As promised, starting this week, Guide of the Week is supporting the “__ Days to Government Information Liberation” initiative by highlighting guides from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki that shed light on important Presidential transition issues as defined by the Government Accountability Office’s urgent issues page at http://www.gao.gov/transition_2009/urgent/. This page highlights the following 13 “urgent issues”:
- oversight of financial institutions and markets,
- U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan,
- protecting the homeland,
- undisciplined defense spending,
- improving the U.S. image abroad,
- finalizing plans for the 2010 Census,
- caring for service members,
- preparing for public health emergencies,
- revamping oversight of food safety,
- restructuring the approach to surface transportation,
- retirement of the Space Shuttle,
- ensuring an effective transition to digital TV, and
- rebuilding military readiness.
Today, we focus on oversight of financial institutions and markets. The Handout Exchange Wiki offers several items that look helpful:
- Banking, Banks and Credit Unions (University of Colorado at Boulder Government Publications Library, 2008)
- Government Documents on Banking (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 1999) Last updated 3/10/2008
- Housing (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 2001) Last updated 3/10/2008
I’ve actually covered Bert Chapman’s guide to housing in a prior edition of Guide of the Week, so I won’t cover that guide in detail again. His banking guide provides the usual intro and helpful catalog terms. Then it highlights a number of resources helpful to monitoring oversight efforts, including:
- Annual Report Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
- House Financial Services Committee
- Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
- Australia Parliament House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance, & Public Administration
The UC Boulder guide provides links to national and international banking information including such resources as:
- FDIC Institution Directory contains demographic data and financial profiles of each FDIC-insured depository institution derived from quarterly reports filed with Federal regulators.
- Community Reinvestment Act Database “The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.” The database includes bank ratings and performance evaluations.
- Credit Union Data Detailed data on individual institutions and tool for data comparison.
The guide also offers a link to the informative yet lighthearted AmosWEB ECONOMIC GLOSS*arama.
As usual, there is a lot more in all three guides. Look them over. If you find them helpful, send the guide links to your Senators and Representatives. It’s their transition too! And if you’re a docs librarian with a guide to some of the urgent issues listed above, then please QUICKLY post your guide to the Handout Exchange.
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