Professional Reading Shelf
Access to Information–United States
Source: Secrecy News
Reclassification Program At National Archives Exposed
“U.S. military and intelligence agencies have assigned personnel to review and reclassify declassified historical records at the National Archives where they have withdrawn thousands of records from public access.”
See Also: Declassification in Reverse: The Pentagon and the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Secret Historical Document Reclassification Program (via National Security Archive)
See Also: NARA finalizes rule on short-term e-records (via GCN)
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Library Databases–United Kingdom
Source: Kable’s Government News
England’s Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has launched a new service for access to reference material
“Named Reference Online, it provides a channel to 26 electronic subscription based products, including directories, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, newspapers and business information. MLA said on 20 February 2006 that it had brokered deals with 14 separate suppliers for the service. Traditionally, public library managers have researched the details and negotiated the costs of online resources either individually or as small regional consortia.”
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Digital Preservation–United Kingdon
Source: DPC
New Report, Mind the Gap: Assessing digital preservation needs in the UK (PDF)
From the summary, “A ’state of the nation’ report today reveals that less than 20% of UK organisations surveyed have a strategy in place to deal with the risk of loss or degradation to their digital resources – despite a very high level of awareness of the risks and potential economic penalties…The survey reveals that the loss of digital data is commonplace – it is seen as an inevitable hazard by some – with more than 70% of respondents saying data had been lost in their organisation. Awareness of the potential economic and cultural risks is high, with 87% recognising that corporate memory or key cultural material could be lost and some 60% saying that their organisation could lose out financially. In 52% of the organisations surveyed there was management commitment to digital preservation – but only 18% had a strategy in place.”
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Digital Libraries
Source: Corporation for National Research Initiatives
The February Issue of D-Lib is Now Online
Articles include:
+ A Research Library Based on the Historical Collections of the Internet Archive
+ Copyright Issues in Open Access Research Journals: The Authors Perspective
+ Observed Web Robot Behavior on Decaying Web Subsites
+ OSTI’s E-print Network experiences rapid growth

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