In its traditional irreverent way, The Register describes a new House bill that will “divert limited FBI investigative resources from solving serious crimes and preventing terror attacks to waging a new War against File Sharing. “
Reporters sans frontires - International Publication of second annual report on cyberspace : “The Internet under Surveillance - Obstacles to the free flow of information online.” This report is about attitudes to the Internet by the powerful in 60 countries, between spring 2001 and spring 2003. The preface is by Vinton G. Cerf, who is often called the “father” of the Internet. The report is available in pdf. There is an article about the report in ZDnet.
David Brollier, cofounder of Public Knowledge, a new policy advocacy group for the information commons, says talking about the information commons is important because t underscores the fact that the American people collectively own certain public resources, and because it helps focus attention on the fundamental political implications of new technologies, markets and intellectual property laws. (Thanks to LISnews.)
Free Online Scholarship. Peter Suber posts an important statement on open access publishing from an
April meeting of foundations, scientists, editors, publishers, and open
access proponents.
Research Information. What are the challenges facing digital preservation? One is quantity:
Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library notes, “the world produces 1-2 exabytes (i.e. 1-2 billion gigabytes) of unique information per year, of which only 0.003 per cent is in printed form. That’s equivalent to 250Mb for every person on the planet. Each day sees the production of 7.3 million new web pages alone.” This feature article from Research Information outlines the issues. Thanks to RLG ShelfLife.
Superintendent of Documents Reorganization Plan
The Superintendent of Documents reorganization that was discussed at the Depository Library Council meeting in Reno in April has now been approved by the Public Printer.
Information for Social Change no. 16 by Robin Rice. “There are at least three major reasons why librarians oppose the intelligence agencies’ powers to snoop around their users’ records.”
News
To bee or not to bee
Search engines may be remarkable resources, but they’re not intelligent. Will a new ’semantic’ web be clever enough, asks Danny Bradbury, to tell a flying insect from a work of music?
18 June 2003
ongoing On Search: The Users
Tim Bray’s ongoing history of “searching” notes that most folks want a simple search form and enter on average 1.3 search words. His conclusion is that “anyone whos building search needs to focus almost all their energy on doing an as-good-as-possible job given those 1.3 words and no other inputs.”
“Funded by a grant awarded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in the fall of 2001, the University of Denver (Denver, Colorado) spearheaded a multi-state collaborative initiative to create a virtual collection of widely dispersed digital resources on the topic, Western trails. …another significant component of this multi-state initiative was development of a set of Dublin-Core based best practices by representatives from cultural heritage institutions beyond the original four participating states.”
Western States Dublin Core Metadata Best Practice (pdf)