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Weekly News Digest
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March 31, 2016 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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New Tool Exposes Government Information
FOIA Mapper, a winner of the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge on Data, had its official launch. Journalists, researchers, businesses, and individuals can use this site to search government records that were not previously online. “Government agencies store an enormous amount of information in offline databases, far more than what is available online as open data. And in theory, anyone has the right to access it through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. However, the catch is that most government databases are not documented online, so there is no practical way of knowing what to ask for,” the press release states.FOIA Mapper collects information about these offline databases and organizes it into a searchable catalog. Searches on any topic return a list of government agencies with the information, its format, and how to request it under FOIA. Users can also search a database of past FOIA requests by others. For more information, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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