Gov Gab: Friendly gov website talk
The folks that brought us usa.gov have established a blog of their own over at http://blog.usa.gov/roller/. The blog is called Gov Gab and is maintained by "a team of five bloggers with different backgrounds and interests, all experts on government information via their jobs at USA.gov, Pueblo.gsa.gov, or 1 (800) FED-INFO."
The blog is a week old and so far have had conversational, user-friendly postings on photo resources, gov't travel sites, apartment hunting and organic foods. If you're familar with Lori Smith's blog on MySpace, you have a sense of the tone of this blog. The sites featured are taken from federal, state and local web resources. If this week is an indicator of the quality, this will be a great resource. I hope it gets maximum promotion from librarians and other interested parts.
The blog accepts comments according to this reasonable sounding policy:
We welcome your comments and expect that our conversation will follow the general rules of respectful civil discourse. This is a moderated blog, and we will only post comments from bloggers over 12 years of age that relate to topics on Gov Gab: Your U.S. Government Blog. We will review comments for posting within one business day. You are fully responsible for everything that you submit in your comments, and all posted comments are in the public domain. We do not discriminate against any views, but we reserve the right not to post comments.
According to a reply to a comment I saw, the blogging team is very open to suggestions for future topics:
We would love to get ideas for future blog topics! You can email any of us by clicking our name above our posts and sending us a message.
Spread the word! The more the merrier around here.
Consider the word spread. Thanks much to Ray Matthews of the Utah State Library for pointing out this new blog to me. Now go and do the same for others!
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Total Recall: The Podcast
Weekly Recall Review is a 3-5 minute summary of product recalls and other consumer safety news from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. According to the podcast website, the 8/31/2007 show included "highlights back-to-school safety, including clothing with drawstrings, art supplies, playground equipment, portable soocer goals, and helmets"
This podcast joins its siblings on our government podcasts page. Have a listen and if you're a podcaster, consider dropping in part or all of one of these public domain podcasts into your own podcasts.
GPO’s FY 2008 Budget Request via CRS
Thanks to our friends at the Open House Project and Open CRS, we can bring the Congressional Research Service summary of GPO's FY 2008 budget request contained in the report:
RL34031
Legislative Branch: FY2008 Appropriations
June 05, 2007Government Printing Office (GPO). The agency’s FY2008 request of $181.98 million represents a 49% increase over the $122.1 million made available for FY2007. GPO’s budget authority is contained in three accounts: (1) congressional printing and binding, (2) Office of Superintendent of Documents (salaries and expenses), and (3) the revolving fund. FY2008 requests for these accounts are ! congressional printing and binding — $109.5 million; Office of Superintendent of Documents (salaries and expenses) — $45.6 million; and revolving fund — $26.8 million.
The congressional printing and binding account pays for expenses of printing and binding required for congressional use, and for statutorily authorized printing, binding, and distribution of government publications for specified recipients at no charge. Included within these publications are the Congressional Record; Congressional Directory; Senate and House Journals; memorial addresses of Members; nominations; U.S. Code and supplements; serial sets; publications printed without a document or report number, for example, laws and treaties; envelopes provided to Members of Congress for the mailing of documents; House and Senate business and committee calendars; bills, resolutions, and amendments; committee reports and prints; hearings; and other documents.
The Office of Superintendent of Documents account funds the mailing of government documents for Members of Congress and federal agencies, as statutorily authorized; the compilation of catalogs and indexes of government publications; and the cataloging, indexing, and distribution of government publications to the Federal Depository and International Exchange libraries, and to other individuals and entities, as authorized by law.
GPO requested $26.8 million for its revolving fund to support the agency’s acquisition of information technology infrastructure and security enhancements, workforce retraining and restructuring efforts, and facilities maintenance and repairs. This is an increase of $25.8 million over the $1 million provided in FY2007. Of the requested amount, $10.5 million was proposed for the completion of the development of GPO’s Future Digital System, while $9.4 million would cover the replacement of a 30-year-old automated composition system.20
Highlights of House and Senate Hearings on FY2008 Budget of the GPO.
Acting Public Printer William H. Turri, in his written testimony, discussed recent efforts to transform GPO’s operations for the digital age.21 GPO’s production of U.S. passports to meet new standards and increased demand has also been of
interest to appropriators.20 Testimony of William H. Turri, Acting Public Printer of the United States, U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, Legislative Branch Appropriations for 2008, hearings, 110th Cong., 1st sess., March 16, 2007 (not yet published).
We at FGI would welcome any comments that GPO staff would want to post here, along with any other interested party's comments.
Continue readingDaniel’s Docs Videos now at Internet Archive
As you should know by now, Free Government Information maintains a listing of video spots promoting government documents and government information. Most of these videos are available at YouTube and the Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network.
But we recognize that a number of organizations ban "commercial/consumer video" sites like YouTube. So I have posted the videos on the list that I personally created over at the Internet Archive, which most filters seem to treat as an educational site and often left unblocked:
- Air Force at Your Library (3 min) - US Air Force documents and other resources set to the official Air Force Song.
- Army at Your Library (1 min) - Selection of Army resources set to Army Song.
- Best Titles Ever! The Video - 13 titles from FGI's Best Titles Ever page set to electronic music.
- Documents on Parade: Criminal Edition - Web sites and Dept of Justice documents set to music familiar to boomers.
- FDLP - The Final Frontier (Approx 2 min) - Space. The final frontier. Available at your Federal Depository Library since the dawn of the space age. Music by Victor Stellar courtesy of Podsafe Audio.
- Marines Get Around! (approximately 1 min, posted 12/24/2006) - Roundup of documents showing how active Marines have been in our nation's history.
- Navy at Your Library (39 seconds) - Sampling of Navy documents and web sites set to music.
- Shield of Freedom (2 min, posted 12/30/2006) - USCG documents set to the tune Coast Guard's Chief Petty Officers March.
Placing these videos in the Internet Archive has another virtue. They can be downloaded, burned onto CD/DVD, remixed, whatever. These videos are under a noncommerical Creative Commons license, so free to use them in your own promotional materials. And if you create your own videos, we at FGI encourage you to upload them to the Internet Archive now that the IA has simplified the upload process. If you need a walkthrough or have other questions, just drop me a line at dnlcornwall AT alaska DOT net or leave a message here in comments.
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Book Review: Made to Stick – Info advocates must read
The book discussed below doesn't have much to do with government information, but I think it can be a powerful guide to those of us who our passionate about the cause of freely available government information.
Crossposted from Alaskan Librarian:
I feel fortunate that my library participates in a downloadable audiobook project called Listen Alaska through Overdrive, inc. It's given me the chance to do try out books on my mp3 player that I might not have picked up to read but turned out to be great books.
Such is the case with Made to stick : why some ideas some ideas survive and others die by Chip and Dan Heath. I downloaded the audiobook version from Listen Alaska, and was so impressed I ordered the paper copy for my library. If you're a librarian, you should too. Then read it. You can read the introduction right now by going to the companion web site at http://www.madetostick.com/.
Why do I think this book should be read by every librarian? Because the authors carefully lay out the elements needed to convey a compelling message and provide many examples of messages that work. Many well-intentioned people tell us librarians to "tell our stories." The Heath brothers show us HOW to tell our stories. Consultants tell libraries it is important to have a mission statement, but the Heath brothers demonstrate how to generate a "core value" that can actually guide decision making.
The authors start the book with a common and unforgettable urban legend and dissect the "stickiness" aspects that keep the legend in circulation. They suggest that every successful message has characteristics that spell out SUCES:
Simple
Unexpected
Credible
Emotions
Stories
The rest of the book examines how to make messages simple, unexpected, credible, have emotional content and how to tell stories. This is both simpler and more complex than it sounds. The books messages are made clearer by frequent "message clinics" where the brothers provide several ways of getting a message across and let the choose the one that seems most compelling.
Authors Chip and Dan Heath are the first to tell you that this isn't a cookbook. It's not a matter of following SUCES and having success every time. But they and I say that if you do put these elements into your messages, they'll have a fighting chance of being heard and remembered.
One of the things I regret about Library school is that there were no courses in communication or public relations. This is a particularly glaring deficiency because as a group librarians tend to be introverted and self-effacing. We don't have much experience in getting our stories out and tend to lapse into jargon and statistics, two things guaranteed to lose our audience. Made to Stick could help turn that around and make us effective advocates for our libraries and other causes in our lives.
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