From the Financial Times:
For someone writing under the name Robert Basic, it seemed too good to be true.
“My parents are never going to believe I’m going to be catalogued by the German national library,” the blogger wrote about the library’s plans to collect things German on the web to add to its century-old collection of [...]
Archive of entries posted on November 2008
Bloggers take German national library to task
Iraq Ally Lists Were Altered, Study Shows
From the New York Times:
Before invading Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration mounted a significant diplomatic offensive to rally international support, and officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department went to great lengths to trumpet those nations that joined what they termed “the coalition of the willing.”
But historians researching those early alliance-building efforts [...]
Openings at the Smithsonian
From the Washington Post:
Thousands of people lined up last week for the Smithsonian Institution’s long-awaited opening of the remodeled National Museum of American History. It wasn’t the only Smithsonian opening to be celebrated. Earlier in the week, the Smithsonian’s regents held their first-ever public meeting, an event that also will help improve the institution’s tattered [...]
Last Secrets of the Bush Administration – How to find out what we still don’t know
From the Washington Monthly:
. . . Gonzales’s March 2001 memo was the opening salvo in a war over information, one that began in the earliest days of the Bush administration and will continue beyond its end. The stakes, which no one could have predicted when the letter crossed Carlin’s desk, are now self-evidently enormous: when [...]
Don’t Remove Gov’t Records, Departing Officials Are Told
From Secrecy News:
Government officials were reminded recently that as they depart from government service with the end of the current Administration, they are not permitted to take classified information with them.
“Classified information is not personal property and may not be removed from the Government’s control by any departing official or employee. This includes ‘extra’copies.”
That timely [...]
LegiStorm launches earmarks database
From LegiStorm:
We are proud to launch the latest free LegiStorm resource, a free searchable database to track the explosive growth of legislative earmarks.
The earmarks database builds on other LegiStorm data so users can find important connections between otherwise unconnected facts, such as between earmarks and the corporate-sponsored travel or personal financial holdings of members of [...]
Federal Register Announces Launch of New Electronic Public Inspection Desk
From NARA:
The Office of the Federal Register has created an Electronic Public Inspection Desk to provide free worldwide electronic access to public documents. For the first time in the 72-year existence of the daily Federal Register, the documents on file are available for viewing anytime, anywhere. Every Federal business day, anyone with access to a [...]
France takes lead in digital library
From the International Herald Tribune:
France has never been shy about promoting its culture, so few were surprised that Paris took a close interest in a new European digital library designed to showcase the Continent’s history, literature, arts and science.
But when the new site, called Europeana, begins life Thursday, more than half of its two million [...]
Readers Overwhelm Europe’s New Digital Library
From Yahoo! News:
Europe’s heritage went digital Thursday when the European Union launched an online library putting famous works such as Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony just a mouse click away.
Europeana (www.europeana.eu) gives multilingual access to two million digitized books and other items of cultural and historical significance held in over 1,000 institutions in [...]
Library of Congress and National Library of China Sign World Digital Library Agreement
From the SLA Public Policy blog:
The Library of Congress and the National Library of China have signed an agreement to work collaboratively in developing the World Digital Library. The two libraries agreed to provide content to the World Digital Library and to cooperate in such areas as the development and maintenance of the Chinese-language [...]