While poking around the Government Printing Office’s (GPO)’s OPAL training site at http://www.opal-online.org/archivegpo.htm, I found a couple of online workshops that I think will be valuable to beginner and expert alike:
Searching for Free Government Full Text Docs Online: Where to Begin? presented in October 2009 by Holly Harper, GPO intern and MLIS student at the University of Washington.
Geology Librarianship and Government Documents presented in August 2009 by Stephanie Earls, GPO intern and MLIS student at the University of Washington.
They appear to run best in Internet Explorer. The recordings were made by two library school interns working with GPO’s Robin Haun-Mohamed. The intention was to create programming that would be helpful to generalist librarian and new depository staff.
I think they’ve done well at this and created some videos that should be shared with non-librarians as well. I publicly thank Robin and the GPO staff that made these possible. You may wish to pause the videos in places to make notes of URLs.
One new thing I learned (or was reminded anew) by the “Full Text Docs” presentation was the ability to browse publications in FDSys by collection, congressional committee or by Date. Use the “last 24 hours” option to see just how much information government is pumping out these days. And that’s just a fraction of what’s available.
My highlighting these two OPAL presentations should not be interpreted as a slight on the other good material you can find there. Go, watch and explore.
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