FOIA, Inc.

Government transparency is imagined as a public good necessary to a robust democracy. Consistent with that vision, Congress enacted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to allow oversight and accountability of governmental activities, imagining the prime intended users to be journalists. But this democracy-enhancing ideal is at odds with FOIA’s reality: at some agencies, commercial—not public—interests dominate the landscape of FOIA requesters. This Article provides the first in-depth academic study of the commercial use of FOIA, drawing on original datasets from six federal agencies. It documents how corporations, in pursuit of private profit, have overrun FOIA’s supremely inexpensive processes and, in so doing, potentially crowded out journalists and other government watchdogs from doing what the law was intended to facilitate: thirdparty oversight of governmental actors. It also reveals a cottage industry of companies whose entire business model is to request federal records under FOIA and resell them at a profit, which distorts the transparency system even further. Counterintuitively, limiting commercial requesting will not solve this problem. Instead, this Article proposes a targeted and aggressive policy of requiring government agencies to affirmatively disclose sets of records that are the subject of routine FOIA requests—a surprisingly large number of the documents sought by commercial requesters. By meeting information needs in a more efficient manner that is available equally to all, affirmative disclosure will enable federal agencies to reclaim public records from the private market and free up resources to better serve FOIA requests that advance its democratic purpose.

Printed proposal for the works of Horace, 1821

This folder contains two copies of a proposal for publishing the works of Horace.

The Oraibi summer snake ceremony, by H. R. Voth -- The Stanley McCormick Hopi expedition -- George A. Dorsey --

v.3:no.4(1903)

The select works of Antony van Leeuwenhoek : containing his microscopical discoveries in many of the works of nature / translated from the Dutch and Latin editions published by the author, by Samuel Hoole.

2 (text)

The select works of Antony van Leeuwenhoek : containing his microscopical discoveries in many of the works of nature / translated from the Dutch and Latin editions published by the author, by Samuel Hoole.

1 (text)

The mosquitoes of the southern United States east of Oklahoma and Texas, by Stanley J. Carpenter ... Woodrow W. Middlekauff ... and Roy W. Chamberlain ...

no.3

Grammatica graeca, 1763

Bound volume containing a handwritten Greek grammar compiled by Joseph Drury beginning in 1763. The last sixteen pages contain a historical poem beginning, “Mason might once assert a Poets Claim. / But he must needs write.” The poem contains references to the “Great Patriot P—,“ the Roman conquest of Gall, Caeser, Versailles, and includes the verses, “How the King doth all his Cooks excel / Besides he longs to kiss his P / Saving your presence Louis keeps a whore.”

Road map of Massachusetts, 1922 (Raster Image)

This layer is a georeferenced raster image of the historic paper map entitled: Road map of Massachusetts, prepared by General Drafting Co., Inc. ; published and presented by the First National Bank of Boston, May 1922. Scale [ca. 1:285,000]. The image inside the map neatline is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the Massachusetts State Plane Coordinate System, Mainland Zone (in Feet) (Fipszone 2001). All map collar and inset information is also available as part of the raster image, including any inset maps, profiles, statistical tables, directories, text, illustrations, or other information associated with the principal map. This map shows features such as roads by condition (first class trunk line highways, trunk line highways, good or fairly good roads, poor roads, very poor roads), distances in miles between places, drainage, county boundaries and more. Relief is shown by hachures. Includes insets: Important routes of lower New England -- Cape Cod -- [Boston and Cambridge]. This layer is part of a selection of digitally scanned and georeferenced historic maps of Massachusetts from the Harvard Map Collection. These maps typically portray both natural and manmade features. The selection represents a range of regions, originators, ground condition dates (1755-1922), scales, and purposes. The digitized selection includes maps of: the state, Massachusetts counties, town surveys, coastal features, real property, parks, cemeteries, railroads, roads, public works projects, etc.