Radreffies' blogs

Radical Reference is a collective of volunteer library workers who believe in social justice and equality. ... Portland Radical Reference Collective meets quarterly at the ...

Radical reference is not about waiting for the question. It's not about simply being as good as we are and being the only ones who know it. ...

Radical Reference (RR) is a volunteer-run collective of library workers (Librarians, support staff, and LIS students) who believe in social justice and equality. ...

Get the scripts to for the Initial Reference Checks™ call, the follow up letters and emails for every step in the Radical Reference Checking Process™ ...

Radical Reference. My curiosity got the best of me when I read the email forwarded through CMRLS about an upcoming Western Massachusetts Radical Reference meeting. ...

Radical Reference is a group of radical librarians and information workers who provide reference and research support to activist communities. ...

Reference resources for the general public, independent journalists, and activitists for their radical questions and ideas. Email your reference question in English, Spanish, or other languages.

Radical reference originated as a service provided by volunteer ... Radical Reference members have shared their skills at several conferences, bookfairs, and ...

Radical Reference began as part of the counter-protest against ... Radical Reference the website of a collective of library workers who provide radical ...

Radical Reference: Community Librarianship and Free/Open Source Technology ... Radical Reference is a collective of volunteer library workers who believe in social ...

(Via Feministing)
Students at John Carroll University in Ohio protested during a school basketball game over the school’s unwillingness to include sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination policy.

From a student statement on YouTube:

John Carroll’s mission is to create people for others. That means support, protection, love, and understanding for all people without regard to color, creed, sexual preference, gender, age, or other personal factors. That’s the goal of a Jesuit institution.

By not explicitly voicing its support of LGBTQ students, faculty, and alumni, John Carroll’s administration is breaking those unspoken bonds of trust that make JCU a community.

Despite support from the faculty union to include sexual orientation in the policy, the school’s administration is holding firm. JCU President Robert Niehoff issued a statement saying that the policy wouldn’t be changed because it goes against “traditional Catholic moral teaching.”

The nondiscrimination policy is the university’s promise to employees and faculty that the institution will not discriminate based on gender, religion or race. In his message earlier this week, Niehoff issued a lengthy explanation of his views that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should be welcomed and respected at the university. He stopped short of recommending that the policy be changed, however, instead offering a “community standards statement” as a supplement to the policy.

Planning to overthrow the US Government?

If yes, and you live in South Carolina, you must pay a five-dollar subversive registration fee. (Via BoingBoing, Via The Agitator)

The recent "alliance" between the National Security Agency, (one of the most secret and secretive members of the U.S. intelligence community), and Google has brought up more questions than answers. Here are some recent stories:

• Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks, By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post (February 4,
  2010).

  "The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity."

• Google Asks Spy Agency for Help With Inquiry Into Cyberattacks, By JOHN MARKOFF, New York Times (February 4, 2010).

  'By turning to the N.S.A., which has no statutory authority to investigate domestic criminal acts, instead of the Department of Homeland Security, which does have such authority, Google is clearly seeking to avoid having its search engine, e-mail and other Web services regulated as part of the nation’s "critical infrastructure."'

• 'Don't Be Evil,' Meet 'Spy on Everyone': How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google, By Noah Shachtman, Wired (February 4, 2010).

  "The company pinkie-swears that its agreement with the NSA won’t violate the company's privacy policies or compromise user data. Those promises are a little hard to believe, given the NSA's track record of getting private enterprises to cooperate, and Google’s willingness to take this first step."

• Google, NSA ‘alliance’ has privacy advocate alarmed, By Stephen C. Webster, Raw Story, (February 4th, 2010).
   
• EPIC Seeks Records on Google-NSA Relationship, Electronic Privacy Information Center (February 4, 2010).

See also: Privacy: "I have nothing to hide".

[UPDATE: I added the slides for Tom Bruce's talk]

Shinjoung and I submitted a panel on the future of govt information for iConference 2010 in Champaign, IL. We had a good far-reaching discussion with Tom Bruce (Cornell Legal Information Institute), Daniel Schuman (Sunlight Foundation) and Cindy Etkin (GPO). Below are my slides and notes. I've also attached the notes and abstract as PDFs. As Tom tweeted, "World's problems: solved."

If the other panelists agree, I'll post their notes/slides as well. This is of course an ongoing conversation so please feel free to leave comments, questions, rants etc.

--that is all!

Jacobs Iconfonference 2010 presentation

View more presentations from James Jacobs. Tom Bruce iConference 2010 presentation

View more presentations from James Jacobs.

3:45 - 5:15 pm Thursday, February 4, 2010
Roundtable 4 : : Technology Room
"Gone today, Here tomorrow: assuring access to government information in the digital age." ShinJoung Yeo, University of Illinois; and James R. Jacobs, Stanford University

Panelists:

• Shinjoung Yeo, Moderator
• James Jacobs, Stanford University Library
• Thomas Bruce (Legal Information Institute, Cornell University)
• Daniel Schuman (Sunlight Foundation policy director)
• Cindy Etkin (Govt Printing Office)

[SLIDE 1: govt documents]

Right up front, I'm a librarian and a collaborator in the LOCKSS distributed digital preservation project (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). I've been in academia/education my whole life as a student, teacher, librarian and technologist. I've been a government information/FDLP librarian since 2002 and currently am serving a 3 year term on the Depository Library Council, the body which informs and advises the Govt Printing Office regarding issues of the Federal Depository Library Program (which Cindy talked about). So my mindset/perspective/bias is from one who assists in the scholarly communication process, one who believes that libraries have a place in the digital information landscape, and one who believes strongly in the idea that access to govt information is a fundamental right. As Ralph Nader has said, “There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.” And there can be no citizenship without access to government information.

[SLIDE 2: mmm documents]

With that in mind, I'd like to talk about the underlying historical ideals of the FDLP, discuss how those ideals have been under fire from both within and without the library community and argue that those ideals applied to today's information landscape give us the best chance at access to and long-term preservation and assurance of govt information.

[SLIDE 3: FDLP logo]

The federal depository library program (FDLP) has been around since 1813 in one form or another. The basis underlying the need for an FDLP is to give the public free access to government information. Depository libraries have long safeguarded the public's right to know by cooperating with and receiving for free the govt publications published by the Govt Printing Office (GPO), organizing, maintaining, and preserving those publications, assisting users in accessing said information in a geographically dispersed system and most importantly, assured that govt information is freely available and tamper-proof -- think Napster for govt information. Taken together, the collections of the 1238 depository libraries make up the historic corpus of govt information available for free to every citizen. Jessamyn West of librarian.net, recently called the FDLP the longest running open source project. I would add that it's the longest government-run public-centric open-source project to support the democratic ideal.

[SLIDE CHUCK QUOTE]

Over the last 20-30 years, developments in publishing and Internet technologies have affected the way government information is produced, disseminated, controlled, and preserved. These changes have affected the policies and procedures of the GPO and, in turn, have affected the depository library program. Despite the often-heard promises that Web technologies will bring more information to more people more quickly and easily, the actual effects have been decidedly mixed. The highly visible, short-term successes of rapid dissemination of single titles directly to citizens (e.g., the large number of downloads of the 9/11 report) mask the loss of a secure infrastructure (GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) notwithstanding) for long-term preservation of and access to government information as more and more agencies publish content on their own Web sites rather than using the GPO conduit (which librarians call "fugitive documents") and very few agencies publish to any standards or have policies in place that deal with archiving and preservation. As Chuck Humphrey, a data librarian friend of mine, once said, “there seems to be an inverse relationship between convenience of dissemination and preservation standards.”

In addition to this lack of a secure infrastructure, the growing din of the call for digitization of historic govt publications (most recently the Ithaka/ARL report "Documents for a Digital Democracy: A Model for the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st Century"), while no doubt a boon for access today, is somewhat of a red herring that makes library administrators believe that they will soon be able to dispose of their physical collections and use that space for today or tomorrow's buzz word. This call for digitization may instead have the deleterious affect of damaging the long-term preservation of govt publications.

Lastly, the growing trend toward privatization of govt information has actually caused a decrease in public access despite it's digital nature. This is not a new trend. Herbert Schiller noted this in 1986 in his book "Information and the Crisis Economy." Speaking of machine readable formats, he wrote that, "Library information capability is greatly enhanced. Yet this benefit is accompanied by the abandonment of libraries' historical free access policy. User charges are introduced. The public character of the library is weakening as its commercial connection deepens. No less important, the composition and character of its holdings change as the clientele shifts from general public to the ability-to-pay user."

[SLIDE: GAO contract]

We've seen over the last 30 years a disturbing rise in Federal Agencies entering into contracts with private companies whereby public domain govt documents are digitized and then taken out of the commons via licensing agreements. See for example, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)'s deal with Thomson-West whereby Thomson-West digitized the GAO's 20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995 and in return received exclusive license to sell access to the content. GAO received nothing in return but an account on Thomson's service while the public received nothing at all.

Rapid technological change and the misplaced assumption that "it's all in google" have caused some in the FDLP community to question the need for the FDLP and some others to drop out of the program altogether. I believe that the inherent nature of digital information actually increases the need for a distributed network of dedicated, legislatively authorized libraries. It would be prudent to draw upon the existing infrastructure of FDLP libraries and the almost 200 years of cumulative experience of these institutions in assuring preservation of and access to government information. We must reinforce FDLP’s traditional mission of selection, collection, free access, and preservation of government information in the digital era in order to assure free access to this information into the foreseeable future. Some in the depository community, like my library, are doing just that by participating in the LOCKSS-USDOCS network, harvesting digital govt information -- for example, harvesting openCRS that Daniel mentioned along with other sites that post CRS reports -- and yes digitizing parts of their collections. But we need more libraries not less.

[SLIDE: FDLP ecosystem]

Nobody knows for sure how to preserve digital content for the long-term. This means to me that a loosely coupled, independently administered, distributed ecosystem is the best way to assure long-term preservation -- many organizations with many funding models and a distributed technical infrastructure(s) have a better shot at preservation than 1 or 2 organizations -- especially if one of those organizations has a tenuous budget, or is a private corporation etc.

Imagine if you will 2 future govt information systems: on the one hand, the system where there are one or two digital collections (say for example GPO's Federal Digital System (fdsys) and Portico, the dark archive currently housing digital journals); and on the other hand, one with many digital collections in fdlp libraries. How would each of these deal with or react to different stress situations or threat models (e.g., reduced budgets, increased demand for privatization, increased demand for censorship or control or removal of information, media/hardware/software/network failure, natural disaster, organizational failure etc.)? It's easy to see that a highly replicated, distributed FDLP model of preservation would deal with these situations much better than a centralized model. A web is much stronger than a silo.

[SLIDE: Federal Register XML]

law.gov, Carl Malamud’s proposal for a registry and repository of all legal information -- from what I've seen and heard and read, is a compelling proposal for a significant piece of the federal (and state) legal information ecosystem. What we ought to be doing is a) figuring out how to make law.gov a reality; b) figuring out how to expand it beyond legal materials to include ALL federal information -- information from all 3 branches of government, federal agencies as well as the regional and local offices of those agencies, data and statistics, the entire Congressional/legislative process including the funding that goes into that process to grease the skids so to speak, and making sure public information stays in public control; and c) MOST IMPORTANTLY from my perspective as a librarian, figure out how to preserve that ecosystem for the long term so that the public can inform itself not just today or tomorrow but 100 years from now. Now the 4 of us on this panel are just 4 players with dogs in this fight. But if we agree on the goals, then we ought to work together to proceed toward them and mobilize our communities and the public to support this endeavor.

It's going to take the government (and not just GPO) being serious about transparency and funding the necessary changes in its own federal information distribution system to include open format standards with no DRM, bulk data channels, indexing, description, collection and authentication of information resources, multiple digital preservation strategies to not only assure preservation but also to insure against tampering and deletion of vital information (which, as I've stated earlier, the FDLP historically has done very well!). It's also going to take libraries being serious about and applying the ideals of the FDLP to build a distributed digital infrastructure that takes into account access to as well as preservation of digital govt information.

I agree with Tom and am absolutely convinced that the changes in the information ecosystem that are needed should not be left to the market because the information market leans heavily toward monopoly, proprietary standards, licensing restrictions, lack of access, "rights management" and the like.

If an evolving ecosystem that is free, open, standards-based, authenticated, and privacy-protecting is built and sustained correctly then citizens, libraries, non-profit watchdogs, hackers, activists, AND government will thrive.

[SLIDE 7: THANKS! lockss, archive-it]

digital changes a lot of things about information, but it doesn't change the need to fund it, collect it, share it, preserve it, and give access to it. As my friend and colleague Jim Jacobs recently stated, "lots of collections keep stuff safe!"

Here is a point-by-point comparison of the big new data dissemination initiatives by the U.S. and the U.K.:

• Data.gov.uk versus Data.gov. Flowing Data (Feb 4, 2010).

While Data.gov.uk was just recently launched publicly, it has many advantages over Data.gov. It's easier to use and geared towards developers, who, let's face it, are the only ones who are going to do more with the data than open it up in Excel. Data.gov has some catching up to do. Both still have a long way to go. Both are good steps in the right direction.

Hat tip to Kevin Taglang at Benton Foundation!

”

To dress a poem, a character, the magic of the imprecise moment that only literature allows; this is 20 dresses for Europe”, says Concha Hernández, the curator, in the exhibition catalogue. “The history of Europe in novels …/… And above all, or at the same level, the gown conceived from the direct inspiration of that literary fragment. They are all here to be enjoyed, for taking pleasure from an exhibition that is a model for intercultural dialogue, a tower of Babel for the senses”.

20 suits for Europe: a dialogue between fashion and literature

The project is part of the special cultural programme organised by the Spanish Presidency in coordination with Belgium and Hungary, the other two countries in the “EU trio”. This multidisciplinary and transnational context gives the exhibition an additional artistic element, as well as a marked European flavour, providing a metaphor for the constant exchange experienced by Europe’s citizens and its cultural diversity.

The U.S. National Archives joins the Commons!, Flickr blog, (February 1, 2010).

Please welcome the U.S. National Archives to The Commons, the world’s public photography archives on Flickr to which you can contribute information and knowledge.

With over 3,000 images in 49 sets uploaded already, perusing these important archival images should keep you entertained for a long time. Their four collections encompass important Americana, ranging from the famous Mathew Brady Civil War images to historical and iconic images of American history.

After a fairly easy 3 hour trail run during which I felt like hell, I fell asleep in the car ride back to NY. (No, I was not driving!) I came home, showered, ate, puttered a bit, and passed out. I slept a solid 11 hours, dragged myself out of bed for work (late), was fairly useless for 3.5 hours, then left to go back home to sleep. I slept another 3 hours, got up, ate, and passed out for another 10 hours. Then I worked from home, and decided to skip my Tuesday weight lifting/elliptical for 1hour/1 hour run. I needed to rest.

I'm not a creature who likes to rest. It was a little difficult, but I kept busy with relaxing, drinking chamomile tea, catching up. Today, I feel heaps better, and was able to do my Tuesday workout routine no problem (though I know yesterday I would have had great difficulty).

Sometimes it's hard to step back and realize what's best...I know Umstead looms close ahead, and I know the cut-off for a sub-24 100 miler will be very, very tight, and I know, I KNOW if I'm having a good day I can definitely achieve it. The problem is, with running, you never know if you'll have a good day until it happens.

At VT100, I was on target for sub-24 for a while. At mile 70, I was slipping off it a little, but I could see 24-and-change. And well, we all know what happened when my feet had that horrid allergic reaction to the socks...

Iliana and I have been talking about upcoming races. It keeps changing, but I think this will be 2010:

• February 13: Dances with Dirt 50 Miler (Green Swamp, FL)
• March 27-28: Umstead 100 Miler (NC)
• April: Boston Marathon
• May 1: Miwok 100k
• May 8: Bear Mountain (probably not, but I'd love to do the 50 miler)
• May 22: South Mountain 100k (I do love those fatasses, baby!)
• June: Ultimate XC
• July: Maybe, Maybe, Maybe Vermont 100
• August: Possibly pacing Iliana in Leadville!
• August: Burning Man 50k
• October: Javelina Jundred
• November: NYC Marathon (If I'm in the States...)
• December: Agua y Fuego 100k in Nicaragua

It's a pretty tough schedule, and a lot of money in plane fares. I'm hoping I can use my frequent flier miles to go to Nicaragua and/or AZ for Javelina...


So many races, so little time.


How did ultrarunning become such a passion? I think as my last relationship slowly disintegrated, I embraced something that always loved me back (well, except when I was trying not to cry in the bushes in the VT50 or crying during the Watchung 50k blizzard in 2009). It's tough, but running is the one thing I always come back to. I read some old letters I wrote when I was 16 and I was obsessed even then (scarily!). I look around at the mess in my apt - Endurolytes on the bookshelf, a pile of clothes for tomorrow's run at my feet, running backpack next to my Coach bag, my cat snuggling with my wicking socks...my life is full of contradictions, but really....


It all comes back to running.


 

The Literature Police by Peter D. McDonald.
“Indispensable reading if we wish to understand the forces forming and deforming literary production in South Africa during the apartheid years.” – JM Coetzee

On the website is the Database: The most complete record to date of decisions the censors made about works that can be identified as belonging to the corpus of South African literature published during the apartheid era, though it also includes some arguably non-literary titles by leading political figures (e.g. essays by Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko). It gives details relating to just over 450 decisions, some of which were reviewed, and is searchable by, among others, author, publisher, date and outcome. It is worth noting that it covers books only. It does not include decisions relating to literary magazines.
Website.

Peter D. McDonald.

Thanks KAW.

Today the Department of Defense (DoD) released it's once-every-four-years report to Congress on the military's defense planning called the Quadrennial Defense Review 2010 (see DoD press release).

Significant highlights of the report include the consideration of the significance of climate change on national security; the greening of the Department of Defense, including efforts to make the military more environmentally friendly, to anticipate and prepare for environmentally driven crises and disasters, and to achieve energy security; and efforts to convert the nontactical vehicle fleet away from gasoline-dependence, and a Navy plan to deploy a carrier strike group running on biofuels and nuclear power by 2016.

For more analysis of what's inside the QDR, please see the following articles:

• Growing Pentagon Focus on Energy and Climate. Andrew C. Revkin. NY Times dOTEarth blog.
• What's inside the Quadrenial Defense Review. Robert Farley. Tapped: the group blog of the American Prospect

All of the strategic defense reviews are available at DoD Strategic Defense reviews including the Quadrenial Defense Review (QDR), Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), Ballistic Missile Defense Review (BMDR) and the Space Posture Review (SPR).