Archiving .Gov: Your Help Requested!
As the inauguration ceremony begins tomorrow, we can be assured that the Library of Congress and other partners in the End of Term Harvest project have captured much of the Bush administration’s online presence. Many of these websites will be re-captured at later dates, providing an interesting look at how these websites will change over time, through different administrations.
On a related note, there will undoubtedly be changes in the coming days, weeks, months, that will eliminate some government agencies. We are trying to archive as many of these “dead” websites as possible in the CyberCemetery, to preserve them in their final form.
Please, if you know of a website that is disappearing, email or call me. I’m keeping my eyes and ears open, but there is a lot of content out there, and I welcome your help. After all, this information is for all of us!
Thanks, and I wish you all joy as we witness history tomorrow.
Missed Econ 101?
In light of all this financial upheaval, I’ve been trying to find good sources for learning basic economic concepts. I must admit that I haven’t taken economics since high school, a class that consisted of one semester learning to balance checkbooks… and that was about it. Lately I’ve been reading a basic economics book, and have another on my to-read list, but it struck me that what I really needed was a series of short educational publications on specific economic topics.
Hmmm… government documents, anyone? Here are some helpful documents and websites I’m using.
- Federal Reserve Education
- Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: Publications
- Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: Publications
- The Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy and the Economy
- Free Enterprise, the Economy and Monetary Policy
- Everyday Economics
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Please comment if you’ve got further resources–I’m fascinated to see them!
September BOTM Wrap-Up
September’s gone already? Well, brief as the month was, I want to say I’ve really enjoyed being September’s Blogger of the Month. Posting here and watching new stories come up daily has been a real treat. My thanks to the FGI folks for giving me a great venue for posting thoughts and finds! And in that spirit, here’s a little mish-mash of what I’ve been reading the past two days.
I find it pretty telling (in a geeky way) of where the nation’s attention lies, that I’m getting timeout errors in so many areas related to the Economic Stimulus Bill and the general financial hoopla. This morning, I couldn’t get to related articles on Wikipedia.
Yesterday GovTrack.us posted a high-traffic-volume message to the effect of, “we’ll be back when everyone chills out.” Today, they’ve posted the Economic Stimulus Bill details at the top of the page, with a note stating, “We’ll have more info here as soon as it’s posted on the government website THOMAS, maybe tomorrow. If that’s not fast enough, tell your representative that the Library of Congress needs the funding and a mandate to enter the 21st century for legislative information.” Indeed.
And now for something completely different! I’ve been looking through Resource Shelf‘s GovDocs category lately, and made several interesting finds, including Statescape (fee-based, but includes lots of free state gov info) and an overview of the new features on Science.gov.
And in a follow-up to the earlier government Twitter posts, here are a few more feeds I’m following:
And a Happy Autumn to you all!
Core Reference Tools Survey
Kovacs Consulting, which holds online training for librarians, also surveys librarians’ core reference tools in a variety of subject areas. And yes, there is a Government Documents section! You can contribute to the current survey or take a look at the 2005 and 2006 results.
What a great way to find some new resources, and see what everyone else is using! I also plan on using the list as I train a graduate student on our reference desk.
VP Records to be Preserved
This past Saturday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered Dick Cheney to preserve all vice presidential records–huzzah! Read more about the case below:
- news story about the case
- Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s memorandum opinion
- the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who filed the lawsuit
- more about the Presidential Records Act
Thanks again to Rebecca Blakeley to alerting me about this story!
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