White House website

The White House website switched over to Obama's new version during the Inauguration. The New York Times blog discussed the changes:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/obama-renovates-whitehousegov/?hp

It looks like it includes more modern Web 2.0 elements. A blog is featured prominently. It sounds like the want to encourage more interaction. They have rotating images, and there is a boxy widget style on the bottom portion of the page.

I discovered this page that had archived the different versions of the Clinton website. They were fun to look at - it was like a trip through internet history! I especially loved the one with the little waving flags:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa012201b.htm

Born Digital's view of librarians

I'm reading the book Born Digital by Palfrey and Gasser right now. The introduction had a line about librarians:
"Librarians, too, are reimagining their role: Instead of primarily organizing book titles in musty card catalogs and shelving the books in the stacks, they serve as guides to an increasingly variegated information environment."

When I first started reading, I was wincing at the depiction of librarians, but I thought he ended with a pretty good description of the direction we see ourselves going. Later on he also mentioned that they used research done by librarians and talked to librarians about the issues surrounding "Digital Natives."