Hurricane Resources
I've seen a lot of good resources related to Hurricane Ike over the past week, and thought I'd compile them here.
- Images of the devastation that Ike wrought, from the USGS, NOAA, and NASA.
- Applying for assistance through FEMA.
- Hurricane assistance resources through USA.gov and Health & Human Services.
- Planning for future hurricane preparedness.
- Rebecca Blakeley has posted a list of places you can volunteer or donate at Gov Docs on the Bayou.
- I also used a recent FGI tip to stay informed! By watching the NASA tweets, I saw when this message was posted about the re-opening of Johnson Space Center on Monday.
“To Form a More Perfect Union…” (Constitution Day)
In my department, we're preparing for Constitution Day on Wednesday--printing stickers and buttons, boxing up pocket Constitutions, creating activity booklets, updating our website. Last year, we handed out hundreds of pocket Constitutions in a matter of hours at the Political Science department, and this year we've already begun receiving requests for them. This year, we're also participating in a community event at the local Barnes and Noble, which is designed to draw grade-school kids and their parents. We’ve even got a giant replica print of the Constitution (with extra blank but “antique-looking” pages) for the kids to sign. Here are some of the many resources available online:
- Search for great resources from the Constitution Center!
- Peggy Garvin recently posted a great summary of the purpose and origin of Constitution Day on LLRX.com.
- If you're looking for last-minute display ideas, here's a great webpage at the Minnesota State University of Mankato (recommended to me by Shari Laster, Gov Docs librarian at the University of Akron—thanks, Shari!).
- Also, here are some sources for pocket constitutions and related government publications (great giveaways!).
- And we printed our replica based on the gorgeous images on NARA’s Charters of Freedom website.
- See more primary resources at the Library of Congress website.
- The Constitution Day website also has trivia and great resources for making activity booklets, etc.
New WMD Report Card Released
Yesterday, the Partnership for a Secure America released a new WMD Report Card. The report gives our defenses against a WMD terrorist attack as a grade "C," a slight upgrade from the 9/11 Public Discourse Project's 2005 grade of "D." Former 9/11 Commissioners Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-IN) and Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA) were present at the press conference. In related news...
- President Bush spoke this morning at the dedication of the Pentagon Memorial.
- The Flight 93 Memorial is underway; NPR has a story about visiting the site.
- And the memorial at the World Trade Center site is still under construction; Mayor Bloomberg demanded yesterday that it be completed by 2011. Continue reading
We Want YOU… To Help With the Dot Gov Harvest!
Hi to all you FGI readers! I'm thrilled to be this month's guest blogger. As we all watch this historic presidential election unfold, there's another question going on in the back of our minds--how much of this online government information is going to change with the new administration, regardless of who's sworn in next January? As someone who works specifically with digital government collections, and whose primary job is capturing defunct government websites, this is of particular interest. Most of you already know about the "Dot Gov Crawl" project that's been organized to address this issue. The project partners include the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, the California Digital Library (CDL), the University of North Texas (UNT), and the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). We're working collaboratively to harvest and preserve government websites (primarily .gov and .mil domains), to form a snapshot of digital government information at the end of the current presidential administration. The Internet Archive will be performing the comprehensive crawl, and Library of Congress is focusing on congressional materials. CDL and UNT will be performing in-depth harvests of specific government websites, gathering documents linked deep within the websites that may not be gathered in the Internet Archive crawl. I encourage you to participate in the project. Communicate with the partner institution closest to you, and let them know if there are specific websites (or portions of websites) that are of particular interest to you. At UNT, we're trying to focus on documents that support our regional interests, things that might be overlooked in the kinds of sweeping national topics that will be handled by the Internet Archive. We're requesting that librarians for the central United States send us things that you want captured--websites you use often, publications deep within websites that might not be captured in large crawls, topics of regional interest. Your requests will help us identify and prioritize the information that is preserved for future generations. Please, submit any suggestions you have in the comments section below--I'll be monitoring them and adding them to our list. Thanks for your input! Continue reading
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