Radreffies' blogs

The National Academy Of Public Administration has released its report on the Government Printing Office.

• Rebooting The Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age, A Report by a Panel of the National Academy Of Public Administration for the U.S. Congress, Congressional Research Service, and the Government Printing Office. National Academy Of Public Administration, Washington, DC (January 2013).

  Congress mandated that the National Academy of Public Administration (the Academy) conduct a broad operational review of GPO. The Academy formed a five-member Panel of Fellows to conduct a ten-month study of the agency’s current role, its operations, and its future direction.

The report contains 27 finding and 15 recommendations. Depository libraries will be particularly interested in three findings:

• III-3: Preservation of the Legacy (Tangible) Government Collection
• III-4: Preservation of the Digital Government Collection
• III-5: Government Information Dissemination and Access

The report repeats many of the tropes about the digital government information that have become familiar over the years. Some of these bear repeating and others are more questionable.

Perhaps the most troubling suggestion in the report is GPO should consider "cost recovery" for access to FDsys:

Now may be the time for GPO to revisit charging the public for access to FDsys content. The Academy convened a forum of experts on printing and publishing where this topic was discussed extensively. Participants noted that technologies for online payments have progressed to the point that they cost very little to administer. Also, the public is becoming accustomed to paying fees for government services that used to be free (such as admittance to National Parks). Rather than charge a publication price, GPO could explore charging a small user fee to recoup the cost of providing access to government information on FDsys, or allowing users to view documents for free, and charging for document downloads. Forum participants also discussed the possibility of GPO exploring opportunities for repackaging files and content in different ways and making them available for sale to the public.

This model (as the report notes) was tried before with GPO Access and failed. We would argue that it failed not because the "technologies of online payments" were inadequate at the time, but because attempting to charge fees for information that was also available without fees was a fundamentally flawed approach. (We have written about this issue many times. See for example: Government Information in the Digital Age: The Once and Future Federal Depository Library Program and Privatization of GPO, Defunding of FDsys, and the Future of the FDLP.)

There is much more in the report and it deserves careful scrutiny.

Access to Court Opinions Expands. Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (January 31, 2013).

A pilot project giving the public free, text-searchable, online-access to court opinions now is available to all federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts.

The Judicial Conference, the policy-making body of the Federal court system, approved national implementation of the project with the Government Printing Office, Federal Digital System (FDsys), which provides free access to publications from all three branches of federal government via the Internet. The pilot project pulls opinions nightly from courts’ Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) systems and sends them to the GPO, where they are processed and posted on the FDsys website. The functionality to transfer opinions to FDsys is included in the latest release of CM/ECF which is now available to all courts. Twenty-nine courts participated in the original pilot, and now, all courts may opt to participate in the program.

Access to judicial opinions through FDsys allows the Judiciary to make its work more easily available to the public. Collections are divided into appellate, district or bankruptcy court opinions and are text-searchable across opinions and across courts. FDsys also permits embedded animation and audio.

Presently, more than 600,000 opinions dating back to 2004 are available. Opinions from the pilot are already one of the most heavily used collections on FDsys, with millions of retrievals each month.

This week at the State Agency Databases project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases:

NEW VOLUNTEERS AND A STATE HAND-OFF

This week we officially welcome three new volunteers to our project:

• Susan Paterson (University of British Columbia) - District of Columbia
• Siu Min Yu (Rice University) - Maryland
• Flora Shrode (Utah State University) - Utah

Flora is taking over the management of the Utah page from Susanne Caro who recently took over the Montana page.

Susanne had been one of two volunteers with two state pages. I (Daniel Cornwall) am the other. In addition to my home state of Alaska, I also do my best to maintain the Arizona page. If you live in Arizona and would like to take over the page, let me know.

ORPHANS: THE FINAL FIVE

With the successful adoption of Maryland and the District of Columbia, we now have five states up for adoption:

• Florida
• Hawaii
• Kansas
• Minnesota
• Oklahoma

If you are interested in adopting one of these pages, please read our volunteer guide and make sure you can accept the responsibilities of a project volunteer. Then contact project coordinator Daniel Cornwall at danielcornwall@gmail.com with a statement of interest and your favorite database from the page you are adopting.

DATABASE ACTIVITY

For a full listing of activity over the past week, visit http://tinyurl.com/statedbs. Here are some highlights:

DATABASES ADDED

OHIO (Audrey Hall)

Empowerment through Education county highlights] Summary of program activities for each county. Additional keyword searching available.

NEW RESOURCES ON THE "NOT DATABASES" PAGE

The following non-database resources were added to the South Dakota section of our "not databases" page:

• Adoption Resources in South Dakota
• South Dakota Resource Directory for the Elderly

A LOOK AT THE VOLUNTEERS BEHIND THE STATE AGENCY DATABASES PROJECT

We recently surveyed our project volunteers about who they were, where they worked and where they updated their pages from. About 70% of our volunteers responded to the survey. Here are the demographic findings:

What best describes your current job position?

Librarian - 77.8%
Paraprofessional - 8.3%
Library Student - 2.8%
Other (please specify) - 11.1%

Responses from the "other" category included:

Circulation Manager
Assistant Director with background in Government Documents
Library consultant
Archivist with a library degree working in a library

--

What best describes your current workplace?

Academic Library - 63.9%
Special Library - 2.8%
State Library - 33.3%

Other options were offered on the survey, but only the three categories above had non-zero responses.

--

Are you allowed work time to edit your page?

Yes - 88.9%
No - 11.1%

The project coordinator is one of the people whose currrent job description is too far outside the project work to justify using work time to maintain his pages or write these reports. In full disclosure, I have not asked to.

--

Where do you edit your page?

Work - 58.3%
Home - 11.1%
Home and Work - 30.6%

--

Do you live in the state of the page you edit? (If you have more than one state, choose "other" and note which state you live in.)

Yes - 77.1%
No - 17.1%
Other (please specify) - 5.7%

In addition to the demographic questions above, volunteers were asked several narrative questions. We'll be bringing those questions and selected responses to you over the next three weeks.

author:  Pfeffer, Susan Beth

A companion to Life as We Knew It, The Dead and the Gone tells us what it was like in Manhattan after the moon got knocked out of place and messed up life on Earth.

reviewdate:  Feb 1 2013 isn:  978-0-15-206311-5

read more

author:  Romero, Sophia G.

"Do you still love him?" I asked.
"With all the bile in my body."

That exchange between a Filipino daughter and mother was basically the high point of the novel for me.

reviewdate:  Jan 29 2013 isn:  0-688-15632-0

read more

Steve Schultze, Princeton University, Associate Director at the Center for Information Technology Policy, gave this talk as part of a series of 3-minute lightning talks on transparency hosted on Capitol Hill by the Advisory Committee on Transparency, a project of the Sunlight Foundation.

• My Bill to #OpenPACER in memory of #aaronsw -- Open for Comment and Available on Github, by Steve Schultze. Freedom to Tinker (February 1, 2013). (video and transcript with links and downloadable slides).

  ...the courts offer electronic records through the PACER web site, which charges for search results, docket lists, and documents.

  ...PACER is making a killing, with $120 million dollars in revenue for 2012. Even with a highly inefficient system architecture, they only manage to spend about $20 million dollars on PACER expenses per year. Where does the rest of the money go? They spend it on other stuff.

  This is illegal. In 1992, Congress passed a law saying that the courts could charge only to recoup costs. Ten years later, Congress strengthened that law and said that it expected the courts to move to a free system. PACER fees have increased 42% since then.

  ...Open PACER is a bill that, once and for all, mandates that the courts provide free access to our public record. The bill is open for comment at openpacer.org. It is written in GPO-compliant Legislative XML, which anyone can edit and submit for incorporation via a tool called github.

The "workaround" is to clear your browser's cache, cookies, and history. The Census Bureau also suggests viewing the site in either Internet Explorer 9 or 8. The Bureau and its contractor should be really, really embarrassed about this and fix it quickly.

• Workaround Solution for Redesigned American Factfinder Browser Issues. FDLP Desktop (31 January 2013).

  The U.S. Census Bureau has brought to our attention that the newly redesigned American FactFinder does not render properly in some Web browsers. Users have reported issues with various versions of Mozilla Firefox (FF) and Internet Explorer (IE).

  The Census Bureau is investigating the matter. In the meantime, their recommendation is to clear the browser's cache, cookies, and history as a temporary solution. In addition, they recommend viewing the site in either IE 9 or 8. If issues are encountered, the following instructions are specific to IE 8 and up.

  1. Click on the "Tools" icon.
  2. Select "Internet Options".
  3. Under the "General" tab, click on the "Delete" button under "Browsing history".
  4. Select the following:
     • Temporary Internet files
     • Cookies
     • History
  5. Deselect:
     • "Preserve Favorites website data"
  6. Click on the "Delete" button.

  To clear the browser cache, cookies, and history for other browsers, visit the American FactFinder FAQ or check the browser's Web site for browser-specific instructions.

  Be advised that clearing your browser's cache, cookies, and history may impact saved sessions for other Web services.

   

My friend John Budge has taken to making some brilliant movies...with a running focus. Here are a few - warning, you will laugh at the first one.



I want to freak out that stupid girl too and take that dopey guy's visor.

An Ultrarunner's NYC Christmas....yep, this is how I get my tree too!



And the latest - the Senegal Sensation Meets the Itching Guy!

My friend John Budge has taken to making some brilliant movies...with a running focus. Here are a few - warning, you will laugh at the first one.



I want to freak out that stupid girl too and take that dopey guy's visor.

An Ultrarunner's NYC Christmas....yep, this is how I get my tree too!



And the latest - the Senegal Sensation Meets the Itching Guy!

I met my friend Emily (friend from NYC Radical Cheerleaders) for lunch today at Crepes du Nord on South William Street in the Financial District. It was really nice to catch up and we had a lovely time – until she went to the bathroom. She saw the following sign on the bathroom door:

After we paid our bill, Emily asked our server what it was supposed to mean.
"That means it's a unisex bathroom."
"A man peering over the wall means it's a unisex bathroom?" Emily asked.
"It's funny. Everyone who comes in thinks it's funny."
"Well, we don't. We think it's offensive."
As he walked away, Emily muttered, "Sexual harassment is supposed to be funny?"
I was really angry when I left; the lunch had been lovely and the food good (though the metal teapots and metal teacups were a bit strange but I digress), but why is it funny when a man peeks in on a woman going to the bathroom - which is essentially what that sign means.
I went onto my work computer and found a Feministe article about a coffeebar in DC with a similar obnoxious sign.
Let me say it straight: a man who is a peeping tom - who spies on a woman, looking at her as she goes to the bathroom, is not funny. Men like that - I don't want to know. That disgusts me.
When I was in 8th or 9th grade, a guy pulled up my skirt and showed my underwear to an entire crowded hallway. I was mortified. I felt terrible. A teacher had seen, reported the student, and he ended up getting suspended. It's rare that these sorts of things get caught and punished. There was the guy who exposed himself to the high school girls as they ran the cross-country races. (Never the boys' races and as far as I know, they never caught him.) I have had men stare obsessively at me at my old job at a public library, frightening me. I have had men try to follow me home. Stare at my building. Sit across the subway from me and stare, stare, stare.
This is not funny. This is scary. Why is our society encouraging this? Maybe you think I'm blowing this up, but I have been a victim of some really horrible things way too many times - and it has never been funny. 
It has been sad. It has been scary. It has been mortifying. It has been soul-destroying. But it has never been funny.

I met my friend Emily (friend from NYC Radical Cheerleaders) for lunch today at Crepes du Nord on South William Street in the Financial District. It was really nice to catch up and we had a lovely time – until she went to the bathroom. She saw the following sign on the bathroom door:

After we paid our bill, Emily asked our server what it was supposed to mean.
"That means it's a unisex bathroom."
"A man peering over the wall means it's a unisex bathroom?" Emily asked.
"It's funny. Everyone who comes in thinks it's funny."
"Well, we don't. We think it's offensive."
As he walked away, Emily muttered, "Sexual harassment is supposed to be funny?"
I was really angry when I left; the lunch had been lovely and the food good (though the metal teapots and metal teacups were a bit strange but I digress), but why is it funny when a man peeks in on a woman going to the bathroom - which is essentially what that sign means.
I went onto my work computer and found a Feministe article about a coffeebar in DC with a similar obnoxious sign.
Let me say it straight: a man who is a peeping tom - who spies on a woman, looking at her as she goes to the bathroom, is not funny. Men like that - I don't want to know. That disgusts me.
When I was in 8th or 9th grade, a guy pulled up my skirt and showed my underwear to an entire crowded hallway. I was mortified. I felt terrible. A teacher had seen, reported the student, and he ended up getting suspended. It's rare that these sorts of things get caught and punished. There was the guy who exposed himself to the high school girls as they ran the cross-country races. (Never the boys' races and as far as I know, they never caught him.) I have had men stare obsessively at me at my old job at a public library, frightening me. I have had men try to follow me home. Stare at my building. Sit across the subway from me and stare, stare, stare.
This is not funny. This is scary. Why is our society encouraging this? Maybe you think I'm blowing this up, but I have been a victim of some really horrible things way too many times - and it has never been funny. 
It has been sad. It has been scary. It has been mortifying. It has been soul-destroying. But it has never been funny.

For a filling and delicious breakfast, try this protein-packed delicious breakfast. I adapted it from a recipe from one of those health food mags V sends me (Taste for Life). I made a big batch and will eat this all week.

Ingredients:1 cup quinoa, rinsed2 cups water
1 cup steel cut oats4 cups water
½ cup shredded coconut½ cup sliced almonds½ cup raisins1 t chia seeds1 teaspoon cinnamonDash or so of cardamomDash of salt(add whatever dried fruits or nuts or seeds you want – it’s all about your favourite taste)

1. 1.       Boil 2 cups of water. Add 1 cup of quinoa. When water is soaked up, put quinoa into a bowl to the side.
2. 2.       Boil 4 cups of water. Add steel cut oats. When it comes back to a boil, lower the heat. Once all the water is absorbed, turn off heat.
3. 3.       You can toast the coconut and the almonds if you want, but you don’t have to. Just keep an eye on toasting them if you do.
4. 4.       Add all of the ingredients together. Stir.
5. 5.       Eat. I prefer with lots of milk or some good Brown Cow vanilla yogurt.

For a filling and delicious breakfast, try this protein-packed delicious breakfast. I adapted it from a recipe from one of those health food mags V sends me (Taste for Life). I made a big batch and will eat this all week.

Ingredients:1 cup quinoa, rinsed2 cups water
1 cup steel cut oats4 cups water
½ cup shredded coconut½ cup sliced almonds½ cup raisins1 t chia seeds1 teaspoon cinnamonDash or so of cardamomDash of salt(add whatever dried fruits or nuts or seeds you want – it’s all about your favourite taste)

1. 1.       Boil 2 cups of water. Add 1 cup of quinoa. When water is soaked up, put quinoa into a bowl to the side.
2. 2.       Boil 4 cups of water. Add steel cut oats. When it comes back to a boil, lower the heat. Once all the water is absorbed, turn off heat.
3. 3.       You can toast the coconut and the almonds if you want, but you don’t have to. Just keep an eye on toasting them if you do.
4. 4.       Add all of the ingredients together. Stir.
5. 5.       Eat. I prefer with lots of milk or some good Brown Cow vanilla yogurt.

This event will be both a zine reading and zine sale to benefit The Ali Forney Center, a Manhattan-based organization which provides housing to homeless LGBT youth. Part of the Center’s facility is located near the Hudson River and was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. The event will include readings by zinesters as well as the sale of zines generously donated by many zinesters. 100% of proceeds will go to this important community resource.

We are aware of recent critiques of the Ali Forney Center*, and we concur with TransRadical blog** that it is crucial to rebuild AFC in order to continue creating safe and welcoming communities for LGBTQ youth everywhere.

DATE: Wednesday, January 9th, 7pm

LOCATION: Bluestockings

READERS:

Kate Angell (My Feminist Friends, A Thousand Times Yes)
Jamie Varriale Vélez (Sinvergüenza)
Jenna Freedman (Lower East Side Librarian, Barnard Zine Library)
+ more!

ZINE DONORS:

Stranger Danger Zine Distro, Kathleen McIntyre (The Worst), Lauren Denitzio (Get it Together), Kate Wadkins (International Girl Gang Underground), For the Birds Collective, Kate Angell, Amber Dearest (Fight Boredom Distro, The Triumph of our Tired Eyes), Maranda Elizabeth (Telegram), PonyBoy Press, Aimee Lusty (Booklyn, Pen15 Press), Amanda Stefanski, Jami Sailor (Your Secretary), Jordan Alam (The Cowation), Alycia Sellie (Brooklyn College Zine Library), Cindy Crabb (Doris), Natty Koper & Sivan Sabach (Bangarang This), Chella Quint (Adventures in Menstruating), Shawn Smith (Black Lesbians in the 70s Zine), Elvis Bakaitis (Homos in Herstory), Sarah Rose (Tazewell’s Favorite Eccentric, Once Upon a Distro), Maud Pryor (Marmalade Umlaut)

Zinesters are welcome to contact us with zines to donate! 100% of event proceeds will be donated to hurricane relief.

CONTACT
Kate Angell at myfeministfriends@gmail.com
Kate Wadkins at mskatherinewadkins@gmail.com

I’m really glad that Simon & Schuster has agreed to make “an exception to their current national eBook sales policy for libraries” for my humble little state so we can have ebooks of the selection for this coming year’s statewide reading program.

I’m a lot less glad that there’s a policy Simon & Schuster needs to make an exception to at all. As American Library Association President Maureen Sullivan put it, “It’s a rare thing in a free market when a customer is refused the ability to buy a company’s product and is told its money is ‘no good here.’”

The Iowa librarians who persuaded Simon & Schuster to make this exception had, apparently, quite a bit of persuading to do:

Simpson and Martin provided answers to a series of questions asked by S&S such as the history of the AIR [All Iowa Reads] program (now in its 11th year), how many Iowans read the AIR selection, how many copies are sold, names of past AIR titles, circulation numbers. “We gave the data we have,” said Martin. “While we don’t know the exact number of circulations of our selections, we do know that Iowa libraries own a total of 300 to 400 copies of each of the previous AIR titles.

The rest of the press release from the Iowa Center for the Book has a similarly librarianly, conciliatory tone. I don’t feel conciliatory. My gratitude toward Simon & Schuster is real, but it is neither wide nor deep. It shouldn’t be necessary to supply data to a publishing company to demonstrate that libraries buy books and patrons read them. We’ve been buying books from publishers for centuries now. It shouldn’t be necessary to beg, as a publicly-funded institution, to buy something that is freely available on the open market. Publishers ought to care about readers all the time, not just when someone begs them to make an exception.

I’m a librarian, and, as one of my library school professors said, librarianship is not a refuge. I’m a fighter, not a begger. Who’s with me?

Once again I’ve allowed a few months to pass since my last post- I started a new job over the summer and also began to attend grad school in September, and thus have been busier than usual! I really do intend to keep posting here, though, so definitely continue to check in.

Today I’m excited to write about a new collaborative zine which I just published last month- it’s called “A Thousand Times Yes: Reflections on Yoko Ono,” and is a tribute to one of my favorite artists and musicians. The zine includes interviews I conducted with people who have been inspired by Ono’s work- including Kathleen Hanna, Barbara Hammer, and Gina Birch- and features original artwork by members of my talented social circle.

If you’d like to buy a copy I encourage you to check out my Etsy Store or send me an email at myfeministfriends@gmail.com!

Zine cover by Elvis Bakaitis

The Sikh Coalition has released the FlyRights app, a phone app that gives anyone traveling, “who believe they’ve been the victim of discrimination by the TSA the ability to submit formal complaints directly from their smart phones.” And just in case you haven’t been hearing about the idiotic, embarrassing and rights eroding things happening at [...]

Sorry it took so long, but I finally got around to uploading our photos from our trip. Check them out! Related posts:Graphics and Photos from U.S. Government Vietnam wrap-up Eating and wandering through Korea Related posts:

1. Graphics and Photos from U.S. Government
2. Vietnam wrap-up
3. Eating and wandering through Korea

It’s been a busy few days full of trains, buses, walking, eating (especially eating!), meeting relatives (brothers, cousins, aunts, nieces and nephews). After spending last week in Daegu with Shinjoung’s parents, we headed up to Seoul and its surroundings to visit myriad relatives — I know some names, but mostly I remember them as relations [...] Related posts:

1. Right at home in Taegu, Korea
2. South Korea – U.S. FTA Jan 15-19
3. Photos from our SE Asia trip to Singapore, Vietnam and Korea

Yes we’re still on our SE Asian tour. Shinjoung and I have been in Taegu, Korea for the last few days. No videos to post yet (and also no tour books to consult ). We’ve been staying pretty close to home, visiting with family, eating, visiting with more family. As some of you know, Shinjoung’s [...] Related posts:

1. Eating and wandering through Korea
2. Mountain Voice
3. Hotspots for democracy