October 14, 2009

CLA Resolution on USA PATRIOT Act

Released yesterday:

October 13, 2009 • SACRAMENTO, CA - The California Library Association (CLA) has just announced a resolution calling on Congress to dramatically revise the up-for-renewal USA PATRIOT Act, passed hurriedly in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks.

Librarians have been front-line opponents of certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act since its passage. The Act has made it possible, under Section 215, for the FBI to request and obtain library records for large numbers of individuals without reason to believe they are involved in illegal activity. This jeopardizes the basic ethics of the library profession, expressed in the Library Bill of Rights of the American Library Association.

Expanding on the American Library Association's PATRIOT Act resolution last July, the CLA resolution goes further to address imminent First and Fourth Amendment concerns with Section 505. This provision grants the FBI broad authority to sidestep constitutional safeguards though use of National Security Letters to obtain information.

CLA Intellectual Freedom Committee chair, Mary Minow, a leading expert on library law, said, "It's past time for the blatantly unconstitutional aspects of this legislation to be removed from the books, and now is the opportunity for Congress to act."

Two sections of the PATRIOT Act are currently up for reauthorization, with sunsets at the end of December 2009, and librarians across the country see this as an opportunity to correct those provisions that attack basic civil liberties. CLA's resolution calls for Congress to allow Section 215 to sunset, to amend Section 505 to "include a clear exemption for library records," and in general to intensify Congressional oversight of the use of the Act.

CLA Resolution on 2009 Reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act (PDF - 481k)

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September 02, 2009

From Kumar Percy Jayasuriya of Georgetown Law Library via GOVDOC-L:

You may have heard that some law librarians have drafted a petition to ask the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to enhance the search features of PACER (the database of federal judicial information) and to make it free for GPO depository libraries.

On September 11 Erika Wayne of Stanford Law Library, Terry Martin of the University of Texas Law Library, and I will deliver the petition to the AO's office as well as staff members from the Judiciary Committee, Appropriations Committee, and Senator Lieberman's office. Please take this opportunity to join hundreds of librarians and such legal notables as Jonathan Zittrain, Eugene Volokh, Tim O'Reilly, Mitch Kapor, Ellen Miller, and many others in this effort to update PACER.

As government documents librarians, please consider lending your voice to this effort to create more open government.

Please feel free to write any personal comments if you sign the petition. From the petition web site you can read some of the insightful comments and additional requests individuals have submitted when they signed. We invite your input.

You can sign here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/improve-pacer

You can also see the number of people who have signed (830 as of this writing) and see the list of names along with any comments submitted.

Also, we recently posted a summary to our PACER spending survey on our Legal Research Plus blog. The finding are available at:

http://legalresearchplus.com/2009/08/28/pacer-spending-survey/

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August 25, 2009

The Curious Case of West

West, now part of Thomson Reuters, appears to be having issues in marketing and outreach. Note the plural.

1) The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) rejected West's proposed sponsorship of the 2009 Annual Meeting, in response to West/TR's continued refusal to participate in AALL's Price Index. [Personally ... wow, turning down major dollars in this economic environment? Bravo to AALL for putting its money where its mouth is, as it were.]

2) Both West & LexisNexis expend considerable funds, time and manpower to get law students hooked on their brands (and as a former law student, I am so appreciative ... thanks for the free Nintendo DS, LexisNexis!) For those of you who never been to a law school library, one of the bennies both companies provide are dedicated printers that print WestLaw/LN material for students free of cost. Very convenient, useful, addicting. But West has decided that a very few schools don't get this benefit, and pulled their Westlaw printers from their law libraries. Happily, West printers have been reinstated at the University of Puerto Rico law school.

3) And now there's the email. West sent out an email to attorney clients with a graphic of "librarian" eyeglasses and the following text: "ARE YOU ON A FIRST NAME BASIS WITH THE LIBRARIAN? If so, chances are, you're spending too much time in the library." Needless to say, law librarians aren't pleased.

So, really ... what's going on with West? Is this going on with other types of libraries? Other vendors? And what's the appropriate response from the library community?

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June 30, 2009

Methodology, Part I: How to Score the Obama Administration's Information Policy

After hearing various piecemeal accounts of how the Obama Administration has been treating government information, it occurred to me that a score card could be a rather useful thing.

This is a big no-no in legal and academic writing, but I'm going to start with the caveats:

1) Truth be told, I think it's a touch early to be "grading" the Obama Administration on much. It hasn't even been 6 months since he was sworn in as President of the United States. And the executive branch of the government has a lot on its collective plate: 2 formal wars, a deeply troubled (and troubling) economy, and an international campaign against terrorism is just what we started with at the beginning of the administration and things haven't exactly slowed down since January '09.

Continue reading "Methodology, Part I: How to Score the Obama Administration's Information Policy"

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June 24, 2009

Anyone want a conference registration to ALA?

My life is a little too frantic right now, and I've decided not to attend ALA 2009 in Chicago next month. Since the cancellation deadline has passed ... is there anyone out there who'd like mine? Not sure how many people see this blog, but if you are interested, please email: ms_eli@yahoo.com

Thanks!

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June 16, 2009

Colin Powell and Transparency

I already did a rawblog of Gen. Powell's remarks at SLA2009. But it's taken me a bit to finally transcribe the following. The Q&A portion after Powell's speech was very short - only 3 questions. However, I got the chance to ask him the 1st question. Basically, I wanted to know what he thought about providing access to government data. And that's basically what I asked him, without providing specific details (I thought that would be too confrontational). He didn't quite understand what I was asked, so I repeated it. His answer, to paraphase:

You can't stop information flow eventually. He believes in maximum openness, maximum transparency, with reasonable limits for security, privacy, etc. But greater openness and transparency is good for society in the long run.

In government, there is a big problem with information hoarding, getting the information to where it needs to be ... there needs to be more information sharing among agencies. His own example of government wanting to keep too tight a rein on information: the military wanted to hobble GPS for civilian use - luckily, that didn't happen and GPS is all over the place (I think he said he had 3 in his car ... a Corvette ... ah, boys and their toys).

Information professionals need to push the envelope as much as we can to get information and data released and accessible to the public. Risk is inherent - pushing means getting pushed back. We need to work out how much risk each of us can manage. But the bias should always be towards sharing, towards transparency.

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