News release: “Mayor Bill de Blasio announced [August 10, 2015] a powerful new tool to increase government transparency with the launch of an expanded City Record Online (CROL). CROL is now a fully searchable database for all the notices contained in the City Record newspaper – including schedules for public hearings, land-sales and contract awards… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: August 2015
Binaryedge Report – more than petabyte of data on unsecured servers
Via Digital Guardian – “The research firm Binaryedge says it found more than a petabyte of data stored in high performance databases like MongoDB is exposed to the public Internet.” Continue Reading
Paper – Is Biblioleaks Inevitable?
Dunn AG, Coiera E, Mandl KD. Is Biblioleaks Inevitable? J Med Internet Res 2014;16(4):e112 “In 2014, the vast majority of published biomedical research is still hidden behind paywalls rather than open access. For more than a decade, similar restrictions over other digitally available content have engendered illegal activity. Music file sharing became rampant in the… Continue Reading
McKinsey insights on change management
The phrase “change management” has been widely referenced across the private and public sectors for decades. Librarians have embraced and executed objectives based upon change management concepts in no small measure due to the inherent agility, adaptability and futures thinking of the professional. From the nacent World Wide Web to the current multi-faceted scope of… Continue Reading
Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale
Wilson AM, Likens GE (2015) Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale. PLoS ONE 10(8): e0134454. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0134454 “Wikipedia has quickly become one of the most frequently accessed encyclopedic references, despite the ease with which content can be changed and the potential for ‘edit wars’ surrounding controversial topics. Little is known about how… Continue Reading
GAO Reports – Electronic Health Records, Trends in U.S. and Chinese Economic Engagement
Electronic Health Records: Outcome-Oriented Metrics and Goals Needed to Gauge DOD’s and VA’s Progress in Achieving Interoperability, GAO-15-530: Published: Aug 13, 2015. Publicly Released: Aug 13, 2015: “DOD and VA did not, by the October 1, 2014, deadline established in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2014 for compliance with national data… Continue Reading
Apple releases new diversity report
Apple’s Diversity Report still highlights a staff of employees that are 54% white and 69% male: “Our most recently filed Federal Employer Information Report EEO-1 is available for download here, representing employees as of July 2014. We will make the 2015 EEO-1 available when we file it with the federal government. We make these documents… Continue Reading
NYDatabases.com
“As journalists, we work with mountains of data to help us spot trends, identify problems in our community and to hold public officials accountable. We present that data here at NYDatabases.com (formerly RocDocs), so that you can explore the issues yourself. Learn more about where you live, make informed decisions as a citizen, parent, or… Continue Reading
Bloomberg Law Survey of Law Librarians Yields Reiteration of Expertise Not Recognized
August 13, 2015 – “Last month, Bloomberg Law surveyed 80 librarians from large and medium sized law firms about their respective roles. The result? Law firm librarians feel underutilized as analysts and underpaid for the analytical work they’re already doing. Ninety-three per cent of respondents said their library resources and training could be put to greater use servicing… Continue Reading
Another Snowden Reveal – Telecom Giant Provides Massive Data Pipeline to NSA
NYT and ProPublica investigative reports: “The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly… Continue Reading
Who Drives to Work? Commuting by Automobile in the United States: 2013
Who Drives to Work? Commuting by Automobile in the United States: 2015, August 13, 2015, Report Number: ACS-32, Brian McKenzie “The automobile has played a fundamental role in shaping where we live and how we get around. It has influenced the form and density of our communities and expanded the geographic range of daily travel.… Continue Reading
Centre for Study of Existential Risk
“The Centre for Study of Existential Risk is an interdisciplinary research centre focused on the study of human extinction-level risks that may emerge from technological advances. We aim to combine key insights from the best minds across disciplines to tackle the greatest challenge of the coming century: safely harnessing our rapidly-developing technological power.” One of… Continue Reading
