Librarians are already part of this now.
We use the websites that you mentioned and a variety of other sources to
verify "the truth".
Those Librarians that work at Government Funded Institutions are already the
Government funded program to do this.
Any attempt to create a Government Funded agency would eventually turn into,
at best, a political football or, at worst, the "Ministry of Truth".
Any agency, no matter how well intentioned, will attempt to protect its
funding by keeping its funder happy.
In this case, whatever federal government administration is in power at the
time. I certainly would not want to give any agency (How could it possibly
really be independent ?) this kind of power.
Even our old advocate friend Sandy Berman accused the LC of being biased.
How much more would an agency of this kind be?
In these times of increased financial pressures the mere suggestion that
something like this would be "a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money" shows
that he is out of touch with what essential services really need to be
funded well. Funding of education and related libraries will go much
further to attain these goals in the long run.
We should be educating people on how to discover and verify the truth for
themselves, not treating them like children and merely giving them the
government approved textbook version.
--
Todd Puccio
puccio_at_nsu.nova.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of James Weinheimer
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 10:10 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Bill Clinton: Create Internet agency
Ex-President Bill Clinton has suggested the creation of some kind of
agency that would "be independent" to seek out and "correct" factual
errors on the Internet, and has come under a lot of criticism for it,
with critics calling it a "truth regulator" or a "Ministry of Truth"
etc.
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=bill+clin
ton+internet
<http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=bill+cli
nton+internet>
(a more neutral article is at Politico)
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54951.html
But he makes a valid point with: "Somebody needs to be doing it, and
maybe it's a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money." As I have mentioned
in several posts, one "user need" that I have heard requested very
often, from little children to advanced researchers, is the need for
selection. People are gradually becoming suspicious of Google and its
algorithms (at last!), while private, for-profit corporations are
vulnerable to all kinds of manipulation from the public, from their
competitors, and from all kinds of forces in the world. Their business
aim of "make the customer happy" is not always the same as telling
people the truth. Besides, people still find a lot of junk in the search
results of Google and Yahoo while missing a lot at the same time. But
let's face it: people find a lot of junk in libraries and miss a lot
there too, but the perception is completely different.
I don't believe that Bill Clinton was suggesting any kind of censorship,
but more of a "reliable space" to find out what the current thinking is
on certain topics. This is not a new idea, but was suggested by H.G.
Wells in his book "World Brain" where he suggested the idea of the World
Encyclopedia. Here is an article where he wrote about the Encyclopedia
https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html
Wells did not foresee the Internet, and compared his encyclopedia it to
the Britannica, but I am sure he would agree that the Internet would
certainly make it far easier. His idea was not like Wikipedia, although
many have suggested it. It would be much more like Citizendium, written
by experts, but still with important differences since according to
Wells, articles would be written differently, with sections (summaries)
for different readers in mind: researchers to journalists to interested
laymen to children.
When looked at in this way, I think that everybody would like it because
it would be designed with everyone in mind, and if the true global
collaboratory powers of the Internet could be used today, plus
significant government funding to keep it independent, I would agree
with Bill Clinton: it would be a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money.
Of course, Clinton's idea is to build a place to verify facts. There are
some sites like that now, http://www.factcheck.org/,
http://www.politifact.com/, http://www.snopes.com/ and
http://www.opensecrets.org/ are the ones that I know. Some would include
Wikileaks in this list but I doubt if he would. I think more is
necessary, but his idea would be a good first step.
Naturally, librarians would be important parts of this....
--
James L. Weinheimer weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Cooperative Cataloging Rules:
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
Received on Fri May 20 2011 - 12:03:38 EDT