Want to know about ICPSR? well here’s a webinar for you
If you're an aspiring (or accidental) data librarian, or just want to know more about Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), then here's a webinar for you!
Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/343617266 This session will cover effective search strategies, ICPSR’s bibliography of data-related literature, our growing tools associated with the social science variables database, and more! This session is for those who are searching for research data or teaching tools and those who are helping others to find data or teaching tools. Title: Hands-Ons with ICPSR - Discovering ICPSR Data Date: Monday, February 25, 2013 Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.Continue reading
GPO is Closing Gap on Public Access to Law, But Much Work Remains
Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation has a must-read post about the Government Printing Office, the Joint Committee on Printing, and The Statutes at Large:
- GPO is Closing Gap on Public Access to Law at JCP's Direction, But Much Work Remains, by Daniel Schuman, The Sunlight Foundation (Feb. 19, 2013). The GPO's recent electronic publication of all legislation enacted by Congress from 1951-2009 is noteworthy for several reasons. It makes available nearly 40 years of lawmaking that wasn't previously available online from any official source, narrowing part of a much larger information gap. It meets one of three long-standing directives from Congress's Joint Committee on Printing regarding public access to important legislative information. And it has published the information in a way that provides a platform for third-party providers to cleverly make use of the information. While more work is still needed to make important legislative information available to the public, this online release is a useful step in the right direction.
State Agency Databases Activity Report 2/18/2013 – Final Four edition
This week featured a burst of activity at the State Agency Databases project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases. We saw many, many link fixes in addition to the new databases featured below. WELCOME WILHELMINA! Wilhelmina Randtke officially adopted the Florida page this week and immediately got to work on a number of updates. ORPHANS - THE FINAL FOUR The adoption of Florida leaves us with just four states waiting for volunteer government information specialists/enthusiasts to adopt them:
- Hawaii
- Kansas
- Minnesota
- Oklahoma
Open States now available for all 50 states. Thanks @sunfoundation
The Sunlight Foundation has just released Open States for all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The site helps the public find their state legislators, review their votes, search upcoming legislation, and track bill progress. Open States gets their Bill, legislator, committee and event data from official sources, linked at the bottom of each legislator, bill, vote, committee or event page. Check out their methodology for more. They rely primarily on scraping data from sites. Wouldn't it be awesome of all state legislatures had bulk data feeds so that 1000 sites like Open States could bloom? Join the Webinar on February 22nd to learn more about Open States.
After more than four years of work from volunteers and a full-time team here at Sunlight we're immensely proud to launch the full Open States site with searchable legislative data for all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Open States is the only comprehensive database of activities from all state capitols that makes it easy to find your state lawmaker, review their votes, search for legislation, track bills and much more. If you're interested in your state lawmaker, you'll be able to get notifications for their actions, a map of their district, voting records, committee assignments, campaign finance records from Influence Explorer, local news articles and contact information. If you're curious about a particular piece of legislation, Open States allows you to check on its status, find the sponsors, break down votes, view bill text and all supporting documents. Our powerful search capabilities allow you to find similar topics across states and view overview pages for each state, chamber and committee.
Government documents and hidden indian heroes
We all know about the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, but did you know there were Code Talkers in World War I? Or that the very first US military code talkers were Choctaw and Comanche? Suzanne Marshall, an MLIS student at Florida State University and reference librarian at West Florida Public Library serves up these facts and more in an article titled "A hidden story: American Indian Code Talkers" in the Winter 2012 Student Papers Issue of Dttp: Documents to the People. The story of the Indian Code Talkers and belated efforts to honor their work is a story interesting in and of itself. But Suzanne uses this story and some unanswered questions as a springboard to explain the current state of affairs in government archival material and to argue for facilitated access to such material. She concludes with:
Citizens rightfully own government documents and must be granted not only access but facilitated access to those documents. Important facts are, by default, invisible and virtually inaccessible without facilitated access. As this case of the American Indian code talkers highlights, we must strive to reveal the rich heritage we share in our co-owned government documents.We agree. Reference: Marshall, Suzanne. A hidden story: American Indian Code Talkers. Dttp: Documents to the People, v. 40, no. 4, Winter 2012, p. 27 Continue reading