and digital, etc.).

The 2013 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference will take place on Wednesday, May 22, 2013, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Capitol Visitor Center Auditorium. The conference brings together legislative branch agencies with data users and transparency advocates to discuss the use and future of legislative data. Topics include:

--Electronic legislative archiving
--XML and metadata standards
--Updates on beta.congress.gov

I run North Face Endurance Challenge Bear Mountain 50 Miler because it is nearby to me, because I love Bear Mountain, and because it challenges me. I am not the strongest technical runner, but I do it for these reasons. Oh and tons of my friends run it, so it basically feels like a big party. Run a little faster, run with one friend. Slow down, run with another.

I had a lot of fun during the race due to running with a lot of awesome people, especially Amy who I met during Traprock. I also spent time meeting other awesome runners, like Caitlyn from Boston/now Costa Rica, and Ashley from Brooklyn, and Justin who became part of the Pain Train. It was a lot of fun.

But unfortunately, my asthma sucked on every single uphill. I sounded like a 2-pack-a-day smoker wheezing on all the uphills. I sucked on my inhaler 20 times (instead of the 2-4 times I normally would take it). I normally don't run with my inhaler, because usually my lungs behave while running but not today. Misery. And also, my plantar fasciatis was hurting on the road sections and any super duper rocky section. Uber fun.

But despite all the suckiness and the pain, I still had fun.

The field was the absolute biggest it's ever been - I almost passed out when picking up my number when I discovered they had over 500 people signed up and there would be two waves. WHAT?! But the waves really helped smooth things out and it was a little less crowded than last year, honestly - at the beginning in the tight spots anyway.

Early on, before we made the first turnoff on a steep uphill, an arrow at an earlier spot confused the hell out of me and I lost a few minutes trying to figure it out. I saw all the ribbons ahead, but why was an arrow pointing left if everything else indicated straight? I didn't rest until I got to the first aid station. And then after the first aid station, I had a particularly rugged awful climb down, from rock to rock being uber careful...and a bunch of people took a shortcut, saving them a minute or two (which I know because no one was within seeing distance when we began the climb). So a few spots could be better marked, but really, most of the course was exceptionally well marked.

The aid stations were very, very basic - electrolyte drink, water, coke, pretzels, chips, M&Ms. (No ginger ale or cookies, the horrors!) Oh but the volunteers were nice, especially a certain boyfriend of mine (I love you, Wayne!) who was at the Mile 20 aid station. Yay! He was in charge of telling people they missed the cut-off which sucked a lot - apparently, someone started crying and he felt awful telling her she couldn't go on.

The course is super technical. One of the most technical race courses I have ever been on. After, we were talking about how if this had been a 100miler, it would've had a much higher DNF rate b/c you are so tired, it's hard to not be clumsy and trip. I saw a lot of people turning around, walking back, limping, towards the aid stations from the opposite direction - people who had went out but tripped, hurt themselves. One guy seemed pretty despondent around mile 34 - "But I think this is the best decision." We agreed.

It was rather warm - 74. My one bottle, which normally was fine here, was a little rough and I found myself running out of water between aid stations.

I ran much of the race with Amy. We complained together, chatted, WTF on yet another hill/stream crossing/climbing over a tree in the middle of the trail. We laughed, talked about nothing, about mint juleps, that sort of thing. We had so much fun that it didn't feel as miserable as it easily could have been. It was actually fun, when I wasn't sucking down on Albuterol.

The course is longer, and according to everyone's GPS's, and more time between aid stations than promised. Apparently, Wayne said people were relying on their GPS's and ended up DNFing b/c you would be told "This aid station is at this mile" and your GPS would show you two miles more when you arrived....So it was a bit of a challenge in that way.
Drop bag fun...there's a brownie in here!
We started a pain train in the 30s. I led it, followed by Amy, Justin, and some others. It was just a follow the leader, I set the pace (I offered others to do it but everyone refused) and we complained abt the mud and water and stream crossings and rocks and hills and running and everything, and laughed and told jokes and chatted and at one point, we all went, "Choo chooo." A fun pain train.
Crackers, the key to running success!
I arrived at 40 feeling shot. My dream of sub 11 was clearly impossible and I felt depressed. Wayne was fully dressed in running gear with a "PACER" bib. Ummmm....you have been injured since December and haven't run more than a mile at a time and you want to run 10 miles with me, including the hardest up and down of the course? Sure, that sounds smart. I drank some coconut water, got yelled at by a volunteer for sitting in the middle of the course (What? It's an aid station? Whatever.) and then Wayne and I left, with Amy and her boyfriend shortly afterwards.

I felt like hell. I just was miserable. There were a ton of French Canadians we were running with, and Frankie from Queens. (We knew his name because his extremely cheerful and motivating pacer kept yelling, "C'mon, Frankie, you can do this!") Up down rock up down down down up up up up turn twist. 

I met lots of great people, and love the aid station with the crazy theme that is sponsored by Van Cortlandt Track Club. I was bonking majorly and forced down a gel. 

Timp pass. Inhale that albuertol. And again.

The uphill sucks. You climb forever, go across, then climb some more. And then you go down. And some of the down is comprised of these horrendous loose rocks that you just can't run on b/c you slip and slide and it's just terrible. Oh well. And then that other aid station and then you can run hard to the finish. Wooohooo.

Sadly I felt so miserable but I was having fun. It was a pain train, with me and Wayne and Amy and her boyfriend Rob.

I wanted to be done. I was miserable - I knew it would be over four hours slower than my last 50 miler - yes, the course was much, much harder but UGH.

And then - we were coming in. People were cheering. I took off, faster, and Wayne dropped, "I couldn't keep up." I got a medal which promptly became dirty from my filthy self, and Glenn gave me a waterbottle. Then I began cramping up and hugged Amy and sat down in the grass, shivering and cramping, waiting to cheer John Budge to his finish.

Fun, yes. Well-organized, yes. Crowded, a little. Painful, yes. But oh-so-fun!

Here's a twofer: highlights from the March 2013 SACO editorial meeting and new LCSH from March 2013.

[SACOLIST] Summary of Decisions, Editorial Meeting 13/03, March 18, 2013

Preview: Chaotic synchronization is now a SACO approved thing!

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author:  Paul, Caroline MacNaughton, Wendy (illustrations)

With Caroline Paul laid up after an accident and a new girlfriend on the scene, one of her cats goes missing. The cat comes back, but perhaps being bored from lying around the house, or maybe because she's just like that, Paul wants to know where the cat, Tibby, went and who took care of him while he was gone.

reviewdate:  May 2 2013 isn:  978-1-60819-977-8

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