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Guide of the Week: Energy
Since energy policy has been in the news most of this year, it seems like a good time to highlight this guide from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange: Energy (Ed Herman, University of Buffalo, 2007) Ed has produced an annotated listing of web resources to these aspects of energy:
- National Policy Issues
- US Statistics
- Technical Information
- Nuclear Energy
- New York State
- International Data
- Additional Information
- The Energy Source (U.S. Congress. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources) http://energy.senate.gov/ The hearings and news room sections are the most informative parts of this site. These abbreviated hearings reproduce testimonies of witnesses before the full committee and the subcommittees, but exclude dialogs among the witnesses and the Committee members. The Business and Government Documents Reference Center maintains the complete hearings in paper format. The news room includes two sets of press releases issued by the Committee Chair and the ranking minority member.
- States (U.S. Department of Energy. Energy Information Administration) http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/states/_seds.html Presents energy statistics pertaining to the 50 states.
- Building Energy Codes (U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy) http://www.energycodes.gov/ Attempts to promote improved energy codes for buildings by working with government agencies, national code organizations, and industry. It also hopes to develop and distribute compliance tools; and provide financial and technical assistance to states.
- Nuclear Power Information Tracker (Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)) http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/nuclear_safety/reactor-map/embedded-flash-map.html Select power plants from a map or a list to view a brief box that describes safety issues and a detailed statement that cites the reactor's owners, locations, populations within a 10-mile radius, and safety issues. Links lead to more detailed documentation.
- International Energy Annual (U.S. Department of Energy. Energy Information Administration) http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/contents.html Provides information and trends on world energy production and consumption for petroleum; natural gas; coal; and electricity. Statistics measuring population and GDP put the data in context. View information in PDF format or download Excel files that offer longer time series.
Guide of the Week: Declassified Documents
One of the harder to find classes of government documents are declassified documents. In many cases these are not within the scope of the Federal Depository Library Program, so there isn't a centralized place to find them. Sometimes they're not actual publications, but stuff like memos, celebrity FBI files and the like. If you're researching public policy, especially national security, stuff that might be helpful might be declassified or subject to declassification under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But before you start filing that FOIA request, check out today's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange, because what you want might already be out there: Declassified Government Documents (UC-Berkeley, 2004) CC Last updated 9/15/2006 I really like how this guide starts out. Because the Berkeley librarians understand that declassified documents are a misty topic to most people, they start with an introduction:
About Declassified Documents Documents may be classified for many reasons - issues of national security or privacy. A popular misconception is that when a document is declassified, it is somehow systematically made available to the public, for example, distributed to depository libraries. This is most often not the case. Exceptions to this might beAfter this intro, they have additional material about the declassification process and FOIA. Then they talk about resources including:As there are no clear patterns of publication for most declassified documents, it falls to the researcher interested in a document that is declassified to research which agency created the document, who may have researched the document originally, and where it might be now. The guides and resources shown below are intended to assist the research in finding federal records that have been declassified as part of the routine declassification, as well as records that are declassified through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests and other kinds of investigations.
- a highly-publicized document is published as a part of an investigation. E.g. The Munson Report, a report from the fall of 1941 stemming from an intelligence gathering investigation on the loyalty of Japanese Americans is one of these exceptions. It was declassified and published as one of the many appendices in the Hearings held by the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1946.
- a document series that is specifically published by the government for researchers (e.g. Foreign Relations of the U.S. or the Library of Congress Presidential Papers collections).
- The encyclopedia of American intelligence and espionage : from the Revolutionary War to the present. G.J.A. O'Toole. New York : Facts on File, c1988. UB271.U5 O85 1988 GREF References individuals, committees, and operations. Many of the entries have footnotes.
- Unlocking the files of the FBI : a guide to its records and classification system by Gerald K. Haines and David A. Langbart. Wilmington, Del. : Scholarly Resources, 1993. HV8144.F43 H35 1993 GREF
- OpenNet via Department of Energy OpenNet includes references to all documents declassified and made publicly available after October 1, 1994. New references are added periodically as they occur. These collections include citations to several types of documents. Some have been declassified in total, and are termed "declassified." Others have had classified or other restricted information removed to produce a "sanitized" copy. The term "redacted" is sometimes used to refer to these documents.
Guide of the Week: Forensic Science
Because I'm a fanatic CSI fan, I just had to highlight:
Government Documents in Forensic Science (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 2002) Last updated 3/10/2008for this week's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange. This guide brings us back to the hardworking and prolific Bert Chapman. Like most of his document guides, he opens his guide with an introductory paragraph.
Forensic science is used by government agencies for a variety of legal, investigative, and public policy purposes. These agencies are as diverse as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), other U.S. Dept. of Justice agencies, the Defense Department, and the U.S. Congress. Purdue Libraries serve as a depository of U.S. Government documents and Purdue's government documents collections are kept in many Purdue Libraries. Most government documents dealing with criminal justice are in the Humanities, Social Science, and Education (HSSE) Library.Then he moves on to providing tangible and internet resources on this subject from the state, federal and international levels. A tiny selection of what he highlights includes:
- Handbook of Forensic Services
- Managing Death Investigation HSSE DOC J 1.14/2:D 39/2
- A Guide for Explosion and Bombing Scene Investigation HSSE DOC J 28.24/3:EX 7
- Indiana State Police Laboratory
- Israel Police-Investigations & Crime Fighting Division
Guide of the Week: Federal Budget Process
There are few things more complicated than the US federal budget process. This week's guide: U.S. Government Documents: The Budget Process (Jerry Breeze, Columbia University, 1999) Last Updated sometime in 2008 Can help you untangle the fiscal knots that is the United States Budget. This selective guide points to information about the current budget, including state by state budget impacts as well as historical data and background materials. This guide also has a federal budget calendar which can help you see when different budget publications becomes available. Finally, Jerry provides a section on News and Commentary which draws from non-governmental sources. The next time you are faced with a concerned citizen or a student writing about an aspect of the US budget, point them to this guide. Then see what else is available from the Handout Exchange. Don't see the subject you're looking for? If you're a documents librarian why not research the subject yourself, put a guide together and link that to the Exchange? Or build a guide on the Exchange wiki itself? Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Agriculture
Last week we introduced the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki, a set of resource guides created by documents librarians for the larger community of government information users. Last week I forgot to mention that the committee that maintains the guides are actively seeking new additions as stated on their website:
The goal of this GODORT Education Committee project is to gather into one place the many tools available to government information librarians to assist in the successful management of electronic government information and in building advocacy skills to promote access to this information. Please feel free to add your handouts, guides, and tutorials to the Exchange to assist your government information colleagues. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can provide templates for one another to save time, share models, and work smarter.With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, we come to this week's highlight: Government Documents on Agriculture (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 1999) Last modified 1/29/2008 Bert Chapman has produced a large number of guides to government information. And all of them are quite good. He generally starts his guide as he does here with an introductory paragraph that includes useful catalog subject headings:
The U.S. Government produces voluminous information on agriculture. This information covers material as diverse as gardening advice, crop insurance, rice production, soils of individual U.S. counties, wheat export statistics, and laws. Purdue Libraries have many government publications on agriculture with most of these being in the HSSE, LIFE, and MEL Libraries. Useful subject headings to search the Library Catalog for government information on agriculture include Agriculture and State--United States Agricultural Laws and Legislation--United States Agricultural Price Supports--United States Crop Insurance Peanuts Poultry Industry Wheat Trade--United StatesIn addition to listing basic resources such as: He also points out agencies likely to have agricultural related publications at various levels of government:
- House Agriculture Committee HSSE DOC Y 4.AG 8/1: (Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN), Joe Donnelly (D-IN) and Brad Ellsworth (R-IN) are members of this committee)
- National Agricultural Safety Database
- Indiana Agricultural Statistics Service
- International Coffee Organization
- South Africa Dept. of Agriculture
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