Documents in the News

The Law Library of Congress has launched a new resource on Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor http://www.loc.gov/law/find/sotomayor.php. The site contains information on articles and books by Sotomayor, Congressional documents, cases, and web resources.

Show Us the Data: Most Wanted Federal Documents is a report that was published by the Center for Democracy and Technology and issued March, 2009.

“This report has been timed in order to inform the changes in open government policies that are now underway. Suggestions for specific documents and data that should be released were solicited broadly, from government officials and interested parties. The list of most wanted documents and data informs our recommendations for policy changes, which are also included in this report, to make government more transparent.” from the Report Summary.

Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) is a federal-state cooperative standardized program designed to identify, describe and track the impact of large job cutbacks. A mass layoff event occurs when an establishment has at least 50 initial unemployment compensation claims filed against it within a five-week period and the layoff lasts longer than 30 days.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services releases quarterly mass layoff data. The Mass Layoff Statistics website includes current and historical data about layoffs, annual closures, and loss of employment.

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access today posted an announcement that President Obama yesterday signed into law the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes a provision making the National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy permanent. The NIH Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access requires eligible NIH-funded researchers to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central (PMC). Full texts of the articles are made publicly available and searchable online in PMC no later than 12 months after publication in a journal.

Click on http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/Release09-0312.html for more information.

The Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age has released their new report – “Nation at Risk: Policy Makers Need Better Information to Protect the Country”
http://www.markle.org/events/20090310_nar/20090304_mtf_report.pdf

Greta E. Marlatt, Naval Postgraduate School Librarian, reports:

The report includes 5 recommendations to accelerate creation of an Information Sharing Framework – they are:

• Reaffirm Information Sharing as a Top Priority
• Make Government Information Discoverable and Accessible to Authorized Users by Increasing the Use of Commercially Available Off-the-Shelf Technology
• Enhance Security and Privacy Protections to Match the Increased Power of Shared Information
• Transform the Information Sharing Culture with Metrics and Incentives
• Empower Users to Drive Information Sharing by Forming Communities of Interest