Library Stuff

“Like many attorneys, Mark Wojcik used to view law libraries as a means to an end. But thanks to an innovative outreach campaign conducted by the Law Library of Congress, Wojcik now relishes the tweets, blog posts and emails that reveal the riches of the world’s largest legal collection. “It’s like the law library is coming to me,” says Wojcik, a professor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago. “They want to show me their treasures or share with me a secret about how I can use their collections more effectively.”

via ABA Journal

“EPIC, along with more than 40 transparency organizations, thanked the House Committee on Oversight for sending a letter to the Department of Justice about the importance of the Freedom of Information Act. The open government organizations said “outdated FOIA regulations, excessive fee assessments, growing FOIA backlogs, and the misuse of exemptions are issues that continually frustrate FOIA requesters” and expressed hope that the Committee would share the Department of Justice’s responses with the public.”

via EPIC

“The House of Representatives’ document portal, docs.house.gov, launched in January 2012 with a surprisingly rich and relevant set of data: all bills and amendments (including drafts) that would come to the floor over the next week, and extensive XML metadata about each document and when it was updated. It’s pretty difficult to overstate the value of this data. After all, information on what the House is about to do is vital — to participate effectively in our democracy, you need to have some lead time. The House has doubled down on its pledge to keep innovating, and has begun to release what promises to be an expansive set of committee information. Docs.house.gov’s expansion in breadth from floor proceedings to include committee activities provides significant new opportunities for the public to understand how the House functions as well as a much earlier entry point for citizens to become substantively involved in the legislative process.”

via Sunlight Foundation Blog

“The Congressional Record app now works across all iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad).  The iPad app has been downloaded over 12,000 times.  I’m guessing with this update, that number will go up.”

via LOC

National Journal – “Barack Obama punched his ticket to the White House with the help of innovative digital campaigning, and since arriving he’s overhauled and created high-profile Web sites like WhiteHouse.gov and Recovery.gov. Yet amidst this push for transparency, some Congressional committee Web sites — crucial for disseminating hearing schedules, transcripts and legislation — haven’t caught up.”

ReadWriteWeb – “Today is an important day in the history of politics and technology – the US Senate voting record is finally available in machine-readable XML (extensible markup language) format. Mashups, vote tracking and comparison applications will now be welcomed in the front door of Congress as first class technologies.”

“Metavid is a project which seeks to capture, stream, archive and facilitate real-time collective [re]mediation of legislative proceedings. Metavid makes use of entirely free and open source software and video codecs to make both the footage and the architecture of the site available, accessible and recontextualizable.” (via)

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