Sonnet Brown: BOTM for December, 2009
Sonnet Brown is head of the Federal Documents Department at the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans. She was selected to be a 2010 American Library Association Emerging Leader. Sonnet received her M.L.I.S. (2008) from Texas Woman’s University and her B.A. in Classical Studies (2004) from Loyola University New Orleans. When she isn’t working with documents, she enjoys writing and exploring Second Life. She is currently a columnist with Legal Information Alert and will also be writing the Tech Watch column with Rebecca Blakeley. She is also working with UNO’s Digital Initiatives Librarian Keith Pickett to digitize U.S. Hearings from the 1960s-1980s. She promotes the project and the rest of her collection through the department’s Facebook, Twitter, and Blog. As a member of Gen Y, Sonnet looks forward to a long career ahead of her. After all, she believes that “librarians are like vampires…they live forever!” Continue reading
Lunchtime Listen: Finding Docs and Geology Information
While poking around the Government Printing Office's (GPO)'s OPAL training site at http://www.opal-online.org/archivegpo.htm, I found a couple of online workshops that I think will be valuable to beginner and expert alike:
Searching for Free Government Full Text Docs Online: Where to Begin? presented in October 2009 by Holly Harper, GPO intern and MLIS student at the University of Washington. * Streaming audio with slides Geology Librarianship and Government Documents presented in August 2009 by Stephanie Earls, GPO intern and MLIS student at the University of Washington. * Streaming audio with slidesThey appear to run best in Internet Explorer. The recordings were made by two library school interns working with GPO's Robin Haun-Mohamed. The intention was to create programming that would be helpful to generalist librarian and new depository staff. I think they've done well at this and created some videos that should be shared with non-librarians as well. I publicly thank Robin and the GPO staff that made these possible. You may wish to pause the videos in places to make notes of URLs. One new thing I learned (or was reminded anew) by the "Full Text Docs" presentation was the ability to browse publications in FDSys by collection, congressional committee or by Date. Use the "last 24 hours" option to see just how much information government is pumping out these days. And that's just a fraction of what's available. My highlighting these two OPAL presentations should not be interpreted as a slight on the other good material you can find there. Go, watch and explore. Continue reading
UVA puts founding fathers’ papers online! (temporarily :-| )
[UPDATE: I spoke too soon. Seems that these are "early access" documents that "will be removed from this database, to be replaced by the fully edited version in the appropriate digital edition in the Rotunda American Founding Era collection."] Nice work U of Virginia! You can access the papers here. I hope this makes it into the FDLP digitization registry.
More than 200 years after they were written, some 5,000 previously unpublished documents of the founders of the United States — including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison — are at long last available to the public at no cost. The Documents Compass group of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia has spent much of the last year proofreading and transcribing thousands of pages of letters and other papers. The documents are now available online for free at the University of Virginia Press’ digital imprint called Rotunda... ...The online project is a federal pilot study that aims to expand public access to the papers of America’s founders. It is funded by a $250,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, which is a division of the National Archives.[Thanks Resource Shelf!] Continue reading
November 2009 Lost Docs Report and Appeal
In September 2009 we at Free Government Information (FGI) started the "lost docs blog" at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info to collect your receipts from GPO about the fugitive documents you reported through GPO's lost docs form at www.fdlp.gov/lostdocs or through GPO's Help system at gpo.custhelp.com. Here is the November Lost Docs Report and Appeal: REPORT Thanks to the continued generosity of documents librarians, we posted 60 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. These receipts were a mixture of old receipts and items actually reported in November 2009. Of these 60 reported items, 17 items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with November 2009 dates. We are appreciative of these new records. In our view, only one of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in November were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications or were already in the catalog. You can view this item by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with November 2009 dates. APPEAL If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:
- If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month.
- Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
- Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
- Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/ or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.
CIA manual of trickery and deception resurfaces
Noah Shactman's cool Danger Room blog (from Wired) posted recently about the CIA's declassified Lost Magic Manual that has just resurfaced. In 1953, the CIA hired professional magician John Mulholland to adapt his techniques of stealth and misdirection to the craft of espionage. According to the BBC News, "the guide was part of a larger CIA programme, called [w:Project MKULTRA], aimed at countering the Soviet mind-control techniques of the Cold War era." The classified manuals were believed to have been destroyed in 1973, but Intelligence historian H. Keith Melton and retired CIA officer Robert Wallace discovered a copy in 2007 in the CIA Archives. The Boston Globe has a great visual summary of some of Mulholland’s best tricks. Get a copy from isbn.nu. A great addition to any library. In fact a bunch of them already have a copy!
At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid $3,000 to renowned magician John Mulholland to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document — and a related paper, on conveying hidden signals — were believed to be destroyed in 1973. But recently, the manuals resurfaced, and have now been published as “The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception.” Topics include working a clandestine partner, slipping a pill into the drink of the unsuspecting, and “surreptitious removal of objects by women.”Continue reading