Tweet Congress
This web site, TweetCongress, makes it easy to find your U.S. Senators and Representative, see if they tweet, and follow them and tweet them.
About TweetCongress.org We believe transparent government is better government. Twitter enables real conversation between lawmakers and voters, in real time. Find your representatives in Congress, follow them and give them a tweet full!Thanks to Sunlight Labs! Continue reading
SEC on Twitter
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) now has three accounts on Twitter:
According to The UK Telegraph, "The three feeds focus on investor education, general news, and job opportunities" and "SEC_Investor_Ed is little more than a rolling feed from its own newssite which details the enforcement actions." There seems to be a lot of overlap between "Investor Ed" and "News" in the few items I have scanned. Perhaps time will make it more apparent the differences between the feeds. Continue readingMarketing Idea: Swine Flu Flashback
One of the things I think documents librarians can do to market their resources is to try and match current events to their collections. A case in point is the current outbreak of swine influenza. Did you know that there was an outbreak in the 1970s that threatened to explode into a pandemic? Emergency supplementals were made and vaccines were rushed out into the field -- possibly too early, according to some reports. Using a combination of WorldCat and the Catalog of Government Publications, I came up with this list of publications:
United States. (1976). Emergency supplemental appropriation bill, 1976: Hearing before a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session ... swine influenza immunization program. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). Emergency supplemental appropriation bill, 1976 Swine influenza immunization program : hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session, Subcommittee on the Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). National swine flu immunization program of 1976: Report to accompany S. 3735. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1984). Patty Jean Tipton and her husband, Ronald Tipton: Report (to accompany S. 1488). Washington, D.C.?: U.S. G.P.O. United States. (1976). Preventive health services and employment programs emergency supplemental appropriations Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Swine Influenza Immunization Program, Department of Labor, Community Services Administration, Public Employment and Summer Youth Programs : hearing before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session, on H.J. Res. 890. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). Proposed national swine flu vaccination program: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session ... March 31, 1976. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). Public Law 94-380: 94th Congress, S. 3735, August 12, 1976 : an act to amend the Public Health Service act to authorize the establishment and implementation of an emergency national swine flu immunization program and to provide an exclusive remedy for personal injury or death arising out of the manufacture, distribution, or administration of the swine flu vaccine under such program. Washington: For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1977). Review and evaluation of the swine flu immunization program Hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Ninety-fifth Congress, first session ... September 16, 1977. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1978). Review and evaluation of the swine flu immunization program: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Ninety-fifth Congress, first session ... September 16, 1977. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). Supplemental appropriation for production of swine influenza vaccine: Communication from the President of the United States ... March 29, 1976. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). Supplemental appropriation for production of swine influenza vaccine: Message from the President of the United States ... March 29, 1976. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1977). Suspension of the swine flu immunization program, 1976: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Labor and Public Health Welfare, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session ... December 17, 1976. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1977). Suspension of the swine flu immunization program, 1976: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session ... December 17, 1976. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). Swine flu immunization program, 1976 Hearing before the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session ... April 1 and August 5, 1976. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). Swine flu immunization program: Supplemental hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment...Ninety-fourth Congress, second session...June 28, July 20, 23, and September 13, 1976. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1976). Swine flu immunization program: Supplemental hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. (1977). The swine flu program: An unprecedented venture in preventive medicine, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare : report to the Congress. Washington: U.S. General Accounting Office]. United States. (1976). Swine flu vaccine. FDA consumer memo. Rockville, Md: U.S. Food and Drug Administration.For a hyperlinked version of this list, please see http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/dcornwall/lists/697063/. As far as I could tell, none of these items are currently available on the internet. So now we've not only highlighted stuff in depositories by creating and posting this list, we've made some basic metadata accessible to the web for researchers who may never visit a catalog or worldcat.org. Finally, I'd like to point out that this list was easily compiled because we have structured databases with controlled vocabulary and the ability to easily limit by date. Try searching "swine flu 1970s hearings" on Google and see if you get authoritative results. Cataloging matters! Continue reading
NPR Discusses Government 2.0: “Transparency Kills Apathy”
NPR.org has a brief article and audiocast entitled "21st Century Crowbars Help Pry Open Government" by Andrea Seabrook. It is the second of a two-part series, of which the first part is entitled "Follow the Money: Web Site Tracks Stimulus Dollars". Both stories highlight several "watchdog" websites such as OpenCongress.org, OpenSecrets.org, Filibusted.us, and Legistalker.org. Filibusted.us recently won the "Apps for America" contest hosted by the Sunlight Foundation. Clay Johnson, described by NPR as a 21st century government watchdog, of Sunlight Labs states:
We live in a society now where if it's not on the Internet, it doesn't exist. The more transparent we make government, the more people can participate in it. And when people participate in it, they're no longer apathetic about it. So transparency kills apathy.Continue reading
Recovery.gov National IT Dialog site open for comments April 27 – May 3
April 29, 2009 / 1 Comment on Recovery.gov National IT Dialog site open for comments April 27 – May 3
I don't see a post yet about the latest comment instrument on Recovery.gov -- the "Recovery Dialogue: Information Technology Solutions" site here . The premise is --- What ideas, tools, and approaches can make Recovery.gov a place where the public can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds? Also with this entertaining u-tube intro This seems like a thread that documents librarians can really sink our teeth into. See the latest post by scholar Katy Borner from IU on semantic web enhancements "Recovery.gov should adopt semantic web technologies as key enablers for promoting an agile, transparent data ecosystem in which federal agencies and other recipients of stimulus monies can share spending and performance data in a way that is truly transparent, readily available, and useful to anyone who wants to view, consume, or analyze the information. " Come on - help them out this week! Continue reading →
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