State Agency Databases Activity Report July 31, 2011
VOLUNTEER AND ORPHAN NEWS This week the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases welcomed FIVE new volunteers who have publicly claimed their pages and are already hard at work: Joel Rane - California Janice Wilson - Connecticut Blaine Redemer - Illinois Adrienne Walker - New Mexico Barbara Bren - Wisconsin Vermont is in the process of being adopted, leaving the following orphan pages waiting for a volunteer government documents specialist: District of Columbia Indiana Mississippi New Jersey Texas West Virginia If you're interested in one of the above states, check out our volunteer guide at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/SADATFS_Volunteer_Guide and then send me an e-mail if you'd like to adopt one of the above states. If you adopt a state, be prepared to put your name and contact information on the main project page AND your state page within two weeks of receiving your wiki login. See the Volunteer guide for more details. WIKI ACTIVITY See our last seven days of activity at http://tinyurl.com/statedbs for a blow by blow description of changes to the page. Here are a few highlights: DATABASES ADDED California (Joel Rane) Watershed Groups in California - This database, created by the University of California, Davis Information Center for the Environment, covers over 500 watershed groups in Davis. Keyword search can be performed for group name, county, or mission (e.g., "to protect and restore wild trout and steelhead"). Entries may include details such as membership information, data collection (and availability of data) by the group, contact information, and projects in which the group is involved. Idaho (Beth Downing) Idaho Outfitter Guide - Find a guide for your next outdoor adventure. Search for a specific guide by name or for any guide in the state by type of activity, hunting, fishing, boating, recreation, winter or all guided activities. Each separate form allows for more specific searching and allows limits to particular areas of the state. Michigan (Michael McDonnell) Michigan Summer Food Finder - The Department of Education's Summer Food Service Program web site allows users to find locations where school age children can obtain nutritious meals during school vacations when National School Lunch or School Breakfast Programs are not available. New Mexico (Adrienne Walker) Contracts - Searchable database for contracts in excess of $20,000 entered with the State of New Mexico. Wisconsin (Barbara Bren) Locate in Wisconsin - provided by the Wisconsin Economic Development Association and the State of Wisconsin Department of Commerce to facilitate searching for sites and buildings information for businesses seeking to relocate or expand in Wisconsin. Click on the search type, then on "Refine your search." (alternate site from Forward Wisconsin, powered by the LocationOne® Information System (LOIS)) DATABASES REMOVED New Mexico eIdea - provides access to Air Quality, Ground Water Quality, Solid Waste, Petroleum Storage Tank, Food Safety Program and Hazardous Waste information for individual facilities throughout the state. Continue reading
Senate Progress on Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports
Bill Mandates Publishing Agency Reports to Congress, By Joseph Marks, NextGov TechInsider (07/27/11). "The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday introduced companion legislation to the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act. The measure would require the Government Printing Office to publish agency reports to Congress online within 30 days of their submission." See also: Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA) Heads to House Floor Continue reading
House Bill Questions Future of GPO
House Questions Future of Government Printing Office, OMB Watch (July 27, 2011)
The House Legislative Branch appropriations bill for FY 2012, H.R. 2551, passed on July 22. The bill cuts $27.3 million from the FY 2011 funding level for the agency -- a 20.2 percent annual decrease, $40.4 million less than the agency's request. These cuts, which are considerably deeper than other legislative branch agencies face, would constrain GPO's ability to publish, digitize, and disseminate important public records. For example, GPO requested $5 million specifically to continue the development of FDsys, but the entire line item was cut from the bill. ...Certain provisions of H.R. 2551 suggest that some members of Congress seriously question whether GPO is needed at all.Continue reading
NTIA website redesigned
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is redesigning its web site. You might want to check for broken links in your catalog.
- the legacy NTIA website. (Note: When visiting legacy website pages where content is already migrated, you may be redirected to the new website.)
- the new NTIA website NTIA is the Executive Branch agency that is principally responsible for advising the President on telecommunications and information policy issues. NTIA's programs and policymaking focus largely on expanding broadband Internet access and adoption in America, expanding the use of spectrum by all users, and ensuring that the Internet remains an engine for continued innovation and economic growth.
- New Website Notice We are in the process of launching a new website to better serve you. While most content has been migrated, some content is not yet on the new website and will not yet appear through the search feature.
From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary
Here is an interesting story about preserving British government information.
- From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary: Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA), by Bernard M. Scaife, Ariadne, Issue 67 (4 July-2011)
It occurred to us that this software could enable us to eradicate our link rot problem, whilst building in a core level of digital preservation and increasing the discoverability of these documents. We were convinced that a citation which linked to a record in a Web archive was far more likely to survive than one which did not.They knew that government budget cuts were increasing the risk of losing content from government departments. The article describes their experiences and summarizes what they learned:
- Placing files in a repository gives digital preservation to key documents in the subject field and eradicates the link rot problem.
- Adding high-quality metadata enhances the resource and allows it to hold its head high and become an integral part of a library's collection.
- A specialist library can play an important role in preserving domain-specific government content as part of its long-term strategy and ensure high-quality resources remain available.
- Provided you are prepared to get to grips with its complexity, the EPrints software is well suited to the task and provides good interoperability with other legacy systems for importing metadata
- The added value of being able to search the full text provides a potentially very rich resource for data mining whether by current or future researchers of educational history. Continue reading