Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics: another defunded publication
Add the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics to the growing list of defunded federal publications. The Sourcebook, published since 1973, is a project of the University at Albany, School of Criminal Justice's Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center and funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. The Sourcebook offers a wide variety of statistics regarding the characteristics of criminal justice systems, public attitudes toward crime, nature and distribution of offenses, Characteristics and distribution of persons arrested, Judicial processing of defendants, and Persons under correctional supervision. Due to budget cuts, the Department of Justice is terminating funding for the Sourcebook as of 8/1/12. Please take a few moments to answer the survey they're conducting as part of their effort to secure alternative funding sources.
As a result of the substantial budget cut that has affected the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online will cease being funded by that agency as of August 1st, 2012. For over 40 years, Sourcebook has served as a standard reference tool in the field of criminal justice. We are proud to have offered reliable data on a variety of crime and justice issues to a wide scope of users. We are actively seeking ways to maintain the services offered by Sourcebook and any development in that direction will be posted here. We thank you for your support throughout the years and encourage you to respond to our brief survey. Your feedback will be kept anonymous and will be helpful in our efforts to procure other funding sources.Continue reading
C-SPAN’s essential video record of Congress has new clipping tool
Gary points to a great, newly enhanced tool from C-SPAN that allows you to create and share video clips in its extensive video library of Congressional proceedings and Committee hearings. The tool is available for all of C-SPAN's online video content, which includes Book-TV and Booknotes, C-SPAN specials, interviews, news conferences, White House events, National Press Club speakers, and more. The archive includes every program aired on C-SPAN since 1987, almost 190,000 hours of video!
- The Wonderful C-SPAN Video Library Releases Enhanced Video Clipping Tool, by Gary Price, infoDOCKET (June 22, 2012). All of the material is searchable not only with metadata but also using each word spoken during a program. That's right, transcript search.
- Clipping in the Video Library, by RXB, C-SPAN video library blog (June 22, 2012). Over three million clips have already been created by users.
- C-SPAN Video Library. Here is a four minute sample: a clip on the Volker Rule, taken from the two hour and fifteen minute testimony of Jamie Dimon on July 13, 2012 before the Senate Committee Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, about J. P. Morgan Chase's $2 billion trading loss on May 10, 2012.
Sunlight releases Scout to help track legislative/regulatory process
Today, our pals at the Sunlight Foundation released Scout, a new tool that allows you to create customized keyword alerts to notify you whenever issues you care about are included in legislative or regulatory actions -- at both the state and federal level! They'll also soon release their Open States tool to target the legislative process of all 50 states. Thanks Sunlight!
Start by entering a keyword or phrase you would like to get updates about, such as the vaguely defined "cyber threat" included in CISPA or any references to the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act." Scout then saves your subscriptions and sends notifications via email or text message whenever the subscribed issue or bill is talked about on the floor of Congress, mentioned in new regulations, appears in state and federal legislation or when Congress is moving forward for a vote. Through your profile you can create as many alerts as you'd like and group them by tags with the additional option to make them public for others to follow your issues. You can also complement a Scout subscription by adding optional external RSS feeds, such as press releases from a member of Congress or an issue-based blog.
Comparing Hathitrust and Google Books as repositories of government documents
June 18, 2012 / 1 Comment on Comparing Hathitrust and Google Books as repositories of government documents
Here are 2 recent items analyzing Hathitrust and Google books for their efficacy in giving access to Federal government documents. The first is an article by Laura Sare (Texas A&M) and compares Hathitrust with Google Books. The second is a presentation by Brian Vetruba (Washington U in St Louis) at "Leveraging Your Strengths: Regional Government Documents Conference" at the Federal Reserve Bank St. Louis on May 4, 2012. A Comparison of HathiTrust and Google Books Using Federal Publications. Laura Sare. Practical Academic Librarianship: The International Journal of the SLA Academic Division. 2(1) 2012 p. 1-25. (attached below. Fair use claim)
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