In addition to librarians, there are investigative journalists. If the
government wants more fact verification, they could fund non-profits
like Pro Publica (http://www.propublica.org). And let's not forget all
of the hard-working government employees who already publish consumer
guides, health information, and the like.
Rebecca Schneider
raschneid_at_gmail.com
On 05/20/2011 11:03 AM, Todd Puccio wrote:
> 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....
>
Received on Fri May 20 2011 - 16:27:00 EDT