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Daily Archives: December 25, 2017

New on LLRX – Legislation Alert: Worrisome Changes to Government Publications Are Possible

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Via LLRX – Legislation Alert: Worrisome Changes to Government Publications Are Possible

Peggy Roebuck Jarrett writes about an issue that is significant to law librarians, federal documents librarians, and to the public. The subject is a draft House bill that proposes “to amend title 44, United States Code, to reform the organization, authorities, and programs relating to public printing and documents, including the Federal Depository Program.” Jarrett shares why this bill could fundamentally change the publication and distribution of official print and digital government information. In addition, Jarrett describes how the future of no-fee public access to reliable government information – which includes the very laws that govern us – is at stake.

Google Maps Go are alternative to Google Maps

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ghacks.net: “Google unveiled Android Go some time ago. Android Go is an optimized version of Android designed specifically for low-end devices and infrastructure….Google launched several Go-optimized versions of its services for Android Go. Google Maps Go is one of the recent ones that it launched. While listed on Google Play, it is not available for… Continue Reading

Archival FRED Economic Data Time Travel

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Archival FRED Economic Data Time Travel from the St. Louis Fed’s Economic Research Division. [h/t terese mulkern, bizrefdesk] “ALFRED® allows you to retrieve vintage versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history. In general, economic data for past observation periods are revised as more accurate estimates become available. As a result,… Continue Reading

Crime in 2017: A Preliminary Analysis

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Crime in 2017: Updated Analysis – “This update to the Brennan Center’s September report finds that the overall crime rate, violent crime rate, and murder rate in the nation’s 30 largest cities are estimated to decline this year. Its projections directly undercut claims of a nationwide crime wave. In September, the Brennan Center analyzed available… Continue Reading

UN Special Rapporteur report on extreme poverty and human rights in US

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– Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, December 15, 2017. “I have spent the past two weeks visiting the United States, at the invitation of the federal government, to look at whether the persistence of extreme poverty in America undermines the… Continue Reading

Standards and Governance of Blockchain in the Legal Industry

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“Without major intermediaries (cloud-based software, cloud-based document storage, etc.) to provide convenience and standards, it is necessary for industries themselves to band together to jointly develop standards and governance, thus the typically non-profit, consortium strategy. The mission of the Global Legal Blockchain Consortium is to organize and align the stakeholders in the global legal industry… Continue Reading

The Billion-Dollar Loophole

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The Billion-Dollar Loophole The most generous charitable deduction in the federal tax code is being manipulated to make big profits — and there’s no sign that Congress has any intention of fixing the problem. Article by ProPublica and Fortune. “The idea seems like the perfect marriage of environmentalism and capitalism: Landowners give up their right… Continue Reading

EPA Releases Draft Risk Assessments for Glyphosate – Denies cancer risk to humans

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EPA Releases Draft Risk Assessments for Glyphosate – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is releasing for public comment the draft human health and ecological risk assessments for glyphosate, one of the most widely used agricultural pesticides in the United States. The draft human health risk assessment concludes that glyphosate is not likely to be… Continue Reading

Paper – Failure, Risk, and the Entrepreneurial Library

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Failure, Risk, and the Entrepreneurial Library, Tom Wall, University Librarian, Boston College. “This past spring, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed the graduates from Harvard College and said that “the greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.”1 Likewise, in a recent letter to shareholders, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos made it a point to equate… Continue Reading

Paper – Metadata Provenance and Vulnerability

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Metadata Provenance and Vulnerability. Timothy Robert Hart and Denise de Vries, Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL). Vol 36, No 4 (2017). doi: 10.6017/ital.v36i4.10146 “The preservation of digital objects has become an urgent task in recent years as it has been realised that digital media have a short life span. The pace of technological change makes… Continue Reading