VOLUNTEER AND ORPHAN NEWS

This week the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States Project welcomed Julie Huskey as our latest volunteer documents specialist. Julie has adopted Tennessee and has fixed a number of broken links.

That leaves the following pages as orphans waiting for a volunteer government documents specialist:

Connecticut
District of Columbia
Illinois
Indiana
Mississippi
New Jersey
New Mexico
Texas
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin

If you're interested in one of the above states, check out our volunteer guide and then send me an e-mail if you'd like to adopt one of the above states. If you adopt a state, be prepared to put your name and contact information on the main project page AND your state page within two weeks of receiving your wiki login. See the Volunteer guide for more details.

WIKI ACTIVITY

See our last seven days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs for a blow by blow description of changes to the page. Here are a few highlights:

SUBJECT PAGES

We have several "subject focused" pages of state agency databases. We moved this list to the front project page. In additon, the Biographical Databases page has been updated. We fixed the Colorado link and added resources from Florida, Indiana, and North Dakota. If you spot problems with any of the other "subject focused" pages, please let me know. Preferably with new links to replace broken ones.

REFORMATTING

The State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States Project simply wouldn't be viable without our volunteers. So we've reformatted all the state pages so that the volunteer name and contact information stands at the top of the page above the table of contents.

DATABASES ADDED

Kentucky (Glen McAninch)

Kentucky Financial Incentives Project Database - From the web site, "is a searchable database of all projects approved for incentives by either the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA) or the Bluegrass State Skills Corporation (BSSC), which are active as of January 1, 2008 through the present.

Missouri (Annie Moots)

Active Missing Persons Map - Click on a county to see a list of missing persons along with details about them.

Tennessee (Julie Huskey)

License Verification - From the website, "The Tennessee Health Related Board's website verification system is the official licensure verification site of the Health Related Boards. The site contains data obtained from primary (original) sources and is updated daily"

Washington (Marilyn Von Seggern)

Cleanup Site Search - A searchable inventory of sites currently being investigated, cleaned up, or that have already completed the cleanup process. Sites can be searched by ID number, name, and location (address, city, county or zip code).

DATABASES REMOVED

Missouri (Annie Moots)

Uniform Crime Reporting Statistical Analysis - Searchable by time frame, year, type of report, and geographical area.

VOLUNTEER AND ORPHAN NEWS

This week the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project welcomed Brenda Hemmelman as our latest volunteer documents specialist. Brenda has taken over the care and feeding of the South Dakota project page.

Brenda has not only fixed all of the broken links on the South Dakota page, but has also added a number of new databases including the Cemetery Record Search, which is considered to be a great resource for pre 1940s burials.

In other volunteer news, we are currently in discussions with a few people over the future of the California page and we hope to have it adopted out in the next week.

That leaves the following pages as orphans waiting for a volunteer government documents specialist:

Connecticut
District of Columbia
Illinois
Indiana
Mississippi
New Jersey
New Mexico
Tennessee
Texas
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin

If you're interested in one of the above states, check out our volunteer guide and then send me an e-mail if you'd like to adopt one of the above states.

WIKI ACTIVITY

See our last seven days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs for a blow by blow description of changes to the page. Here are a few highlights:

Nebraska - Extensive link fixing.

DATABASES ADDED

Arkansas

State Vehicle Inventory Search - Searchable by agency, vehicle type, plate number, and most common reported use.

Delaware

Delaware Environmental Navigator (DEN) - "Will allow the public to view all facility information, violations, enforcement actions and monitoring results pertaining to Air Quality, Waste Water, Water Supply, Hazardous Waste, Hazardous Waste Annual Reports, Solid Waste, Contaminated Site Cleanup, Underground Tanks and Vapor Recovery, Above Ground Tanks, Septic Permits, Wetlands, Ambient Water Monitoring Data and Corrective Action Sites."

Nebraska

Nebraska Memories - Images of Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials.

Activity continues at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project. See a blow by blow list of changes from the previous seven days at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs. Some highlights from this week are:

DATABASES ADDED

Arkansas

Licensed Athletic Trainer Search - Searchable database of licensed athletic trainers, by first name and last name.

Connecticut

Arthropod (i.e. bugs) Management Database - Intended for commercial plant growers, this database "allows you to search for insects and mites that are pests on trees, shrubs and other plants in the landscape, the nursery or Christmas tree farm." Searchable by damage type, pest and plant. One of each, plus a "profession" must be selected to ensure a successful search.

Louisiana

Confederate Pension Applications Index Database - This database consists of alphabetically arranged pensions granted from 1898 for veterans and widows. The pensions may include service information, occupation, place of residence, and number of children. The collection also contains a few applications for individuals other than veterans or widows that were not granted.

This particular database was also added to our Official Records Databases page.

South Carolina

Orders - The database of Orders of the Public Service Commission is being expanded to cover orders and rate requests from 1990 to present. Searches can be by keyword, with filtering by industry.

Washington

Classics in Washington History - A searchable database of more than 160 scanned Washington history publications in 14 subject categories such as geography, territorial and state government, exploration and early travel, and women's stories.

DATABASES REMOVED

Arkansas

Parenting Program Directory - Basic information about existing parent education programs in Arkansas. Directory is searchable by county and keyword.

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In addition to the changes above, the SADATFS Volunteer Guide was updated with some style guidelines and a clarification was made to the "What is a Database?" page.

We continue to need people to adopt the following orphan state pages:

California
Connecticut - Links fixed this week through govdoc-l crowdsourcing!
District of Columbia
Illinois
Indiana
Mississippi
New Jersey
New Mexico
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Readers of FGI are well acquainted with link rot, where internet links break over time.

Today I'd like to talk about something more subtle with no obvious way to detect the problem.

On the Alaska page of the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project, I had a link to APOC InfoQuick, a database of disclosure information for public officials and lobbyists from the Alaska Public Offices Commission. Today I visited the link at https://webapp.state.ak.us/apoc/index.jsp and chose the "lobbyist reporting" menu item because I thought it would be fun to list BP lobbyists in a personal blog entry I was drafting.

The lobbyist reporting section had a Search Lobbyist Registrations link. I clicked on it, searched for BP and got some listings. But only from 2007, the first year that Sarah Palin was Governor.

Searches in other parts of the lobbyist reporting system confirmed that NO information was available after 2007. I started to wonder if I'd missed the session law that repealed lobbying reporting requirements.

Then I noticed that the URL started with "webapp" and thought that it might be good to see if this database was still linked from the APOC home page.

It wasn't. Now they had a link called "search reports" at http://doa.alaska.gov/apoc/SearchReports/index.html. The page features two reporting systems for public officials - An "interim reporting system" for reports filed 2010 and later and "searchable campaign reporting" which is the public official/candidate portion of APOC InfoQuick. This explains why APOC InfoQuick wasn't taken off the live web.

Current information on lobbyists in Alaska is still available, just not database searchable. You can access various PDF lobbyist reports from 2005 forward at http://doa.alaska.gov/apoc/TrainingReports/lobbyist.html.

I have no information on why lobbyist information is no longer database searchable and speculating why would take me out of my comfort zone of not discussing policy choices made by the level of government I work for.

The main point I'm making is that most librarians and other information specialists are pretty comfortable with link checking and fixing broken links when we find them. But what can we do when a site remains on the web but has stopped being updated? Especially when there's no note on the old site about the change?

Activity continues at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States Project.

Marlena Crenshaw of the Arkansas State Library publicly claimed the Arkansas page. Welcome Marlena!

The Pennsylvania and Wisconsin pages came open for adoption. The project coordinator sent out the last of the follow up e-mails to volunteers who have not updated their pages since 1/1/2010.

Next Sunday we should have definitive lists of who is continuing with the project and what pages remain orphans.

We are currently studying ways to ensure that orphan pages have updated links while we recruit for documents specialists for them.

You can find a blow by blow listing of this week's wiki activity by visiting http://tinyurl.com/3npd96f. Here are a few highlights:

DATABASES ADDED

Arkansas

Arkansas Resource Information CyberCenter - Searchable database of community service information. Searchable by organization, city, county, status, hours of operation, and service offered.

New Jersey

Civil War Treasury Vouchers, 1861-1865 - "Includes 15,770 payment receipts for military expenditures and wartime purchases made by the State of New Jersey from 1861 through 1866. It includes soldiers' discharge certificates for final pay, affidavits of family members for pay due to deceased soldiers, and quarterly returns of the counties and cities listing the names of soldiers’ families and dependent mothers who received subsistence pay during their service."

Department of Agriculture Photographs - Indexes more than 7,000 photographs, and displays more than 2,000, showing all aspects of farming, including events and celebrations, organizations, people, corporations, and more. These Department of Agriculture public information photographs range in date from the 1930s to the 1970s with a few items from as early as the 1880s.

We continue to have busy weeks at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project.

You can find a blow by blow list of activity by visiting the project's related changes page.

Highlights from the past week include:

NEW PROJECT VOLUNTEERS

The following people volunteered to adopt a page and have publicly claimed them:

Rita Franks - LA
Karen Kitchens - WY
Chris Sharpe - GA

Other people have volunteered but haven't put their names to pages yet.

DATABASES ADDED

Louisiana

Addictive Disorders and Prevention and Licensing Database - Search by last name, credential number, or city for any certified substance abuse counselor,
compulsive gambling counselor, prevention specialist, counselor in training, or counselor supervisor.

Procedural Risk Database - This database describes risks and hazards related to medical care and surgical procedures. It was developed by the Louisiana Medical Disclosure Panel in accordance with Louisiana Revised Statutes 40:1299.40. Search by the entire database or search for risks by procedure category.

Since last week, project volunteers have been busy at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project on the GODORT wiki:

Florida

Volunteer Rich Gause updated many links on one of the most comprehensive project pages.

Kansas

Volunteer Bill Sowers updated a number of legislative database links.

North Dakota

Volunteer Kathryn Thomas updated links on the North Dakota page and added a number of new databases, including:

Company Profiles - A database of "new wealth creators" like manufacturers, food processors and various information technology businesses. New wealth creators are businesses that bring new money into the state by selling a significant portion of their products outside the state. Search by city, company name, NAICS, or product.

Search Available Property - Cities and Counties with currently available properties for sale or lease.

Virginia

Volunteer Nathan Verilla updated page links and added two databases:

Burned Jurisdiction Database - This database contains a growing collection of records originally recorded in courts or jurisdictions that subsequently suffered record losses. These records are from higher or appeal courts, most of which do not presently exist. Among the jurisdictions included in this database are the General Court, the [Supreme] Court of Appeals, the High Court of Chancery, the various Superior Courts of Chancery, and the various District Courts. These records were found while processing chancery causes and other locality materials. The database contains records from collections housed and processed at the Library of Virginia as well as those processed in localities.

Virginia Military Dead Database - The primary purpose of the Virginia Military Dead Database is to honor those Virginians that have given their lives in defense of freedom. It pulls together information from a wide variety of sources and makes that information more accessible. For more information consult the Introduction to the Virginia Military Dead Database and the Source Guides.

Washington

Volunteer Marilyn Von Seggern updated links on the Washington page and added new resources including the Environmental Information Management system.

In addition to the activity above, project coordinator Daniel Cornwall undertook the following actions:

- Established a draft guide for volunteers
- Created a volunteers mail discussion list as part of an effort to bolster communication and community among project volunteers.
- Did some fixes to the Wyoming page as a result of user e-mail
- Continued to contact project volunteers who had not updated their pages since January 1, 2011.

While not specifically about government maps, this five minute video from the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library is a nice overview of the different uses of maps and why old maps remain important. It also makes a decent case for why at least some maps ought to continue in a physical format.

State Agency Databases Report 6/29/2011

There's been new activity for the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project on the ALA GODORT wiki. I've decided to start making occasional reports when it seems like there is enough activity to justify a report.

Databases removed from project pages due to dead and apparently unrecoverable links:

Arizona

- Who's Who in Arizona GIS
- WRA/WRITE Project Database
- Brownfields Search Utility

New Jersey

- Brownfields SiteMart
- Bike project database

For details on the above, click on the "history" tab of the state page and click on a previous version.

If you know of a new link for one of the above items, please let me know.

Databases ADDED to project pages:

Arizona

- Doctor Search (Arizona Medical Board)
- ADWR Image Records Database (Water Resources)
- AZURITE License Application Query Utility

Volunteer Changes

- Alabama - Paula Webb taking over from Valerie Glenn.
- Maryland - Page is now open for adoption.

General Notes

- Project volunteers who have not updated their pages since January 2010 are being contacted about their continued participation in the project.
- Project pages without volunteers are in the process of being link checked.

If you have questions or comments about this project, feel free to contact me at dnlcornwall@alaska.net

While working on the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project updating Arizona databases, I ran across this resource:

ADWR Imaged Records Database - Searchable database of digitized records, including: Well Registry, Statement of Claiment, Surface Water Files, Groundwater Authority Files, among others. This database has a number of technical hurdles: Windows Only, Internet Explorer Only, Javascript enabled, PowerWeb ActiveX viewer. The plug-in is free, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 users need to follow an illustrated, six page MS Word document to install the plugin.

I don't think this is a deliberate attempt on Arizona's part to discourage access to records, but it does illustrate that there is much more to providing access to public records than simply putting them online. Ideally an agency considers the formats that citizens are likely to use and uses technologies that require low levels of involvement from users. Or, failing that, posting the data in an easy to manipulate format (spreadsheets, xml, pdf, etc) that other people and organizations can use to provide better access.