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House bill would cast FBI as copyright Pinkertons
June 23, 2003In 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. “
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The Internet under Surveillance
June 23, 2003Reporters 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 [...]
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WHY WE MUST TALK ABOUT THE INFORMATION COMMONS
June 23, 2003David 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 [...]
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Bethesda statement on open access publishing
June 23, 2003Free 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.
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Great data, but will it last?
June 20, 2003Research 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. [...]
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SuDocs Reorg
June 20, 2003Superintendent 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.
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The USA PATRIOT Act and American Libraries
June 19, 2003Information 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.”
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Semantic Web in the news
June 19, 2003News 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
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Nobody Uses Advanced Search…..Except the People who Do
June 19, 2003ongoing 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 [...]
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Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices
June 19, 2003“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 [...]