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Earth & the Environment at State Agency Databases Project

This week’s State Agency Databases Project subject highlight is Earth & the Environment, featuring 44 states that project volunteers know to have publicly searchable databases in this subject area. Three examples from this compilation are:

ALABAMA

Alabama Drought Conditions – Enter your zip code to view drought conditions in your area.

 

MONTANA

Abandoned-Inactive Mines Database – The Abandoned-Inactive Mines (AIM) database contains over 8,000 records and includes several data tables that include information on location (latitude/longitude and cadastral), ownership (as determined from 1:24,000-scale maps, GPS, or other sources), office and field screening results, and water/soil sampling (sample-ID, location, and field parameters). Login is required but is free.

 

WISCONSIN

Wisconsin Herbaria Plant Specimen Database –  Over 250,000 records for Wisconsin’s vascular plants. Searchable by name, genus, species, location, habitat, and more. Created by the Wisconsin State Herbarium.

For more, see http://godort.libguides.com/earthdbs. If you know of state agency produced databases in this area, either comment here or use the “Email me” link on the guide to report a database, which will be forwarded to the appropriate project volunteer.

State Agency Databases Project Activity Report 1/15/2015

Welcome to the first State Agency Databases Project report of 2015!

ORPHAN – Nebraska

At the start of each new year we click on the “history” tab of each state page and check when it was last updated. If it hasn’t been updated during the previous calendar year, we let that volunteer go and put out the page for adoption.

Historically, I’ve had to fill six or seven pages each year. This year was different — we only had two “orphan pages” and one got adopted before I could get this report out. So I am happy to report that the sole orphan page of 2015 is Nebraska.

If you are interested in being the documents specialist for the Nebraska page, please read through our Volunteer Guide. If you feel you can carry out the listed duties please contact me at danielcornwall AT gmail DOT com.

 

ACTIVITY

The first few weeks of 2015 saw significant activity at the State Agency Databases Project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases . The following pages saw a significant number of changes. (links are to revisions page, click on “page” tab to see regular page):

  • District of Columbia – Susan Paterson
  • Montana – Susanne Caro
  • New Mexico – Susanne Caro
  • Ohio – Kirstin Krumsee
  • Not Databases” – Resources that are either databases of state information NOT produced by state agencies, or resources from state agencies that are not databases.

One other change we made was to our Prisoner Locater page, our most popular subject collection for several years running. Although it was technically outside the scope of our project, we added the Federal Inmate Locator so that regular people using the page to track down a friend, loved one or other person of interest had easy access to both state and federal locator services.

You can always view ALL changes made in the past 14 days by visiting http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d.

As a reminder, all of the links and text in the State Agency Databases Project is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. We strongly encourage the use of our links and annotations in projects of your own.

State Agency Databases Activity Report 4/6/2014

It was a busy week for the volunteers at the State Agency Databases Project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases.

FEATURED DATABASE

Today’s featured database is from Susanne Caro who maintains the Montana page:

Montana Field Guides http://fieldguide.mt.gov/default.aspx

“These guides and this website are a collaborative effort between the Montana Natural Heritage Program and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.  The Animal Field Guide provides information on identification, habitat, ecology, reproduction, range, and distribution of Montana’s animals; new features include a hierarchal approach to finding an animal of interest, thumbnail photos of the animals and additional links.  The Plant Field Guide offers information on plant species of concern, including references and photographs.” –FWP description

 

DATABASE CHANGES

See the full story of the last week’s changes by visiting http://tinyurl.com/statedbs. Below are some highlights of the week.

 

PAGES WITH UPDATED LINKS

 

DATABASES ADDED

MARYLAND (Siu Min Yu)

Security Interest Filings – To search for information on security interest filings made with the State Department of Assessments & Taxation.  One can search by the business name, by individual’s name and/or by the file number.

NEW YORK (Michael Tatonetti)

Child Care Facility – Search for child care facilities. Search by license/registration ID, facility name, type, county, or zip code. You can also limit your search by facilities that administer medication and facilities that offer non-traditional hours of care.

VIRGINIA (Louise Buckley)

Virginia Natural Heritage Database Search – Users can generate lists of plants and animal species that occur in specific counties, watersheds, subwatersheds or regions such as the Cumberland Mountains or the Outer Coastal Plain. Searches can be done on individual or groups of resources, by scientific or common name, taxonomic group, federal or state legal status, and global or state rarity rank.

WISCONSIN (Mark Rozmarynowski)

Find Local Crime Victim Resources – from the Office of Victim Services. Resources for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, drunk driving, homicide and other crimes. Resources searchable by county.

Historical Newspaper and Magazine Indexes

Maryland Online Digitized Newspapers – These online digitized newspapers are part of the Special Collections of the Maryland State Archives.  These newspapers are from the 18th century to the mid-20th century.  The digitized newspapers are listed in alphabetical order along with its time period.  Scroll down the page to find if a particular newspaper title that you needed is on the list.  Please read the noted information on fair use from the bottom of page.

 

DATABASES REMOVED

Michigan (Michael McDonnell)

Michigan School Report Card – Search schools by name, school district or zip code.  Search results provide a list of schools and links to their scores for student achievement in language and mathematics as well as indicators of school performance (teacher quality, student dropout rate). Former URL: https://baa.state.mi.us/ayp

State Agency Databases Activity Report 1/5/2014

2013 ended with a good amount of activity at the State Agency Databases Project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases.

As we start a new year, I wanted to introduce a new feature into these reports – the Featured Database.  The other volunteers and I will offer one database each week we think is especially worthwhile.

FEATURED DATABASE

Today’s featured database was suggested by Samantha Hager, our documents specialist for Colorado:

Colorado Health Information Dataset  (http://www.chd.dphe.state.co.us/cohid/Default.aspx )

From the website,  “allows access to local-level health data compiled by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to help users determine the health status of a neighborhood, community, county, or region in Colorado.”

Includes statistics on births, deaths, population, behavioral risk factors, birth defects, cancer incidences, pregnancy risk assessment monitoring systems, injuries and tobacco attitudes and behaviors.

ORPHANED IN 2014

The following six state pages on the State Agency Databases Project are now open for adoption because the previous volunteer was unable to update the page during 2013:

If you are interested in being the documents specialist for one of these pages, please read our Volunteer Guide. If you feel like you can meet the requirements, e-mail Daniel Cornwall, project coordinator at danielcornwall AT gmail dot com.

PROJECT STATISTICS

Project statistics for 2011 through 2013 have been posted to the project home page. A few highlights from 2013:

Our state pages received 152,508 visits in 2013. The most popular state was Missouri with 15,257 visits.

Our subject pages received 18,755 visits in 2013. The Prisoner Locater Tools page was first with 6,723 visits but the combined visits for Health Practitioner pages was a close second with 6,500 visits.

Overall, visits were down in 2013 compared to 2012, but still over 2011 levels. Missouri bucked the trend by increasing visits, as did Kansas, Montana, and South Carolina.

DATABASE CHANGES

Because it’s been so long since my last report and because this current report has been lengthy, I’ll skip any effort at specific database adds. Over the past month, these states have shown the most update activity:

Remember, you can always find the latest two weeks of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d.

Until next time!

A Roundup of Recent Government Info News and New Resources

Time once again for a selection of news and new resources that we hope will be an interest to the FGI community. The following posts are from INFOdocket.com (@infofodocket) where we compile and post new items daily. The oldest item in this roundup was posted on January 26, 2012.

1. President Requests $231,953,777 for Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

2. MEDLINE/PubMed: List of Serials Indexed for Online Users, 2012 Now Available in XML

3. South Dakota: State Archives Going Digital

4. Recently Launched iOS App: United Nations News Reader from the UN News Centre

5. Full Text of Prepared Testimony: Librarian of Congress, Public Printer, & Others Testify at House Appropriations Committee Hearing (re: FY 2013 Budget)

6. Montana: “New State Librarian Leads Digitization”

7. Government Information: A New Issue of the FDLP Connection Newsletter is Now Online (Vol. 2, Issue 2)

8. New Reference Resource: PACrimeStats.Info (Pennsylvania Crime Data)

9. EPA Releases New Interactive Tool with Information About Water Pollution Across the U.S.

10. FEMA Grant Helps Restore New Orleans’ Katrina-Damaged Archives

11. Listen Online: National Park Service Releases Historic Audio Recordings Made by Thomas Edison’s Recording Engineer

12. New Feature: The World Factbook Now Allows Users to Listen to the National Anthems of Most Countries

13. U.S. Congress: THOMAS Adds Direct Links to House Committee Hearings

14. New Document from NIH: Public Access Policy Implications

15. New Database: See Who’s Donating to Super PACs

16. LOCPix: New iOS App Provides Access to Digitized Photos from the Library of Congress

17. New Interactive Reference Resource: State Transportation Facts and Figures

18. U.S. Congress: Financial Contributions: MapLight Launches New Company Pages

19. Let’s Fly! FAA Launches Mobile Web App

20. New Search Tool from the IRS: Exempt Organizations Select Check

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