FGI Wants YOUR LostDocs Receipts for new blog!
Have you wondered how many items get submitted to the Government Printing Office as fugitive documents through GPO's Lost Docs form at http://www.fdlp.gov/lostdocs? We have. Have you thought that a public "lost docs" list might be a good collection development tool? We have. Have you wondered how long it takes GPO to act on fugitive documents reports? We have. To answer these questions, Free Government Information (FGI) has established a new stand-alone blog called the Lost Docs Blog at http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/. You can also get to the blog by clicking on "Lostdocs" in the upper right-hand corner of the FGI home page. We think that the Lost Docs blog, if well utilized, will provide several important services to the Government Information Community:
- It will provide an indication of the volume of fugitive documents discovered by the community.
- It will reduce duplicate reports of fugitive documents, optimizing the time of GPO catalogers.
- It will allow depository libraries and other interested parties the opportunity to acquire materials found to be out of scope of the FDLP.
- Since blogs are indexed by Google and other search engines, lostdocs blog posts will raise awareness of government documents in search results. Participating in this blog is easy. All we need you to do is to send us your e-mail receipt from GPO to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. That's it. If you're new to reporting fugitive documents, you might want to check out our instructions at http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/2009/07/how-to-report-a-fugitivelost-document/. We know there have been many respectable efforts at tackling the issue of fugitive documents. What we think makes this project different is the public listing of possible fugitive documents acknowledged by GPO's reporting system. If enough lost docs reporters forward their receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, then we'll have a good handle on what the documents community is finding and reporting. Because some will ask us why we didn't ask GPO for copies of their receipts, we wanted to let you know we did. GPO is involved in a number of worthy projects at the moment and was not able to commit to providing us copies of their lostdocs e-mail receipts. We appreciated the time they gave to review our proposal. Now it's up to you. If you have some lostdocs receipts on hand, send them to us. And start forwarding receipts for items you report to GPO in the future. Together we can create a new collection development resource that will benefit librarians and documents users alike. Sincerely, Continue reading
Congratulations Bert, Lori and Libby!
FGI would like to congratulate Bert Chapman, Lori Bryant and Libby Wahl for their work which has resulted in the Purdue University Libraries Government Documents Department being the Government Printing Office's (GPO) Federal Depository Library Spotlight for August 2009. This honor is well deserved as this excerpt from GPO's citation makes clear:
The depository has subject guides, course guides, and the maintenance of an ongoing list of “Frequently Asked Questions” that are of interest to people monitoring current events. The library’s Government Documents Web page also promotes government information through the maintenance of a "Government Documents of the Week" and "Featured Sites of the Week" section. This enables people to explore topics of current or general interest through depository resources. Visitors may not even have known that government information played a part in the topic! The library’s efforts to connect users to government information supports not only library users, but library staff as well, since much of the information is related to current events and hence may be harder for reference staff to track down. Finally, the depository coordinator, Bert Chapman, is committed to providing detailed subject help through listserv postings as well as through the online reference service Government Information Online (GIO). By participating in these and other initiatives, he shares his vast knowledge by providing quality information and reference services to both library users and librarians nationwide.In addition to what GPO has cited, we at FGI would like to thank Bert Chapman for his many contributions to the GODORT Handount Exchange. His willingness to share his excellent subject guides beyond his university to the entire government information community is greatly appreciated. We have featured a number of his guides linked to the Handout Exchange. In summing up the greatness of the Purdue Government Documents department, we can't do better than how GPO ended their citation:
For all the energy directed to educating both users and librarians alike, GPO would like to thank the Purdue University Libraries. Their willingness to share their expertise benefits us all.Indeed. FGI salutes Bert, Lori and Libby for all that they do and wish them well in continued efforts. Continue reading
Steal This Idea, Please!
After reading the book Jacoby, Susan. 2008. The age of American unreason. New York: Pantheon Books. and reading this about our beloved Constitution:
“More than a third were unable to list any First Amendment rights; 42 percent think that the Constitution explicitly states that “the first language of the United States is English”; and 25 percent believe that Christianity was established by the Constitution as the official government religion. The young are even more ignorant than their parents and grandparents. About half of adults–but just 41 percent of teenagers–can name the three branches of government.”I decided to devote Mondays on my personal blog to exposing people to the Constitution one article at a time. I'm using official text from the National Archives and I'm trying not to do a lot of commentary. I think this might be a good thing to do for librarians around the country. If you do add commentary, try to customize it for your audience. Maybe if our nation understood its Constitution better, it would be more interested in defending it. Call me quixotic, but it is worth a try. If you decide to join me on Constitution Mondays, please leave a comment here or on my introductory post. Continue reading
Depository Concerns in Michigan
This e-mail from govdoc-l is being reposted with the permission of Doug Way.
Subject: Depository Concerns in Michigan From: Doug Way Reply-To: Discussion of Government Document Issues Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:23:12 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain Parts/Attachments: Parts/Attachments Hello everyone, On behalf of the Government Documents Roundtable of Michigan I wanted to make a posting to inform you of an executive order recently made by Gov. Granholm. This order calls for, among other things, the elimination of the Department of History, Arts and Libraries and for the elimination or transfer of the library's Federal Depository collection. As the state's regional library, this obviously has dramatic implications for the state's depository community and for public access to government information. For the complete executive order, please see: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/gov/EO36_285881_7.pdf. For a thorough summary of the executive order and the Michigan Library Association's position (as of last week), please GODORT of MI's Red Tape blog, which is maintained by Jon Harrison (http://blogpublic.lib.msu.edu/index.php/2009/07/14/governor-granholm-issues-executive-order?blog=5). Jon has been posting different details as they emerge, so if you are interested in following this situation I would encourage you to read the Red Tape blog (http://blogpublic.lib.msu.edu/index.php?blog=5). Needless to say this is a difficult and challenging time for the library community in Michigan. The governor's executive order and other proposals floating around Lansing impact not only the depository program, but a wide range of library services that the residents of the state take advantage of on a daily basis. Unfortunately, just at the time when the residents of our state need libraries the most they are the ones who will suffer the most as they lose access to information (government and otherwise). Regards, Doug Way President, GODORT of MII'd like to take note of the fact that Governor Granholm is a Democrat. It's important to remember that friends and adversaries of libraries come from across the political spectrum. You can never class one party or group of people as wholly bad and another party/group as wholly good. We at FGI would welcome discussion of any aspect of the closure/reassignment of the Library of Michigan in this space. A wound to one library is a wound to all. Continue reading
National Data Catalog from Sunlight Labs
Our friends over at Sunlight Labs have announced a new project they call that "National Data Catalog" that will build on data.gov:
Today I’m happy to announce Sunlight Labs is stealing an idea from our government. Data.gov is an incredible concept, and the implementation of it has been remarkable. We’re going to steal that idea and make it better. Because of politics and scale there’s only so much the government is going to be able to do. There are legal hurdles and boundaries the government can’t cross that we can. For instance: there’s no legislative or judicial branch data inside Data.gov and while Data.gov links off to state data catalogs, entries aren’t in the same place or format as the rest of the catalog. Community documentation and collaboration are virtual impossibilities because of the regulations that impact the way Government interacts with people on the web. We think we can add value on top of things like Data.gov and the municipal data catalogs by autonomously bringing them into one system, manually curating and adding other data sources and providing features that, well, Government just can’t do. There’ll be community participation so that people can submit their own data sources, and we’ll also catalog non-commercial data that is derivative of government data like OpenSecrets. We’ll make it so that people can create their own documentation for much of the undocumented data that government puts out and link to external projects that work with the data being provided.If you're interested in helping out on this effort, please join the National Data Catalog Google Group at http://groups.google.com/group/datacatalog?lnk=gcamv. Continue reading
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