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Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

Guide of the Week: Guides related to financial oversight

As promised, starting this week, Guide of the Week is supporting the "__ Days to Government Information Liberation" initiative by highlighting guides from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki that shed light on important Presidential transition issues as defined by the Government Accountability Office's urgent issues page at http://www.gao.gov/transition_2009/urgent/. This page highlights the following 13 "urgent issues":

  • oversight of financial institutions and markets,
  • U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan,
  • protecting the homeland,
  • undisciplined defense spending,
  • improving the U.S. image abroad,
  • finalizing plans for the 2010 Census,
  • caring for service members,
  • preparing for public health emergencies,
  • revamping oversight of food safety,
  • restructuring the approach to surface transportation,
  • retirement of the Space Shuttle,
  • ensuring an effective transition to digital TV, and
  • rebuilding military readiness.
Today, we focus on oversight of financial institutions and markets. The Handout Exchange Wiki offers several items that look helpful: I've actually covered Bert Chapman's guide to housing in a prior edition of Guide of the Week, so I won't cover that guide in detail again. His banking guide provides the usual intro and helpful catalog terms. Then it highlights a number of resources helpful to monitoring oversight efforts, including: The UC Boulder guide provides links to national and international banking information including such resources as:
  • FDIC Institution Directory contains demographic data and financial profiles of each FDIC-insured depository institution derived from quarterly reports filed with Federal regulators.
  • Community Reinvestment Act Database "The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods." The database includes bank ratings and performance evaluations.
  • Credit Union Data Detailed data on individual institutions and tool for data comparison.
The guide also offers a link to the informative yet lighthearted AmosWEB ECONOMIC GLOSS*arama. As usual, there is a lot more in all three guides. Look them over. If you find them helpful, send the guide links to your Senators and Representatives. It's their transition too! And if you're a docs librarian with a guide to some of the urgent issues listed above, then please QUICKLY post your guide to the Handout Exchange. Continue reading

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Guide of the Week: Presidential Papers

Kudos to John for counting down the days to "Government Information Liberation!" In support of this great concept, I will try to focus our "Guide of the Week" series on subjects related to the Presidential transition until the week of January 20th, 2009. I'll highlight guides related to subjects from the GAO transition page and the Agenda page at change.gov once it returns. This week tho, I'd like to highlight two guides from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki concerning Presidents and their documents:

The POTUS guide is focused on information about individual Presidents - their biography, their margin of electoral victory, etc. A useful feature of this guide for the transition is the list of Cabinet members. Looking at the Cabinet members for the Clinton and Carter years might provide hints on who President Obama might pick or provide background on nominees who served during these years. Berkeley's Presidential papers guide is a pathfinder to published materials published by Presidents. It includes sections on:
  • About Presidential Papers
  • Biographical Information
  • Guides
  • Elections
  • Vetoes
  • Executive Orders & Proclamations
  • Official Papers and Speeches
  • Personal papers and correspondence
  • Declassified Documents
  • Selected Internet Resources
There is a lot in both guides and I encourage you to look at them. And if you're a librarian with a guide to some other aspect of government information, please add it to the Handout Exchange. I'd love to see more librarians highlighting their resource guides over the next few months. Between the transition and the major issues facing our country, this may be a great teachable moment to demonstrate the value of government information and the experts who deal with it on a daily basis. Continue reading

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Guide of the Week: Immigration

Today's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange comes to us once again from Bert Chapman: Government Documents on Immigration (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 1999) Last updated 6/18/2008 As Bert points out in his introduction, "Immigration has been and remains an important and controversial issue in U.S. history and contemporary public policy." After pointing helpful subject headings with which to search the Purdue library catalog, he turns to highlighting a number of sources including:

There is, as usual, much more. Go check out the rest of the guide. Mark it and the Handout Exchange in del.icio.us, Facebook or whatever you use to share with your online friends. If you're a docs librarian with a handout or resource guide to share, then please add it to the wiki. Let's show people what librarians are made of. Continue reading

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Guide of the Week: Indiana

In case I haven't made it clear by now, the ALA Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) Handout Exchange Wiki has guides for all levels of government information. For instance this week's guide: Indiana Government and Politics (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 2008) is dedicated to the US State of Indiana, which has emerged as a battleground state in the 2008 Presidential Election. So what has Bert Chapman found out about Indiana resources? Here is a sampling of the materials he has listed:

This is actually one of the shorter guides I've highlighted so far, but there is more, so go check out the rest of the guide. Then check to see what else is available, either by browsing the guide or using the guide's custom search engine. And if you're a docs librarian, please post your handout! Continue reading

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Guide of the Week: Guide Search Engine

This week, instead of highlighting a specific guide, I'd like to highlight the fact that the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki now has a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) that covers 611 sites linked to from the Handout Exchange. You can find the CSE at the bone crunchingly long URL of: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=004167096080728781323%3Aglzqvfjgqky. If I were you, I'd just bookmark it now. There is also a link to the CSE from the front page of the guide. It's not perfect because Google itself is not perfect, but it can be a good way to do cross disciplinary searches of guides or to find professionally selected information on countries. Here are some searches for you to try by clicking:

Try some searches of your own. Give us some feedback in comments. Continue reading

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