State Agency Databases Activity Report 1/27/2013
This week at the State Agency Databases project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases: ORPHANS: AND THEN THERE WERE SIX With the pending adoption of the District of Columbia, we now have six states up for adoption:
- Florida
- Hawaii
- Kansas
- Maryland
- Minnesota
- Oklahoma
Public talk: “Gone Today, Here Tomorrow: The Future of Government Information and the Digital FDLP”
I had the distinct honor to be invited to speak at the University of Washington Libraries on thursday, January 24, 2013. I want to thank Cass Hartnett, the Northwest Government Information Network, the UW Information School, the UW Association of Library and Information Science Students (ALISS), and the University of Washington Libraries for allowing me the opportunity to talk publicly about the future of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). the audio for my talk can be downloaded from the UW Library digital archive or streamed below from the Internet Archive. that is all.
We’re at the very beginning of the digital era where tools, policies, best practices, etc are all in flux. In many ways, we’re at the age of new metaphors needed to describe what it is that we as librarians do on a daily basis. I'd like to talk about the underlying historical ideals of the FDLP, discuss how those ideals have been under fire from both within and without the library community and argue that those ideals applied to today's new information metaphors give us the best chance at access to and long-term preservation and assurance of govt information. Then I’ll talk about some of the digital collection strategies that I’ve found to be successful and then conclude with a bit about collaboration and to-dos.
All 100 Senators are now on Twitter
Twitter announced last Friday that all 100 members of the Senate as well as 90% (398 members) of the House of Representatives are on Twitter. In the 112th Congress only 44% of Senators were on Twitter. House use of Twitter has also increased from 35% to 90% (398 representatives). Twitter also announced that Michelle Obama will be tweeting from @FLOTUS about her life as First Lady.
- An entire Senate on Twitter. Really. By Joseph Marks, NextGov (January 23, 2013). Raw numbers can be misleading where Twitter is concerned. The federal tech sphere alone is littered with rarely used Twitter accounts. The Senate’s story seems different, though. A quick review of about 30 senators’ handles revealed no slackers. All of the senators -- or usually their staffs, of course -- are tweeting at least several times a week but, more importantly, a solid proportion of those tweets include content that would actually be valuable to people following the senators’ activities, such as links to legislation the lawmaker introduced, notes on committee work and alerts about media appearances.
- 100 Senators and the 57th Inauguration, Twitter Blog (January 18, 2013).
- US Senate: A public list by Twitter Government: "Principal Accounts of Members of the U.S. Senate (a mix of campaign and government accounts)."
- US House: A public list by Twitter Government: "Principal Accounts of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives (mix of campaign/govt accounts)".
Continue reading OMB Watch now Center for Effective Government
The Center for Effective Government, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, was formed as OMB Watch in 1983 to lift the veil of secrecy shrouding the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In January 2013, OMB Watch became the Center for Effective Government.
- Center for Effective Government (website).
- Government Matters (newsletter)
- The Fine Print (blog)
- RSS feeds
- twitter.com/foreffectivegov
- facebook.com/foreffectivegov
State Agency Databases Activity Report 1/21/2013
New volunteers and ongoing work marked this week at the State Agency Databases project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases. NEW PROJECT VOLUNTEERS Our project welcomed four new volunteers this week: April Sheppard - Arkansas Stephanie Martin - Indiana Mary Sauers - Nebraska (A hand off from departing volunteer Beth Goble.) Ed Sperr - South Carolina In other volunteer news, Susanne Caro adopted the Montana page. She also maintains the Utah page. SEVEN REMAINING ORPHANS With our additional volunteers, our list of orphan pages now stands at seven: District of Columbia Florida Hawaii Kansas Maryland Minnesota Oklahoma If you are interested in adopting one of these pages, please read our volunteer guide and make sure you can accept the responsibilities of a project volunteer. Then contact project coordinator Daniel Cornwall at danielcornwall@gmail.com with a statement of interest and your favorite database from the page you are adopting. DATABASE ACTIVITY For a full listing of activity over the past week, visit http://tinyurl.com/statedbs. Here are some highlights: DATABASES ADDED ARKANSAS (April Sheppard) National Register of Historic Places (AR) - Searchable by county, city, name and description. SOUTH CAROLINA (Ed Sperr) Most Wanted - is a listing with photographs of the most wanted, absconded criminals. TEXAS (Ann Ellis) Texas Higher Education Data - This site contains information organized for policymakers, parents and students, media, institutions and researchers, and educators. It includes forms, maps, charts, graphs and reports. Texas legislative issues related to higher education are included. WYOMING (Karen Kitchens) License Types and Fees - Search for current Wyoming fishing and hunting license fees by type (species) and resident or nonresident. Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Continue reading