Welcome to the podium Emily Keller to the guest blogger podium for August 2010! Emily is the Political Science and Public Affairs Librarian at the University of Washington (full bio). Thanks also to Shari Laster for posting to FGI for the month of July!

Take it away Emily!

Emily Keller is the Political Science and Public Affairs Librarian at the University of Washington Libraries. Her primary focus is on reference and instruction, but she is also a self-described govpubs groupie with an interest in gov/mil 2.0 and integrating government information into general reference and instruction. You can find her on twitter too.

My sincere apologies for not introducing Shari Laster sooner as our guest blogger for July (I swear I have an excuse :-)) Shari's taking time out of her busy schedule (she just started a 3-year term on Depository Library Council!) to find and write about juicy documents tidbits on FGI. Thanks and take it away, Shari!!

For those of us who spend our lunchtimes wandering around the internet, TED Talks are an excellent and often-inspiring diversion. In a February 2010 talk, David Cameron discussed the relationship between politics and behavioral economics, arguing that the technology-driven empowerment of citizens ultimately increases their well-being.

Whether or not you agree with Cameron's political perspective, and whether or not you agree with his assessment of human nature, his description of the relationship between "people power," and transparency, choice, and accountability is an interesting one. He points to the Missouri Accountability Portal as an excellent example of public access to technology resulting in public empowerment.

Incidentally, Cameron promised a site that would track all government spending over £25,000, and all government contracts. Public spending data is now available in the Combined Online Information System (COINS) database. The UK government portal, direct.gov.uk, links to some guidance on using COINS, which indicates that the pledge about publicizing spending should be fulfilled by November 2010. It also indicates that user-friendly access options for some data subsets will be in place by August 2010.

You can watch the video here, or view the video with subtitles and an interactive transcript on the TED Talks site.

• David Cameron: The next age of government. Filmed February 2010.

It's 2010; time to gear up for another year of advocating for digital govt information. It's my pleasure to introduce Tom Moritz to the guest blogger podium for January, 2010 (Tom's bio here). Tom's a jedi library advocate with too much experience to list here. Take it away Tom!

And our many thanks to Sonnet Brown, our December 2009 guest blogger! As always, let us know if you'd like to take a turn as guest blogger. It's fun and easy :-)

Tom Moritz has been a librarian and advocate for knowledge equity since 1975. He has broad experience from the local to the international level in public and private sector libraries of all types. He has performed extensive contract work for US EPA, NOAA, The National Academies and the University of Washington, has won grants from the Mellon Foundation, the US National Science Foundation and The Sloan Foundation (in conjunction with the Internet Archive). He has been successful in winning substantial support from private donors. In 2005, he served as Visiting Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute Graduate School of Library and Information Science. He is a regular participant in professional peer review activities including advisory boards and grant reviewing and is editor and author of many publications and presentations.

Ok gentle readers, we've got a new guest blogger for December. Welcome to the podium Sonnet Brown, head of the Federal Documents Department at the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans. She's a 2010 ALA Emerging Leader so watch out! Check out her bio for more. Take it away Sonnet!

Sonnet Brown is head of the Federal Documents Department at the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans. She was selected to be a 2010 American Library Association Emerging Leader.

Sonnet received her M.L.I.S. (2008) from Texas Woman’s University and her B.A. in Classical Studies (2004) from Loyola University New Orleans. When she isn’t working with documents, she enjoys writing and exploring Second Life. She is currently a columnist with Legal Information Alert and will also be writing the Tech Watch column with Rebecca Blakeley. She is also working with UNO’s Digital Initiatives Librarian Keith Pickett to digitize U.S. Hearings from the 1960s-1980s. She promotes the project and the rest of her collection through the department’s Facebook, Twitter, and Blog.

As a member of Gen Y, Sonnet looks forward to a long career ahead of her. After all, she believes that “librarians are like vampires…they live forever!”

Thanks for having me as FGI September Blogger of the Month! I am signing off now and returning to my regular gig at the SLA Govt Info Blog but will remain a faithful reader. I will also keep spreading the news about the great work that FDLP librarians do. A fine example just came up on GOVDOC-L: the newly updated Federal Websites for Tribal Libraries and Tribal College Libraries, created by the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. Wonderful!

Happy October,
Peggy

Hi all. We've got a treat for you as Peggy Garvin takes another turn at the podium. Peggy, the blogger in chief at the SLA Government Information Division blog, was BOTM in August, 2006 and liked it so much she decided to do it again (hear that other guest bloggers?!). So without further ado, take it away Peggy.