Not the impact I hoped for
My apologies for anyone who relied on my post "Catloging Gets Results in Alaska." Revised data has forced me to retract my claim. Please see details at http://freegovinfo.info/node/1940. But don't be afraid to share information and new ideas. Sometimes we're going to be wrong. That's just the nature of the game. But we as a community are stronger when we share information and admit our mistakes as well as celebrate our successes. Continue reading
Two new federal government blogs
Two new blogs appeared on the USA.gov Blogs from the U.S. Government page recently:
- Arctic Chronicles, by Jessica Robertson, Public Affairs Specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey. She will be documenting her journey to the Arctic as she accompanies scientists on an expedition to map the seafloor.
- The Energy Savers Blog, which aims to provide "a place for consumers to learn about and discuss energy efficiency and renewable technologies at home, on the road, and in the workplace."
Please welcome Starr Hoffman to the podium
Hi all. We're starting a little late this month due to the labor day holiday. Please welcome to the podium Starr Hoffman, digital librarian from the University of North Texas (more bio here). Take it away Starr! And we really need to thank Acting Superintendent of Documents, Ric Davis for joining us last month. Ric posted quite a few interesting and thought-provoking posts (below). This was a great opportunity for Ric and the Government Printing Office to reach out to the library community, so I would strongly suggest that readers go to those posts and submit comments. Thanks again, Ric. We really appreciate your efforts! Continue reading
Starr Hoffman: BOTM for September, 2008
Starr Hoffman is Librarian for Digital Collections at the University of North Texas Libraries. She is responsible for maintaining UNT's Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports Archive and the CyberCemetery, a NARA-affiliated archive of defunct government websites, and is also the Web Administrator for ALA GODORT. Starr received her Master of Library Science and Master of Art History from the University of North Texas, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Higher Education. Her research interests include web archiving, distance learning, digital collections, library marketing, and graphic novels. She also writes the Geeky Artist Librarian blog… and it’s rumored that sometimes she finds the time to sleep. Continue reading
Following/mapping the election
If you're like me, you want to keep track of the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. I thought I'd share a few sites that I've bookmarked in order to keep up to the minute. My favorite site is Electoral-vote.com. E-V collects national and state polls and shows a nice map of the current electoral vote count. As new state polls are released, the maps, spreadsheets, tables, graphs, etc. are updated. There's also a comparison for that day in the 2004 presidential race, roll-over stats for how each state voted since 1992, and tracking of Senate and House elections. Another site of interest is FiveThirtyEight "electoral projections done right." This one has lots of graphs, "tipping point" states, a return on investment index and more. 538 (the # of electors in the electoral college of course :-) ) also tracks governors' races. It's run by Nate Silver, a writer and baseball statistician. You know how crazy baseball fans are for data, so you know that this site is sucking up as much data as they can, chewing it up and serving it up in lots of different ways. Also check out RealClearPolitics. This one pulls together news, blogs, editorials, polls and electoral maps (although the mapping feature is only for presidential race). [Thanks David Weinberger/JoHo for the RealClearPolitics tip!] Continue reading