Happy 50th to Paul Meek Library at Univ of TN!
According to govdoc-l poster Ania Lasota, the Paul Meek Library had a terrific 50th anniversary as a Federal Depository Library:
This week we have celebrated 50th Anniversary of our depository status. We did great: we had coverage by a local radio station, and also Jackson, local and college paper. We ran information about the docs anniversary on the web, and the campus main electronic marquee. The staff put together a nice display of government documents and posters, and we had a great reception - which went really well! Our guests included Congressman and Mrs. John Tanner, Mayor, Chancellor, and others. As an extra enticement for students to attend our event, we had a bunch of door prizes which local businesses graciously donated to us.
Our hats are off to Ania and others at the Paul Meek Library who did such a terrific job ensuring visibilty for their event!
It looks like it impressed Rep. Tanner as well who is reportedly planning to return to the library to give a lecture.
50-State subject database guides – what next?
Recently, the 50-State Agency Database Registry produced an annotated list of searchable inmate locaters. Many states have databases on many given subjects, so the volunteer staff of the Database Register is interested in expanding the offerings on our subject-focused databases page.
We (the Registry volunteers) would like to do this with subjects of interest to the community. So tell us what we should do next, either by leaving comments here or by participating in a brief poll on the main page of the State Agency Database Highlights blog at http://statedatabase.blogspot.com.
For databases from the 50 states, please see the 50-State Agency Database Registry
Free NYT + Free WSJ = Free Fed Info?
While we haven't been great at generating comments, I wanted to toss out a discussion topic and see where it goes.
As I hope many of you know, the New York Times has dropped subscriber charges and the uber-capitalist Wall Street Journal will follow suit in the next few months. The NYT found they were losing more in ad revenue than gaining in subscriptions. New WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch is on record saying that ad revenue is where the money is.
What, if anything, does the death of premium subscriptions for propriety content, mean for electronic federal information that gets sold? Not just the GPO Sales program, but NTIS, PACER, so-called cooperative publications and the rest? What is their future? Do they have one? At least the NYT and WSJ had copyrighted materials they could defend. With some exceptions, federal information is public domain. Once you get it out of a paid system, you can use it how you want. It's not quite that easy since a few federal fee-based databases are licensed, but it's mostly true.
We at FGI think there is answer -- that selling federal information, aside from being an affront to the taxpayers who paid for the the first time, will not be viable. It wasn't when GPO tried it in the early 1990s and it won't be now. Eventually fee-based gov't information will need to be provided freely, like NYT and WSJ. Though without the ads. It's not inevitable, but even the market seems like it may be trending that way. What do you think?
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Congrats to Jian Anna Xiong, Morris Library
The Morris library in the McLafferty Annex library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale celebrated 75 years as a Federal Depository Library this past week. The Southern Illinoisan newspaper celebrated this occaision with an article titled Morris Library Recognized for Participation in Federal Program. The article featured a photo of documents librarian Jian Anna Xiong.
What I liked was that Ms. Xiong was able to get the paper to mention a number of highlights of the collection:
There are correspondences from Abraham Lincoln, volumes from the U.S. Bureau of Entomology and CIA reports on the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to library officials, much of the history of the federal government from 1789 to present day is available for viewing.
Government Information Librarian Jian Anna Xiong said the depository offers information on almost every imaginable aspect of the federal government.
"There are 400,000 documents on paper and about 900,000 on microfiche," she said. "It's almost every area of American history: political science, race issues, slavery, taxes, health."
Happy Anniversary! And good work in getting your local media to notice the anniversary and to talk about your collection!
Inmate Locator Tool Created from GODORT Wiki
As a demonstration of things that can be done with ALA GODORT's 50-State Database Registry I have created a page listing sites of state prisoner locator tools at: http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Prisoner_Locator_Tools.
So far it looks like nine states have such sites. If you see a state that's missing, let me know or if you have patrons that need to find folks in state prisons, suggest this site to them.
Is there a subject focused page involving state databases you'd like to create? Register with the ALA GODORT Wiki and get started. Or drop me a line.
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