State Agency Databases Activity Report 12/11/2011
Our volunteers remain active and productive at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases. We are in the midst of our December link checking activity. SUBJECT PAGE ACTIVITY Health Practitioner Databases (Lynn McClelland) With the addition of NV and ND. Lynn now has 46 states plus the District of Columbia represented on this page. Significant new information has been added to the Minnesota and North Carolina entries, among others. OTHER WIKI ACTIVITY See our last seven days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs for a blow by blow description of changes to the wiki. Here are a few highlights: DATABASES ADDED KENTUCKY (Glen Mcaninch) Chiropractor Search - You can search the online database of providers by last name, license number, city or county. LOUISIANA (Rita Franks) Central Gaming Registry - From the website, "Louisiana Revised Statutes 27:15 (B)(3) requires the Louisiana Gaming Control Board to provide a central registry of all gaming operators licensed under the provisions of various Louisiana gaming acts. Under this statute the central gaming registry is to include the name and address of all licensees, the address of any location where authorized gaming takes place and the name and address of any person who owns or controls more than 5% interest in these establishments. Data can be accessed from the left side of the Central Gaming Registry Home Page screen and is listed in several different categories. + Expand will provide all data for the individual or business accessed. (Arrow) Previous and (Arrow) Next will move you forward and back through the database. Clicking on an entry will provide detailed information on the entry. Quarterly Listings and Ownership Charts are also accessed from the left side of the Home page. Quarterly Listings are stored by year." WYOMING (Karen Kitchens) Wyoming Boards and Commissions - This database contains a list of statutory requirements and a brief description of purpose for each State of Wyoming board and commission. Also contains a list of all board or commission members. OTHER NEWS After January 1, 2012, I will be examining pages to see the last time a volunteer touched them. Any pages that haven't been edited since January 1, 2011 will be reassigned. Continue reading
State Agency Databases Activity Report 12/4/2011
Our volunteers remain active and productive at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases. SUBJECT PAGE ACTIVITY Health Practitioner Databases (Lynn McClelland) With the addition of ID, KY, LA, MA, MN and NH. Lynn now has 44 states plus the District of Columbia represented on this page. This page has gotten so comprehensive, the wiki made Lynn split the page in two. The original page now covers states A-M and the second page covers states N-Z. This is the kind of problem I love to have as project coordinator. OTHER WIKI ACTIVITY See our last 14 days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d for a blow by blow description of changes to the wiki. Here are a few highlights: DATABASES ADDED ALASKA (Daniel Cornwall) Alaska Film Locations Database - Operated by Reel Scout on behalf of the Alaska Film Office. Searchable by keyword or by category/subcategory, location name, region, town or distance with zip code. Records have name of location, nearest community, id code, photos, description and general notes. CALIFORNIA (JOEL RANE) California Information File - This database contains more than 50,000 references to California people, places, events, and subjects. GEORGIA (Chris Sharpe) Georgia Procurement Registry - Able to search state governments, municipalities, county governments, and K-12 school districts NORTH CAROLINA (Jennifer Davison) North Carolina Board of Nursing - Database of North Carolina licensed RNs and LPNs. OTHER NEWS Mid-December marks our next mass link check update. This should be less extensive than our link changes in September now that our volunteers have committed to checking pages at least quarterly. Some volunteers link check once a month. Also, after January 1, 2012, I will be examining pages to see the last time a volunteer touched them. Any pages that haven't been edited since January 1, 2011 will be reassigned. New for 2012, we will be changing our practice of permitting state listings where it is simply one link to a page of databases maintained by a state agency such as the case for New York. This change is intended to allow the inclusion of search results for that state in the wiki search. The libraries involved will be individually notified before the end of the year. Continue reading
State Agency Databases Activity Report 11/20/2011
It has been two weeks since our last report, mostly because I've been wrapped up in National Novel Writing Month (NANOwrimo). Our volunteers remain active and productive at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project. SUBJECT PAGE ACTIVITY Health Practitioner Databases (Lynn McClelland) With the addition of OK, OR, TX, WV and WY. Lynn now has 38 states plus the District of Columbia represented on this page. I was particularly surprised by the number of practioner databases were available for West Virginia. OTHER WIKI ACTIVITY See our last 14 days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d for a blow by blow description of changes to the wiki. Here are a few highlights: DATABASES ADDED INDIANA ( Kimberly Brown-Harden) Closed Institutions and Student Records - This website contains a database of defunct, or closed schools in Indiana and were accredited by the Commission. Students can also request academic transcripts. MISSOURI (Annie Moots) Missouri State Highway Patrol Online Boat/Drowning Incident Reports - From the web site: "Information on this site is preliminary information relating to boat incidents and drownings investigated by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Water Patrol Division. (Incidents investigated by agencies outside the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Water Patrol Division are not included.) They are posted here automatically and remain online for 29 days." These are not official reports. NEW MEXICO (Adrienne Walker) Find Your Legislator - Locate current members of the House of Representatives and the Senate by name, district or zip code. Former legislators can be searched by name. There are also documents available listing current leadership, addresses, phone numbers and seating charts for the New Mexico House of Representatives and the Senate. OTHER STATE NEWS Liz Paulus has done EXTENSIVE link checking and fixing to the Oregon page. ORPHAN NEWS Our last official orphan remains Rhode Island. Will you be the one to take the last "unadopted orphan?" If you're interested in adopting Rhode Island, check out our volunteer guide and then send me an e-mail if you'd like to adopt it. If you adopt Rhode Island, 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. Continue reading
State Agency Databases Activity Report 11/6/2011
It has been a another productive week at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases. SUBJECT PAGE ACTIVITY Health Practitioner Databases (Lynn McClelland) With the addition of HI, IL, ME, MT, NE, NY, PA, RI, SC, TN, UT, VT, VA, WA and WI. Lynn now has 33 states plus the District of Columbia represented on this page. Way to go Lynn! OTHER WIKI ACTIVITY See our last 7 days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs for a blow by blow description of changes to the page. Here are a few highlights: DATABASES ADDED MICHIGAN (Michael McDonnell) Active State Chartered Credit Unions Locator - Lets you find credit unions chartered according to the Michigan Credit Union Act, 2003 PA 215, as amended. It does not include credit unions chartered by the National Credit Union Administration and credit unions chartered by other states. You can search by credit union name (or part of the name), City, county, zip code, or charter number. NEW MEXICO (Adrienne Walker) Historic Markers - Search through the geographic regions of New Mexico for historical markers. A brief description of each marker and its approximate location will display by region on a map by scrolling over a marker name. There is also a section of New Mexico Women Historical Markers. Citizens can also report missing historical markers and make recommendations for additional markers. TEXAS (Ann Ellis) Portal for Comprehensive Health Data in Texas - This portal contains statistics for births, deaths, demographics, geographic and survey data on risk factors and disease prevalence, and hospital records within the state ORPHAN NEWS Our last official orphan remains Rhode Island. Will you be the one to take the last "unadopted orphan?" If you're interested in adopting Rhode Island, check out our volunteer guide at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/SADATFS_Volunteer_Guide and then send me an e-mail if you'd like to adopt it. If you adopt Rhode Island, 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. Continue reading
Petition in support of GPO and the #FDLP
An online petition in support of GPO has been created by Suzanne Sears and Starr Hoffman at the University of North Texas. Of most interest is the question at the end of the letter: "If you are a selective in the FDLP, are you interested in working with other selectives in your state to share regional services in the absence of a regional?" Along these same lines, for your reading pleasure, here's the running tally of documents surrounding the ASERL Plan for Managing FDLP Collections in the Southeast and the proposed MOU between University of Minnesota Libraries and Library of Michigan/Michigan Department of Education. Please let us know in the comments if there are other documents that should be listed.
- CRS Memorandum Nov. 6, 2007 (scroll down to Congressional Research Service Memo)
- ASERL Reply to GPO Oct. 21, 2011
- ASERL/GPO letters
- ARL Letter (There are other letters of support linked off of this page. The ASERL and CIC responses are both there)
- ASERL Support of ARL Letter Oct. 17, 2011
- CIC Support of ARL Letter
- GWLA Support of ARL letter
- Regional Letter signed by 31 of 47 regionals
- Suzanne Sears' posting to GOVDOC-L in response to the ARL letter dated October 2011
- Back from the brink! Recent discussions and the future of the #FDLP. Free Government Information, 10/6/11
- Library Journal articles:
- 31 Regional Coordinators Protest FDLP Decisions. Library Journal, October 24th, 2011
- Government Printing Office Slams Brakes on Overhaul of Southeast's Federal Depository Library Collections. Library Journal, Oct 21, 2011
TO: Members of the Joint Committee on Printing William Boarman, US Public Printer Mary Alice Baish, Superintendent of Documents We, the undersigned, wish to state our strong support of the Government Printing Office (GPO) in its Congressionally-mandated authority of administrating the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), which operates under the specific legal parameters of Title 44 U.S.C. Chapter 19. All government agencies must operate within legal parameters and limited funds assigned to them, and GPO is no different. While we acknowledge that there are long-standing problems with the FDLP and the Title 44 legislation, we believe that the current administration of GPO is making a concerted effort to rectify these issues while adhering to the current legal parameters. On Thursday, October 20, 2011, the current Superintendent of Documents, Mary Alice Baish, announced a plan to gather information from all libraries currently participating in the FDLP to begin the process of Title 44 reform. Previous attempts at revising the legislation for the FDLP has revealed three factors critical to successful reform: clear vision of what needs to be changed, consensus among the community, and members of Congress who support the legislative changes. The announced plan would be the first step in getting a clear vision of the major issues that need to be addressed according to a consensus of the community. We understand that the situation that regional libraries find themselves in appears to be dire. Libraries across the nation are suffering from a lack of adequate space, funding, and staff. The responsibilities that Title 44 places on regional libraries are not insignificant. However, they are necessary to ensure a strong FDLP. These responsibilities are crucial to maintain no-fee permanent public access to government information and to ensure geographic distribution of comprehensive collections. Geographic distribution is essential particularly for the guarantee access of individuals with limited connectivity or who live in rural areas. We fundamentally disagree with the statement that there is no flexibility within the existing FDLP. Any regional library that finds itself unable to fulfill its assigned duties of receipt, retention, and oversight of selective libraries has the option to drop its regional status and become a selective library or drop from the program entirely. The FDLP is designed so that selective libraries may maintain depository status and receive federal documents while being tasked with fewer demands on their space, staff, and fiscal resources. Selective libraries are an integral part of this program and are the face of government information for a wide portion of the U.S. population, particularly in rural areas. Libraries can continue to serve their patrons with the same level of high-quality service and collections whether they are selective or regional. Innovative solutions involving selectives have been successful in sharing regional services within a state, like in Oregon, where four institutions work together to share collections and services to provide regional services for the state. We are concerned with the number of libraries dropping status, but there has historically been fluctuation within the program. The FDLP has survived these fluctuations for over 150 years. In the 2009 Biennial Survey, only 6 regional libraries indicated they were considering dropping their regional status. If the current economic climate necessitates these regional libraries and others dropping their status, then it will be a lamentable loss to the program and to the nation. However, if the remaining libraries in the program are fully committed to the program then the mission of no-fee permanent public access will still be maintained. Recent letters and public statements may give the incorrect impression that the entirety of the government documents community is represented by those statements. We believe it necessary to draft this statement of support for GPO and the existing FDLP because our opinions are not supported by the letter signed by 31 of 47 regional libraries or the letters written by major academic library consortia. There are over 1,200 libraries in the FDLP. Some of those libraries are not as well funded, organized, or vocal as the larger academic libraries. This petition is an opportunity for FDLs not represented by those statements to demonstrate our support for GPO in its efforts to continue to lead the Federal Depository Library Program forward into the future. 1. Your Signature and Location Your Signature and Location Name Position (optional) City/Town State 2. If you are a selective library in the FDLP, are you interested in becoming a regional? If you are a selective library in the FDLP, are you interested in becoming a regional? YesNo 3. If you are a selective in the FDLP, are you interested in working with other selectives in your state to share regional services in the absence of a regional? If you are a selective in the FDLP, are you interested in working with other selectives in your state to share regional services in the absence of a regional? YesNoContinue reading
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