Twitter's decision to ban archiving of politicians' deleted tweets is a mistake

Back in 2012, Twitter decided to allow the Sunlight Foundation to collect and curate deleted tweets from lawmakers and people seeking public office in order to hold them accountable by preserving their public statements on the record. 

But in June of this year, Twitter shut down the deleted tweet project in the US under the guise of "honoring the expectation of user privacy." Then, this Sunday, Twitter dealt the final blow, killing the Open State Foundation’s effort to archive deleted tweets from public officials in 30 other countries.

For the full article see: http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/24/9198075/twitter-political-transparency-diplowoops-politwoops

De Blasio is reviewing public records requests for all New York City agencies in bid to control information

Mayor de Blasio, who promised to run the most transparent administration in New York City history, has taken steps to have his office review any public records request of any city agency that could "reflect directly on the mayor."

That broad mandate, outlined in a May 5 email obtained by The Associated Press, could give de Blasio's office control over virtually all newsworthy Freedom of Information Law requests from journalists, watchdog groups or members of the public.

Although the ramifications of the policy are not clear, transparency advocates fear such control could lead to prolonged delays in responding to records requests, a criticism both President Barack Obama and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced when they instituted similar policies.

For the full article, see:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/de-blasio-reviewing-records-requests-nyc-agencies-article-1.2330353

Analysis of August 2015 Leaked TPP Text on Copyright, ISP and General Provisions

The United States is currently negotiating a large, regional free trade agreement with eleven other countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. On August 5, 2015, Knowledge Ecology International published a new leak of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’s (TPP) negotiating text for the intellectual property chapter. 

For the full post see: http://policynotes.arl.org/?s=tpp

 

Metropolitan Archivist Volume 21, Number 2 is now available.

Metropolitan Archivist Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer 2015) by Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc.

This issue features an introduction to the newly elected board members and more.

Many thanks to the A.R.T. board, all of the contributors, and the Metropolitan Archivist editorial staff:

*

Managing Editor: Mary Ann Quinn

Features Editor: Rachel Greer

A.R.T. News: Haley Richardson

Interview Section: Ellen Mehling 

* 

Feel free to contact me at editor@nycarchivists.org with questions, comments, and submissions. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for your support,

Lindsey Wyckoff

Editor-in-Chief

The following is cribbed from the American Alliance of Museums, but applies equally to archives of any type, shape, or size:

Congress Wraps Up Work, Heads Home
 
As August approaches, members of Congress are headed home. The House of Representatives has adjourned for five weeks, and the Senate is not far behind. Congress will certainly have its hands full when it returns; deadlines are approaching on issues including highways, children’s welfare, expired tax breaks and funding for federal agencies.

While a deal on federal spending remains elusive, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees completed work on all 12 of their annual bills—the first time this has been accomplished in six years. Considering the very tight funding constraints within which these bills were written, several accounts important to museums fared quite well:
 

	Current Funding	House Proposed	Senate Proposed
IMLS Office of Museum Services	$30.1	$30.9	$30.3
National Endowment for the Humanities	$146	$146	$146
National Endowment for the Arts	$146	$146	$146
NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning	$55	$65	$60
Historic Preservation Fund	$56.4	$60.9	$61.4

(Funding Totals in Millions)

 
Make Sure Museum Priorities Are Heard; Invite Your Legislators to Visit
 

Government officials have threatened "rogue archivist" Carl Malamud with legal action many times for his efforts to make public government documents widely available for free, but the state of Georgia has set a new standard for fighting this ridiculous battle: It's suing Malamud for infringing its copyright of state laws by -- horrors -- publishing them online.

For more on this story see: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-state-of-georgia-copyright-wall-20150727-column.html

The Secretary of State of Arizona, who oversees the State Library, wants the space now occupied by the genealogy collection for other uses. Under the misguided notion that everything genealogists really need to use is online, the original plan was to simply close the collection. Pushback from the genealogical community has resulted in a plan to move the collection to the State Archives.

The hitch, of course, is that the State Archives doesn’t have room to make this 200,000+-volume collection accessible to the public. If this move goes forward — and it could be as early as this Friday, July 31st — the collection will most likely end up in storage … and ultimately piecemealed out or lost forever.

For more on this developing story, see:

http://legalgenealogist.com/blog/2015/07/27/raising-arizona/

The National Humanities Alliance (NHA) is an advocacy coalition dedicated to the advancement of humanities education, research, preservation, and public programs – and as such is instrumental in advocating for public funding for the NEH, IMLS, and NHPRC (among others).

Like them on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter. 

• Spread the word quickly and widely when humanities funding is under attack on Capitol Hill
• Keep up on news and opinion pieces that highlight the importance of the humanities
• Learn more about the positive effects engaged humanities work is having around the country

Advancing the Humanities for All
http://www.nhalliance.org/

Tuesday, July 21—SAA learned this morning from the National Coalition for History that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which oversees NARA, will take up a bill tomorrow morning to address the recent data breach at the Office of Personnel Management. Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who introduced the bill, proposes to offset the costs associated with implementing it by eliminating the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. With markup certain today, we thought it important to notify you of this situation with an understanding that it will be very important to take action – both as individuals and collectively – when this bill comes before the House. We will notify you as soon as we’re aware of that timing. SAA is communicating with the Council of State Archivists and the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators regarding this situation and further action.

An article by SAA Intellectual Property Working Group member William Maher, who represented the views of American archivists as a permanent observer at the recent meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.