Survey of Digital Library Aggregation Services

A Survey of Digital Library Aggregation Services by Martha L. Brogan, Digital Library Federation, Council on Library and Information Resources, Washington DC, December 2003. From the Executive Summary: “This reports provides an overview of a diverse set of more than thirty digital library aggregation services, organizes them into functional clusters and then evaluates them more …

Subjects: Internet, Libraries, Search Engines

GAO Report on Federal Public Key Infrastructure Initiatives

Information Security: Status of Federal Public Key Infrastructure Activities at Major Departments and Agencies. GAO-04-157, December 15. From the Highlights: “PKI implementation continues to pose major challenges for agencies…” “Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is IT infrastructure that enables users of a basically unsecure public network (such as the Internet) to securely and privately exchange data …

Subjects: Government Documents

Terror Alert System Under Seige

From Newsweek: “U.S. Homeland Security officials are coming under increasing political pressure to overhaul, if not eliminate, their color-coded terror alerts as concern mounts that the current system has become so dysfunctional that it may actually be increasing the country’s vulnerability to attack.” See also Lawmaker Wants Terror Alert System Refined

Subjects: E-Government

Rep. Waxman Requests Investigation into Release of “Sensitive” Gov’t Docs

In a January 14 letter to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Henry Waxman, Ranking Minority Member of the Committee on Government Reform requested “information regarding apparent inconsistencies in how the Administration handles allegations regarding the release of sensitive information.” References and context: Treasury Dept. Urges Probe Over O’Neill Paper in response to former Treasury …

Subjects: Freedom of Information, Government Documents

U.S. Still Lacks Consolidated Terror Watch List

Federal Computer Week reports that the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center has yet to create a single, unified database comprising the dozen terror watch lists created by various government agencies, missing the December 1, 2003 deadline to complete the task. See also Terror Watch List Buried in Bureaucratic Mess, which states that according to Rep. Jim …

Subjects: Government Documents

Browser Patent Claim Upheld Against Microsoft

This afternoon, Judge James B. Zagel, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago), refused to overturn a $521 million verdict against Microsoft, ruling in favor of Eolas Technologies Inc. in their web patent infringment dispute. The patent at issue is number 5,838,906, and is titled “Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing …

Subjects: Internet, Microsoft, Patent and Trademark