e-gov pubs

Contribute to the Open Government Ideas Dialogue

An “Ideas Dialogue” has been development as part of the Government of Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2.0 Consultation:

What is the Idea Dialogue? It is a way to take the next step in building Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2.0. We’d like you to share your ideas on ways the Government of Canada could focus its efforts toward increased openness and transparency. You could also help build on someone else’s idea by adding your comments on the idea details discussion pages.

Canada’s first Action Plan on Open Government helped us make significant strides in providing easier access to the data and information Canadians want.

This could be a great opportunity for the government information community to make concrete suggestions for improving access to government information and data in Canada. Please, contribute your recommendations to this consultation, spread the word, and upvote the ideas you support!

Un dialogue en matière d’idées relatives à l’élaboration du Plan d’action du Canada pour un gouvernement ouvert 2.0 a été développé:

En quoi consiste le dialogue en matière d’idées? Il s’agit d’un moyen de passer à l’étape suivante dans l’élaboration du Plan d’action du Canada pour un gouvernement ouvert 2.0. Nous aimerions connaître vos idées sur la façon dont le gouvernement du Canada pourrait orienter ses efforts en vue d’accroître son ouverture et sa transparence. Vous pourriez également enrichir l’idée d’une autre personne en ajoutant vos commentaires aux pages de discussion relatives aux détails de l’idée en question.

Le premier Plan d’action du Canada pour un gouvernement ouvert nous a aidé à réaliser d’importants progrès qui ont permis de faciliter l’accès des Canadiens à l’information.

#CRL_Leviathan Session 3: New Models of Stewardship: An Agenda for CRL and North American Research Libraries

Government Records and Information: An Inventory of the Major Threats and Challenges
Bernard Reilly, President, CRL

Major threats and challenges:
- Scale of the challenge > the enormous and constantly growing volume of information and government records being produced, as well as data being collected and disseminated > now must use computer-assisted research and applications to analyze this content for decision-making, preservation, context-generation, etc.
- The unknown unknowns > we don’t know what we’re missing and we don’t know the size of what we’re dealing with > this makes prioritization, decision-making, and the framing of a preservation strategy very difficult
- There is no longer a distinction between what’s a government record and what’s a government document > in the digital realm these terms are almost interchangeable > a lot of material falls in a grey area (is an agency website a government record or document?)
- We’re facing reductions in capacity and funding in the big organizations that have traditionally been trusted with the long-term preservation of government information > at the same time, these organizations are being asked to do much more and the reality is that they will only be able to do less
  - These institutions will play different roles in the future > NARA could be a collaborator with government agencies in decisions on systems used and adopted to produce and manage government documents and records – there has been start to this process with the development of NARA guidelines on this topic
  - Different priorities of higher education institutions > used to be stewards of information and content needed by researchers, but there are so many pressures on these institutions and the return on investment is farther in the future, which makes it harder for institutions to provide support
- Larger role of tech companies and cloud > in the short term these companies support the maintenance of digital content and in providing services for use and discoverability of this content > social media companies sometimes considered to be de facto repositories > must use caution, as content could easily disappear
- Bigger role of private companies like ProQuest mediating use and access to government content > increasingly these companies are in possession of data about how the content is being used, which could be very valuable for libraries
- Must get a better understanding of civic-minded organizations > these organizations are in the government information supply chain > there are many things we don’t know about the systems of private organizations that are storing government information and how the finances of these organizations work > there is a lack of economic transparency

Panel Discussion: Prospective Roles and Actions for Libraries and CRL
Mary Case, University Librarian, University of Illinois at Chicago

Who gets to determine the value of the information? Governments, scholars? > there is tension between the desire of scholars to have everything available and how we manage all of this information with the laws and rights that govern it
The technologies do exist for improve metadata creation and document tracking, but it is not yet being applied in the domain of government information
We need to rebuild the connection between records managers and content creators > re-education on importance of documents for institutional memory and our ability to move forward
A big challenge lies with the fact that everything has become data > there is a push to ensure that all information can be mashed, taken apart, and recontextualized in some manner
When we talk data, we’re being encouraged to get closer and closer to the point when the data is being created > moving up stream will be critical for us
When trying to address the challenges of born digital information we need to think outside the FDLP box and find ways to do more, collaboratively
What can research libraries do?
- Tell the story and explain why preserving government information is important, why any government data is critical for our present and our future
- There are several local and regional consortia > can we model and do pilots with local and regional governments and researchers to see how we might manage information more locally
- Urge more movement above stream (encourage GPO and NARA to put out best practices – don’t wait)
- Have more conversations > can we figure out how to agree with ProQuest and others to create a trusted digital repository where if the company goes out of business we can maintain access > we can’t keep replicating

Brent Roe, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Research Libraries

Government information needs to be held independently of government > what role do research libraries have in this?
Some realities in Canada:
- At the federal level, we need to work with government information in both languages
- Crown copyright at the federal level (still 50 years)
- Potential constraints on what researchers can do with information, but policy allows quite liberal use of content
Some current developments:
- Depository program no longer distributing print publications, only electronic
- Open Government Action Plan
- Open data portal
- A virtual library is envisioned
- Open Data Institute forthcoming
Many existing initiatives bring together research libraries and government information:
Maybe we don’t need to keep everything? We should consider this perspective
It may be most logical for us to simply buy what’s provided by third parties because we don’t really have the capacity to preserve everything ourselves
Is there a way that research libraries can collaborative on web crawls? > each institution could be responsible for different domains or agencies
Research libraries have an important advocacy role to play
How to find money for these new opportunities / projects? > we need to come around to the idea that we may have to start and hope that the projects will get supported in the future

Ingrid Parent, University Librarian, University of British Columbia and former Assistant Deputy Minister, Library and Archives Canada

The situations in Canada and the United States have many similarities and differences, but what is clear is that a lot needs to be done
Support at the international level is needed to ensure long-term accessibility and integrity > generally not enough is happening > in European libraries the focus is on copyright exceptions for libraries and e-lending and digital government information is not top of mind
National archives and libraries are addressing some challenges, but there is little collaboration
Many questions about who does what, how do we do this at the international level, and who pays for what?
PERSIST: UNESCO Digital Strategy for Information Sustainability > helping secure mechanisms of good governance and access to information, government documents are part of this scope
There is no one organization that can tackle the issue of born digital government information > collaboration with a variety of stakeholders will be key
There is a group in INFLA that deals specifically with government information and this may be a way for us to bring these issues to the international stage > perhaps an advocacy statement can be drafted to take to the international level
We are all struggling with digital big data, but the technology is there to be used creatively to meet our objectives and we should embrace and explore this > let’s be ambitious and pragmatic

Conclusions: a New Strategic Framework for Collective Action by North American Academic Libraries and New Multi-year Priorities for CRL
Bernard Reilly, President, CRL

Analysis > we need to know more about what we don’t know > how gov info is produced, managed, and distributed and how gov records are declassified > more about systems and software involved inside governments > more about the organizations tasked with long-term management of government information > more about commercial actors, NGOs, and civic organizations > more about the consumption and the uses of government data and records
- Need to locate and exploit expertise within the CRL community > collections development communities, libraries, people that know gov info and data, etc.
- Need to know more about what’s at risk > the problems with declassification and things going missing > many problems seem to be in the access pipeline
- In danger of losing material from foreign governments with unstable regimes and corrupt governments
Communicate > we need to tell the story better > articulate what we want and what we need
Audit > We need to audit commercial repositories and preservation repositories
We need to stop talking about e-government and paperless government documents as if they are manageable within the framework of the FDLP
Do we really want to put so much money in web archiving? What are we getting out of it? Is what we’re archiving going to be used? Should we focus more on at risk data that will matter if it disappears?
- We should look more closely at the research being done by social scientists, economists, historians, etc. who are using web content and have stake in the near-term preservation of content

#CRL_Leviathan Session 2: Libraries and the Information of Governments

Keynote: Approaching Leviathan: The Dangers and Opportunities of “Big Data”
John S. Bracken, Director, Journalism and Media Innovation, Knight Foundation

How to deal with big data is only half the story > we must also focus on organizational culture and adaptation or we lose track of the importance of culture and people
There is so much data now > what’s important is the process, what you do with it, and the talent you build around it > we must adapt and create a bridge between traditional skills and new quantitative approaches
There is skepticism about technology and our reliance on it and this is colliding with the emerging culture of break things and focusing on future and the next challenges
How does the civic sector do a better job of adaptability to build the tools that people want and need?
“Make something people want or move on” outlook is much harder to accomplish in civil society
The biggest cognitive switch we need to make is enabling ourselves to make mistakes
The Knight foundation works in the space of news and journalism, but links it to the community > learn more about the Knight Foundation here: http://www.knightfoundation.org/

Government Records and Information: Real Risks and Potential Losses
James A. Jacobs, Data Services Librarian Emeritus, UC San Diego, and technical advisor for CRL Certification Advisory Paneldfd

There are many gaps in what we know: no list of born-digital government information, no list of all government websites, no list of preserved born-digital gov info
What we do know: FDLP libraries have preserved millions of volumes of non-digital government information and most born digital information is not held, managed, organized, or preserved by libraries
- Preservation is at the mercy of budgets and social priorities > risk increases if persevering agency is the creator and doesn’t have preservation as mission or if preserving agency governed by politicians
The production of digital documents is far outpacing what’s being done to preserve these documents
Key issues:
- Versioning
- The need for persistent URLs
- The need for temporal context (ex: link to version of document or site that author linked to at time of publication and not updated version)
- E-government issues (e-gov often hides information behind services > how to we preserve this information)
- Relying on government for preservation and free access (most agencies do not have the mandate to preserve indefinitely – this is even the case for GPO)
- Collections need services to provide important context for interpretation
When we create dark archives we’re not creating a value for our community > we need to create immediate value for our users
Who should preserve?
- Option one: the government alone
- Option two: the government with non-governmental partners (ex: GPO + LOCKSS-USDOCS)
- Option three: non-governmental organizations without government cooperation (ex: Internet Archive)
There are different methods for selecting what needs to be preserved (the solutions should be mixed and the issue should be tackled collaboratively)
- Broad web harvesting (ex: Internet Archive)
- Focused selection (ex: by agency or title by tile)
- Digital deposit (ex: deposit by creators to memory institutions)
When planning for preservation focus on different user-communities: don’t look at the web and decide what to preserve, look at the web and preserve based on what users will need
Every library should participate in digital preservation > it’s about building the value of libraries > collections and services should be reliable and useful > shared collections and services can be built with different contributions – not all libraries have to be data centres
Summary of key points:
- Preserve born digital government information – the technology exists
- Every library can and should participate
- We can add value to the information by building collections of use to our user communities

The Digital Future of FDsys and the Federal Depository Library Program: A Public Policy Analysis
R. Eric Petersen, Specialist in American National Government, Congressional Research Service

Challenges
- Access and service (tangible, digital, or both?)
- Costs (Less print distribution, but still costs libraries to maintain
- FDSys – there is no good model for permanent digital retention > we will have to update software and touch digital assets to make sure access continues > ongoing investment and responsibility required > every 8-10 years will require entire overhauls and updates
- Born digital materials > identification, retention, preservation, service
- Tangibles > retention, digitization, consolidation, service
Lack of consensus around:
- What is to be captured > how to count – websites / documents vs. records
- How to capture and by whom > GPO / FDSys, originating agencies, third parties
Legislative change is slow without clear agreement regarding the solutions among stakeholders
Before Congress will engage, we need clear proposals that are broadly supported and offered by stakeholders and interested parties > they must cover issues such as enduring standards for digital retention, who collects and retains born digital content and tangible content, and how the costs will be managed

Panel Discussion: New Models of Access: The Role of Third Party Aggregators and Publishers

Susan Bokern, VP, Information Solutions, ProQuest

We all have different roles to play and there’s enough content to go around
ProQuest’s essential role is to add value to content
ProQuest is focusing on researchers and the improvement of workflow processes to create new research output > enabling researchers to access content more efficiently, providing tools to improve workflow, visualization and analysis tools, not just about content but also about context
The process of adding value begins with market research (surveys, advisory boards, focus groups to identify known and unknown needs) > creating acquisitions strategy to develop collection > preserving content or data > keeping the technology up to date > identifying where and how to obtain the content
ProQuest takes preservation seriously > content is stored on their own servers > currently exploring a longer-term storage and preservation solution (ex: Iron Mountain)

Robert Lee, Director of Online Publishing and Strategic Partnerships, East View Information Service

East View is an aggregator for academic institutions and a variety of international governments
Some example projects: GIS, big data, political rallies ephemera
Big focus on content from Russia and China > not usually seeking or producing translations, but going after the information and data that’s not always available elsewhere or not the same as what’s provided in English
There is an operational risk is that the information received could later be reclassified
In China, content can be made available and digitized very quickly but it can also disappear or be blocked quickly, too
Interested in exploring cross-platform solutions for content

Robert Dessau, CEO, voxgov

Voxgov harvests materials from over 10K web destinations each day > every 6 mins the system looks for new URLs > 49 diff types of documents (fact sheet, social media, congressional, federal register, speeches, etc.)
The collection process has evolved rapidly > learned to identify when a website’s format has changed to maintain quality intake of data > 18-22%, depending on the group, falls into the broken link category
Interested in tracking conversations from beginning to end to allow a much deeper and more comprehensive level of research
The involvement of third parties in the preservation and access process is inevitable
Mining the text we have to bring value has not yet been realized

#CRL_Leviathan Session 1: Libraries and the Records of Governments

The CRL Leviathan conference, Libraries and government information in the age of big data, took place in Chicago on April 24 and 25, 2014. CLA-GIN’s Co-moderator, Catherine McGoveran, attended the conference and has compiled notes of the key points from each presentation. The following are notes from the first session, Libraries and the records of governments. Notes from session two, Libraries and the information of governments, will be posted in the coming days.

Welcome and Keynote: Information, Transparency and Open Government: A Public Policy Perspective
Thomas S. Blanton, Executive Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University

Born-digital document production is far outpacing the physical documents we have in our government archives from the past two centuries
There are many barriers that limit an accurate understanding and adoption of open government
The Electronic Records Archive – a flagship legacy system – doesn’t come close to being comprehensive
Documents from the Clinton administration ordered declassified have not yet reached the shelves of the national archives – a lot more support is needed (financial and personnel) to speed up the declassification process and make these documents available
Research libraries are on a trajectory from the collection and preservation of special collections to data curators > our future is in the interactive collaboration with others, crowd-sourcing to make sure the data is available
The opening of government data can help make incredibly important revelations, which can lead to better government and consumer decisions
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will fail to meet mission unless it becomes an offsite backup for electronic government records
Only 2% of what the government creates gets saved at NARA
We know of the huge power of the National Security Agency (NSA) to retrieve, store, and link records > NSA does records management well and this expertise should be used by the National Archives for off-site back up of government information > this would fit well with national security mandate and could be a way for the agency to restore trust and engage in the civic duty of preserving and making available government information

Historical Research and Government Records in the Era of Big Data: a Historian’s Perspective
Matthew J. Connelly, Professor of History, Columbia University

The government info available is the function of a political process > it is the relationship between knowledge and power > where do electronic records fit into this?
There is a crisis in democratic accountability and national security > it is a national security issue when departments and agencies don’t have functioning / accurate archives, it opens the government to foreign threats and is an issue about which every citizen should care
It is doubtful that, as historians, we will ever be able render a complete account of government documents, records, and decisions
We don’t know what we don’t know
The government should move more aggressively to use data mining to manage records
Archives are also sites of expectation, not just memory > they’re about the future

“To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past so that can gain in judgment in creating their own future.“ – Roosevelt

The system is so overloaded that the info that should be protected has suffered because of over protection
Historically, secrecy has been in the eye of the beholder, which makes it difficult to set a classification standard that satisfies everyone
With the transition to electronic, hundreds of thousands of paper records were lost, because they were not migrated to digital and not kept
The budget for declassification has diminished and the budget for keeping secrets has skyrocketed > though there has been a huge growth in the amount of information created, there has been a steep decline in the amount of records declassified
The amount the government is currently spending on declassification is 15% of what was spent in the late 90s
Data mining can help us identify gaps in the documents released and withheld by government and text analysis can help us identify the trends of declassified words and issues
By comparing redacted and later released unredacted documents, we can see the patterns of official secrecy > this could help government find what topics are more sensitive, which and aid the classification and declassification process

Read Matthew Connelly’s recent article on declassification policies, “The Ghost Files”, in a recent issue of Columbia magazine. Visit Connolly’s Declassification Engine: http://www.declassification-engine.org/

Panel Discussion: Preserving the Electronic Records of Governments: Issues and Challenges

Paul Wester, Jr., Chief Records Officer for the United States Government, National Archives and Records Administration

There is high level administrative support for records management (presidential memo) > we need to change how we manage records and make them available to the public and we cannot do things on an individual level any more
Directive developed with deadlines and guidelines to transform how records management is done across the government
Directive goals: transform the entire record keeping function from analog to digital automated approach
- Federal agencies must manage all permanent electronic records in an electronic format by December 31, 2019
- All agencies must manage both permanent and temporary email records in an accessible electronic format by December 31, 2016
Agencies must manage documents in automated ways to be effective
Training, awareness, and accountability are the main focus of the directive
How we manage email will transfer to how we manage other types of electronic records
We need to focus on records of relevance and work with universities and archives to do research to set records free and build new connections to records (collaborate to build exhibits, showcase research projects, provide context, etc.) > value could be short term but visibility will be long term

William A. Mayer, Executive for Research Services for the National Archives and Records Administration

Focusing on building a national framework for archives research services to reach more people (now limited to physical archives locations)
NARA is changing the way staff access and interact with the web and with records > as learning is human-to-human we still need humans to be involved with dealing with records
Archives are seen as the end of the records management pipeline, but involvement needs to start farther upstream
NARA still has 30 years of paper records to come to Archives
While we may need to consider how to bring in more records to do data analysis, we also need to figure out how to get rid of those records that really don’t have value because we don’t have the capacity to preserve everything
In terms of web harvesting, one issue for consideration is the capture of content-rich intranet sites
NARA would like to engage in more small partnerships around building context-rich interfaces for resources

Cecilia Muir, Chief Operating Officer, Library and Archives Canada

Our government planning to ensure that over 98% will have access to high speed internet even in remove parts of country by 2017 (Digital Canada 150, p. 7)
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has a link to at least three initiatives in the government’s Action Plan on Open Government
Shared Services Canada is consolidating the government’s digital services
LAC mandate: ensure documentary heritage of Canada is preserved, be the source of enduring knowledge accessible to all, facilitate cooperation among library and archive communities, serve as the continuing memory of government of Canada
Departments and agencies focus on managing information of “business value” and LAC receives records of “enduring value”
There has been a shift in thinking about the separation between government records and publications > people are less and less concerned about format and now focus on content and value of content
A risk-based approached needs to be implemented to manage the increasing amount of information
LAC is interested in collaborating with various partners to support research, access, and context building

Paul Wagner, Director General and Chief Information Officer, Information Technology Branch, Library and Archives Canada

Documents must be accessible, or at least discoverable, for us to meet our mission
We are moving towards digital curation model > the goal is to become a trusted digital repository > this used to simply be a tech based solution (buy right system), now it’s about capacity and ability to work in a digital world
We need to have same rigour for digital assets that we have for physical documents and we’re not there yet
Not all digital assets need to be in Government of Canada data centres, as not everything is private > we are going to work with the private sector to see how we can manage and preserve these records
Context is key, as many clients don’t know how to interact with the data / information > we need to provide the context to them so they can understand > LAC can create user experience to provide context and access while the data may be held somewhere else
The data and information we have is valuable, but only in context > user contributed content / analysis that takes massive amounts of data and finds trends and stories are what create the value in that information

_________________________

Updates on NARA records activities can be found on the NARA Records Express Blog: blogs.archives.gov/records-express

Canadian government documents digitization registry

At Government Information Day at the University of Toronto on November 1^st, there was significant interest from participants in the development of a “registry” of completed, ongoing, and proposed digitization projects for Canadian government documents.

A bilingual Google form to collect and store digitization project information has been created to get this project off the ground. This platform was chosen because it can act as a simple starting point – data can easily be updated and exported to another tool in the future.

The registry is now open and you can contribute content in English and French.

If you have content to contribute, please, enter the details directly in the form at the following link: http://bit.ly/gov-docs or send an email to gsg@uottawa.ca.

Results of the form can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/gov-docs-results

** Note: Every bit of information helps, so if you heard of a project but are not sure of all the details, send an email to gsg@uottawa.ca so they can begin to investigate.

The success of this project will rely heavily on the participation of members in our community. Please take a few minutes to contribute to and share this important project. Again, this is a starting point. Some of our colleagues have expressed an interest in further developing this project in the future, so let’s get a solid foundation established!

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L’événement « Government Information Day » à l’Univeristé de Toronto, ayant eu lieu le 1^er novembre 2013, a suscité beaucoup d’intérêt auprès des participants à l’égard du développement d’un registre de projets de numérisation, soient terminés, en cours ou proposés de documents du gouvernement du Canada.

Pour lancer cette initiative, un groupe de l’uOttawa a créé un formulaire Google bilingue pour recueillir et enregistrer les renseignements sur les projets de numérisation. Nous avons choisi cet outil parce qu’il s’agit d’un point de départ simple ; l’information peut être facilement mise à jour et exportée vers un autre outil à l’avenir.

Nous vous invitons à participer à ce projet, soit en anglais ou en français.

Si vous avez du contenu à partager, veuillez nous le faire parvenir au moyen du formulaire se trouvant au lien suivant : http://bit.ly/gov-docs ou par courriel à gsg@uottawa.ca.

Les résultats de ce projet peuvent être consultés ici : http://bit.ly/gov-docs-results

*** Notez que tous les champs du formulaire ne sont pas obligatoires donc ne vous inquiétez pas si vous ne remplissez pas tous les champs. Si vous manquez de temps pour le remplir complètement ou si, par exemple, vous avez entendu parler d’un projet, mais n’êtes pas sûr des détails, envoyez-nous un courriel afin que nous puissions commencer la recherche. Chaque petit détail compte.

La réussite de ce projet dépendra en grande partie de la participation des membres de notre communauté. Veuillez prendre quelques minutes pour contribuer et prendre part à cette importante initiative. Nous soulignons le fait qu’il s’agit d’un point de départ. Certains de nos collègues ont exprimé un intérêt à faire évoluer ce projet ultérieurement, alors aidez-nous à leur offrir une solide assise !

Open Government Partnership – IRM Canada Report 2012-2013

“In January and February of 2014, the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) will produce 35 Progress Reports for public comment. These 35 countries joined OGP in April 2012, and the IRM progress reports cover the first full year of action plan implementation.”

The IRM Canada Progress Report 2012-2013 provides valuable and interesting insight into the commitments and progress made as part of Canada’s Open Government Partnership action plan. Some highlights include the proposal for a Virtual Library, the Open Government Directive and Open Government License, GCWeb commitments for a consolidated online presence, the opening of GoC records, the state of the data.gc.ca portal, and a lot more.

Please take the time to review this important document, available here: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/country/canada/comment-report/irm-comments-canada-report

Free data available from Statistics Canada website

Media advisory: More free data on the Statistics Canada website

December 8, 2011

http://www42.statcan.gc.ca/smr09/smr09_035-eng.htm

OTTAWA — On February 1, 2012, self-serve standard products available on the Statistics Canada website—including CANSIM and census data products—will become free of charge.

Statistics Canada will maintain current pricing practices for products such as print publications, maps, CD-ROMs, and custom products and services.

Licensing restrictions for the use of Statistics Canada data products will be removed.

Concerning DLI licence, we are working with licensing at Statistics Canada and will be back with a proposal. It may allow to be more open with some data but others like PUMF will still need a licence. I will get back to you on this aspect but it does not change the DLI functioning since the DLI subscription covers the DLI infrastructure, the training and support.

Digitization of Publications relating to the Parliament of Canada

Subject: Digitization of Publications relating to the Parliament of Canada/Numérisation des publications se rapportant au Parlement du Canada

A working paper on digitization of publications relating to the Parliament of Canada has been made available on the Parliamentary Internet. http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/Digitization/index-e.asp

This document reviews the state of digitization of papers relating to the Parliament of Canada as of April 2009 in order to determine:

which published papers relating to the operations of Parliament have been digitized
by which organization;
where the digitized works are housed;
who is permitted access &
plans for future digitization

The goal is to help inform the development of a coherent strategy amongst the various stakeholders to digitize, make available and preserve over the long term, the corpus of Canadian publications relating to the operations of Parliament since 1867.

Comments, updates and suggested revisions are welcomed.

Please forward comments to Michèle Robichaud, Canadian Government Information Specialist, Library of Parliament at robicm@parl.gc.ca, or Ian McDonald, Government and Law Specialist, Library and Archives Canada at Ian.mcdonald@lac-bac.gc.ca.

William R. Young
Parliamentary Librarian

(posted by C.Rollins, Source Govinfo-L)

Web Archiving Book

Thanks to Andrew Hubbertz for bringing this to our attention! Many of us are trying to figure out how to deal with electronic government publications.

Just published:
"Web Archiving"
Masanès, Julien (Ed.)
2006, VII, 234 p., 28 illus., Hardcover
ISBN-10: 3-540-23338-5
ISBN-13: 978-3-540-23338-1

"The public information available on the Web today is larger than
information distributed on any other media. The raw nature of Web
content, the unpredictable remote changes that can affect it, the
wide variety of formats concerned, and the growth in data-driven
websites make the preservation of this material a challenging
task, requiring specific monitoring, collecting and preserving
strategies, procedures and tools.

Julien Masanès, Director of the European Archive, has assembled
contributions from computer scientists and librarians that
altogether encompass the complete range of tools, tasks and
processes needed to successfully preserve the cultural heritage
of the Web. This book serves as a standard introduction for everyone
involved in keeping alive the immense amount of online information,
and it covers issues related to building, using and preserving Web
archives both from the computer scientist and librarian viewpoints.

Practitioners will find in this book a state-of-the-art overview of
methods, tools and standards they need for their activities.
Researchers as well as advanced students in computer science will
use it as an introduction to this new field with a hopefully
stimulating review of open issues where future work is needed."

Read more detailed information
(including table of contents and sample chapter):
http://www.springer.com/3-540-23338-5

Government Information Network

A CLA Network