Who:  Librarians of NOCALL, SLA & BayNet What:  Librarian Mashup Join us on Thursday, June 27th from 5-7 PM for an SLA/NOCALL/BayNet Librarian Networking event! Meet us at The Holding Company, Promenade Level of Embarcadero Two in the Financial District of San Francisco. It is a no host bar, so bring cash as well as business cards, [...]

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Freedom of Information; U.S. federal judge lifts ban on public access to Medicare data A U.S. federal judge lifted a 33-year-old injunction barring public access to a confidential database of Medicare insurance claims, a decision that could lead to greater scrutiny of how physicians treat patients and charge for their services. Judge Marcia Morales Howard [...]

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Freedom of Information: Just How Many Drone Licenses Has the FAA Really Issued?  The Los Angeles Times reported last week that the FAA has issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007 and noted this was "far more than were previously known." This new number points out again how difficult it is to answer [...]

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Freedom of Information Major Library Associations Thank Committee on House Administration for Rejecting NAPA Suggestion to Charge for FDsys “The five major library associations – AALL, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Medical Library Association and Special Libraries Association — joined  together this week to thank the Committee on House Administration for opposing the [...]

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Freedom of Information Data.gov embraces open source data management “As part of a series of major upgrades, Data.gov today moved to a new data catalog based on an open source data management system, the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network – better known as CKAN. The new data catalog is a key component of the Data.gov 2.0 [...]

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Freedom of Information Seeing Like a Citizen: How Activists Are Making State Laws Legible “The Open Government Foundation announced Friday that it had released MarylandCode.org, a web-friendly and restriction free publication of the Maryland Code of Public Laws. Prior to the new website, state law was only available in PDF documents on the Maryland Legislature [...]

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Freedom of Information New Executive Order will increase government transparency The White House has issued a new Executive Order (EO 13642) making open and machine readable the new default for government information and a memo, Open Data Policy – Managing information as an asset.  These documents provide a new set of guidelines for government agencies [...]

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Ranging in sizes from 4 to 14, the 2013 neighborhood dinners showcased the eclectic interests of our members. Food, wine and great conversation was had by all. Thank you to all who participated, and especially to those who provided the recaps below. – Tricia Marin/Sonoma by Diane Rosenberger Nine of us enjoyed good food and [...]

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Deb Hunt is just back from two trips in her role as SLA President. She traveled to the Pharmaceutical and Health Technology Division Conference in Philly at the beginning of April and stayed an extra evening in Philly to nosh with the Philadelphia Chapter members. She then flew to Seattle to present to the UW [...]

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Freedom of Information Justices say states can limit access to public records “The Supreme Court on Monday said states are free to allow public records access only to their own citizens, delivering a blow to freedom of information advocates who had challenged a Virginia law. In a unanimous ruling, the court said two out-of-state men [...]

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