Legal Affairs: May | June 2003.
Think you know what is wrong with the Copyright Law?
This article by Jonathan Zittrain (Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and a director of its Berkman Center for Internet & Society)
goes into the details that you probably didn’t know. (What does the size of a parking lot have to do with copyright?) It is straightforward, funny, and illuminating.
Finding Governmental Statistical Data on the Web:
Three Empirical Studies of the FedStats Topics Page. by
Irina Ceaparu and Ben Shneiderman Department of Computer Science and
Human Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland College Park
Draft: May 13, 2003
This paper summarizes the results of three empirical studies with 15 users in each group of the FedStats Topics web page.
Keywords: digital government, statistical information, usability, web page design, categorical indexes, web navigation
Thanks to Gary Price’s Resource Shelf
A really solid examination of the limitations of Google.
EPA - Window to My Environment
“A powerful new web-based tool that provides a wide range of federal, state, and local information about environmental conditions and features in an area of your choice. This application is provided by U.S. EPA in partnership with federal, state and local government and other organizations.”
# Interactive Map - shows the location of regulated facilities, monitoring sites, water bodies, population density, perspective topographic views and so much more with hotlinks to state/federal information about these items of interest.
# Your Window - provides selected geographic statistics about your area of interest, including estimated population, county/urban area designations, local watersheds/waterbodies, etc.
# Your Environment - links to information from federal, state, and local partners on environmental issues like air and water quality, watershed health, Superfund sites, fish advisories, impaired waters, as well as local services working to protect the environment in your area.
Safeguarding the Vote By Doug Pibel. It’s extremely worrisome that election officials will accept a 10% error rate. “Touch-screen voting machines are vulnerable to both error and “downright sabotage,” computer-science and computer-security experts told Mr. Pibel. He says such voting machines have produced many “glitches, miscounts, odd results, and other
problems.” In response, some election officials have said they would accept an error rate of 10 percent.” (from July 18 issue of The Chronicle)
Here’s a new publication from NISO called, “Metadata Demystified: A Guide for Publishers”. Written by Amy Brand, Frank Daly, and Barbara Meyers, this online book does a good, succinct job at defining what metadata is–and ISN’T–as well as describing metadata standards in the publishing industry.
Hot off the presses, the July-August issue of D-Lib Magazine
Librarians plan Montreal convergence against WTO & GAT. Information about how the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) will adversely affect libraries. Thanks to LISnews.com for the link.
Library Journal Editorial
John N. Berry III, Editor-in-Chief — 3/1/2003
Consider the problems of electronic and digital communication. If a government, corporation, or enemy wants to suppress communication, all it has to do is pull the plug. The “system” goes down unintentionally often enough. When governments and virus hackers or spooks and spin doctors put their minds to it, they can wreak havoc.