4 ms·

One thing that most people don't have an appreciation for is how effective the non-political departments of the US Government are, and also how at risk such jew

by qq66 4y ago

One thing that most people don't have an appreciation for is how effective the non-political departments of the US Government are, and also how at risk such jewels are for backsliding into incompetence and corruption if poorly managed.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago
That’s right, because many departments have their effectiveness undermined by legislation with the intent of undermining the existence of those departments altogether.
conradev 4y ago
The Library of Congress was not doing enough to digitize their library: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/hiring-the-first-librarian-of-congress-for-the-internet-age/396038/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/hirin... The Internet Archive and Google Books have a significant head start over the largest library in the world
- acdha 4y ago
  Note that a lot has changed since 2015. The LOC's Strategic Plan (https://www.loc.gov/strategic-plan/ https://www.loc.gov/strategic-plan/) and especially the digital strategy (https://www.loc.gov/digital-strategy/ https://www.loc.gov/digital-strategy/) are trying to address that gap — under the “We will throw open the treasure chest” section: > The Library's content, programs, and expertise are national treasures – we are dedicated to sharing them as broadly as possible. The growth of the Library's digital content, which includes our collections, has increased exponentially every year. We will make that content available and accessible to more people, work carefully to respect the expectations of the Congress and the rights of creators, and support the use of our content in software-enabled research, art, exploration, and learning. > Exponentially grow our collections > The Library will continue to build a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity. We will expand our digital acquisitions program, as outlined in Collecting Digital Content at the Library of Congress; continue our aggressive digitization program, which prioritizes the Library's unique treasures; and improve search and access services that facilitate discovery of materials in both physical and digital formats. > We will expedite the availability of newly acquired or created content to the web and on-site access systems. This will mean making improvements to the procedures and tools we use to move content from acquisition or creation to access, which will be critical as we continue to experience exponential growth in the size of our digital collection. We will also improve tools to make it easier for Library staff to enhance content after publication, such as adding additional description or information about the conservation of objects.
- sh34r 4y ago
  You’re comparing two very different things there. Institutional libraries and government archives have records going back centuries, many of which can’t be found anywhere else. Even your local library might have some obscure local newspapers on microfilm from 100 years ago, that haven’t been digitized yet (we’ve admittedly made progress on this problem over the last decade). To answer these “who am I” questions posed in the article, of unidentified historical photos, we need institutions like the Library of Congress digitizing their records, uniting them with other institutional datasets, and organizing them in a way that we can run facial recognition algorithms on them. The answer to “who are these musicians circa 1930” probably comes from a local newspaper that ended publication 50 years ago. In case it isn’t abundantly clear, this is going to take decades to accomplish. These institutions operate on timelines measured in centuries, not weeks. They care deeply about problems like bit rot when replacing physical archives. If it is lost to the world in mere decades, it is not useful to them. The Internet Archive is of little help here, beyond sharing technical information for efficient archival and retrieval of truly massive public datasets.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    > You’re comparing two very different things there. This is such an important point. Governments have longevity and universal service requirements that others just don't. I am personally a charge-ahead-and-try-shit kind of person. But I recognize that works for me because I can easily say "fuck it" and move on from my experiments. Anything the LOC does they're stuck with, possibly for centuries. So I'm glad that they proceed at a pace that seems positively glacial to me. That's what success on those timescales often requires.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Furthermore, there's digitizing things and there's providing unlimited open access to those digitized things. The LoC needs to tread lightly on the latter to a degree that other institutions may choose not to do. Just because they're the LoC doesn't mean they can throw open digital access to anything they feel like.
      - 4y ago
xyzzyz 4y ago
This is true because the non-political departments of US government have ultimately very limited power, so there is little incentive to either capture them or destroy them by partisan actors. Political operatives would much rather control something like FBI or EEOC instead of LoC or USFS. This should motivate us to ensure that each department’s capabilities are as restricted as possible to achieve its mandate, so that Library of Congress can focus on archiving materials, and not, say, drafting rules on what is required and banned from public libraries across the country (a very contentious topic these days, apparently). Of course, the political operatives want the opposite: they want to concentrate and extend the power of government agencies as much as possible. The incentive to do so for administrative agencies is strong: elected politicians can be voted out, so they have to be more careful, but career bureaucrats are effectively not removable. The result is a fight for the control of the agency, and then, if one side wins the control, to diminish the power/funding of the agency, which obviously is not conducive to agency being effective at its stated goals.
- toss1 4y ago
  Good description of the essence of democracy and the path of it sliding into authoritarianism. In a democracy all of the institutions of government and society are relatively independent, with power spread out and relatively balanced between them. This goes for the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of govt, as well as the civil service, the press, the academy, industry. In contrast, as politicians start controlling "something like FBI or EEOC", and start forcing the justice department, the press, academic institutions and other government and societal structures to bend to the will of the leader, you soon have authoritarianism. Once it goes that way, it is very difficult to restore a democracy.
  - yucky 4y ago
    I would argue that's an inevitability with democracy, since short term thinking tends to dominate.
    - toss1 4y ago
      You are certainly right, it is not constantly and actively maintained. After the Constitutional Convention in 1787, it's said that when Ben Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall, someone yelled: “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?” To which Franklin responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Wise Words. And, as Plato said: "The penalty for good men not participating in politics is to be ruled by evil men.".
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by qq66 4y ago

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

That’s right, because many departments have their effectiveness undermined by legislation with the intent of undermining the existence of those departments altogether.

conradev 4y ago

The Library of Congress was not doing enough to digitize their library: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/hiring-the-first-librarian-of-congress-for-the-internet-age/396038/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/hirin... The Internet Archive and Google Books have a significant head start over the largest library in the world

acdha 4y ago
Note that a lot has changed since 2015. The LOC's Strategic Plan (https://www.loc.gov/strategic-plan/ https://www.loc.gov/strategic-plan/) and especially the digital strategy (https://www.loc.gov/digital-strategy/ https://www.loc.gov/digital-strategy/) are trying to address that gap — under the “We will throw open the treasure chest” section: > The Library's content, programs, and expertise are national treasures – we are dedicated to sharing them as broadly as possible. The growth of the Library's digital content, which includes our collections, has increased exponentially every year. We will make that content available and accessible to more people, work carefully to respect the expectations of the Congress and the rights of creators, and support the use of our content in software-enabled research, art, exploration, and learning. > Exponentially grow our collections > The Library will continue to build a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity. We will expand our digital acquisitions program, as outlined in Collecting Digital Content at the Library of Congress; continue our aggressive digitization program, which prioritizes the Library's unique treasures; and improve search and access services that facilitate discovery of materials in both physical and digital formats. > We will expedite the availability of newly acquired or created content to the web and on-site access systems. This will mean making improvements to the procedures and tools we use to move content from acquisition or creation to access, which will be critical as we continue to experience exponential growth in the size of our digital collection. We will also improve tools to make it easier for Library staff to enhance content after publication, such as adding additional description or information about the conservation of objects.
sh34r 4y ago
You’re comparing two very different things there. Institutional libraries and government archives have records going back centuries, many of which can’t be found anywhere else. Even your local library might have some obscure local newspapers on microfilm from 100 years ago, that haven’t been digitized yet (we’ve admittedly made progress on this problem over the last decade). To answer these “who am I” questions posed in the article, of unidentified historical photos, we need institutions like the Library of Congress digitizing their records, uniting them with other institutional datasets, and organizing them in a way that we can run facial recognition algorithms on them. The answer to “who are these musicians circa 1930” probably comes from a local newspaper that ended publication 50 years ago. In case it isn’t abundantly clear, this is going to take decades to accomplish. These institutions operate on timelines measured in centuries, not weeks. They care deeply about problems like bit rot when replacing physical archives. If it is lost to the world in mere decades, it is not useful to them. The Internet Archive is of little help here, beyond sharing technical information for efficient archival and retrieval of truly massive public datasets.
- wpietri 4y ago
  > You’re comparing two very different things there. This is such an important point. Governments have longevity and universal service requirements that others just don't. I am personally a charge-ahead-and-try-shit kind of person. But I recognize that works for me because I can easily say "fuck it" and move on from my experiments. Anything the LOC does they're stuck with, possibly for centuries. So I'm glad that they proceed at a pace that seems positively glacial to me. That's what success on those timescales often requires.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Furthermore, there's digitizing things and there's providing unlimited open access to those digitized things. The LoC needs to tread lightly on the latter to a degree that other institutions may choose not to do. Just because they're the LoC doesn't mean they can throw open digital access to anything they feel like.
    - 4y ago

xyzzyz 4y ago

This is true because the non-political departments of US government have ultimately very limited power, so there is little incentive to either capture them or destroy them by partisan actors. Political operatives would much rather control something like FBI or EEOC instead of LoC or USFS. This should motivate us to ensure that each department’s capabilities are as restricted as possible to achieve its mandate, so that Library of Congress can focus on archiving materials, and not, say, drafting rules on what is required and banned from public libraries across the country (a very contentious topic these days, apparently). Of course, the political operatives want the opposite: they want to concentrate and extend the power of government agencies as much as possible. The incentive to do so for administrative agencies is strong: elected politicians can be voted out, so they have to be more careful, but career bureaucrats are effectively not removable. The result is a fight for the control of the agency, and then, if one side wins the control, to diminish the power/funding of the agency, which obviously is not conducive to agency being effective at its stated goals.

toss1 4y ago
Good description of the essence of democracy and the path of it sliding into authoritarianism. In a democracy all of the institutions of government and society are relatively independent, with power spread out and relatively balanced between them. This goes for the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of govt, as well as the civil service, the press, the academy, industry. In contrast, as politicians start controlling "something like FBI or EEOC", and start forcing the justice department, the press, academic institutions and other government and societal structures to bend to the will of the leader, you soon have authoritarianism. Once it goes that way, it is very difficult to restore a democracy.
- yucky 4y ago
  I would argue that's an inevitability with democracy, since short term thinking tends to dominate.
  - toss1 4y ago
    You are certainly right, it is not constantly and actively maintained. After the Constitutional Convention in 1787, it's said that when Ben Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall, someone yelled: “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?” To which Franklin responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Wise Words. And, as Plato said: "The penalty for good men not participating in politics is to be ruled by evil men.".

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]