From the Daily Mail:
Historians face a ‘black hole’ of lost information if we do not preserve websites and other digital records, the head of the British Library warned today.
Chief executive Lynne Brindley said our cultural heritage is at risk as the internet evolves and technologies become obsolete.
Archive of entries posted on January 2009
British Library warns of ‘black hole’ in history if websites and digital files are not preserved
State library always ready with answers
From KSNT:
There’s a legislative hotline to call with questions you might have about what’s happening in the Kansas Statehouse, and a group of three legislative reference librarians’ stand by everyday in hopes of helping you out.
White House Tech More Tired Than Wired
From Wired:
Prior to his inauguration, Barack Obama was, without a doubt, eagerly anticipating taking his seat in the Oval Office. What he likely wasn’t looking forward to was time-traveling backward into a workplace riddled with obsolete technology. . .
. . . Here, we run down a list of what’s known about tech in the White [...]
The Washington Post has just launched WhoRunsGov.com
From the About Us page:
Who Runs Gov offers a unique look at the world of Washington through its key players and personalities. Our site will feature profiles of a select group of government officials, including members of the new presidential administration, legislators, senior Congressional aides and committee staff, and experts at think tanks and [...]
Library of Congress Leads Nationwide Digitization Effort
From the Library of Congress:
The Library of Congress will digitally scan “The Heroic Life of Abraham Lincoln: The Great Emancipator” as the 25,000th book in its “Digitizing American Imprints” program, which scans aging “brittle” books often too fragile to serve to researchers. The program is sponsored by a $2 million grant from the Alfred P. [...]
Federal Register Announces New “Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents”
NARA Press Release:
The Office of the Federal Register (OFR), which is part of the National Archives, has created a new publication, to be called the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents. The Daily Compilation will appear on the Government Printing Office’s (GPO) new Federal Digital System (FDsys) January 20, 2009, to coincide with the incoming President’s [...]
Whistleblower Reveals New Abuses of Wiretapping Power
From FishbowlDC:
In an exclusive interview tonight on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” former NSA analyst Russell Tice says that the agency under the Bush administration secretly collected communications data on civilians, including journalists. Following is a transcript of tonight’s interview. . .
TICE: Well, I don’t know what our former president knew or didn’t know. I’m [...]
Spokesman says Obama is keeping his BlackBerry
From the Associated Press:
President Barack Obama is keeping his cherished BlackBerry, becoming the first sitting president to use e-mail.
“The president has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday. He did not say with [...]
Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
From the Washington Post:
If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.
Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of [...]
Bush Whitehouse.gov Archived
The content of Whitehouse.gov as it was on 20 January 2009 is available online via the National Archives site at:
http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/visit/bushgw.html.