Guide of the Week: Anthropology
This week's "Guide of the Week" from the GODORT Handout Exchange is: Government Documents for Anthropologists (Word file) (Jennie Burroughs, University of Montana, 2008) CC Like a number of guides in the Handout Exchange, this guide was created for a college course. Because people, including government scholars, have been writing about anthropology for a long time, it has a mix of print and electronic sources including: -------------- Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology Call number: SI 1.33: A monographic series published irregularly. American Memory Collection URL: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ The Library of Congress is building an extensive digital library collection. The American Memory collection includes a wide variety of materials: photographs, correspondence, manuscripts, sound recordings, motion pictures, etc. Folklife materials are included in this digital collection. NARA 1930 Census http://1930census.archives.gov/ The 1930 Census is the most recent Census to become available to the public. NARA has an online database that can help you to identify the microfilm roll you need. Then, take that roll number to the microfilm drawers (call number: 312.0973 U58p 1930) to find the relevant reel. General Land Office Records & Maps - The Bureau of Land Management has created a Federal Land Patents Database that allows you to search for General Land Office grants issued between 1820 and 1908. You can perform a basic search, where you can search by state and patentee name, or a standard search, where you can search by patentee name, by a particular location (described by county, section, township, range, etc.), or by date and land office. http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/ ------------- The CC next to the guide name above means that this particular guide is available for noncommercial copying and adaptation if the original author is cited as stipulated under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. So as long as you provide credit to Jennie Burroughs, you could change her library's call numbers to your own, and print out as many handouts for your students as you like. The above resources are just a highlight of what's available in the guide. See it for yourself, then check out what else is available. And if you're a docs librarian with a handout of your own, link it to the wiki! Continue reading
Reference Renaissance: Session Writeups
For those who are interested in what I learned at Reference Renaissance, please visit http://alaskanlibrarian.wordpress.com/category/rr2008/, where you can find all of my session writeups. I didn't cross post here because I think most of what I picked up was out of scope for FGI. But a few themes from the conference that I think worth mentioning here are:
- Librarians must support patrons as content creators in addition to supporting them as content users.
- Reference (including document reference) needs to move from supplying stacks of documents to providing more targeted information, along with providing context.
- Librarians must continue to find non-traditional venues to be where information users are.
Video of Docs2.0 GODORT preconference
Last month, at ALA Annual Conference 2008, FGI volunteers participated in the GODORT preconference "Docs2.0: emerging web technologies for the government documents community". At long last, we've got the video of all the speakers up and available!! It's also available on the internet archive (slightly better quality video). You can now access all the slides, video, and notes from the preconference at the GODORT wiki. Speakers:
- James R. Jacobs, International Documents Librarian, Stanford University. "Social tagging for building subject portals"
- Amy West, Interim Head, Government Publications Library, University of Minnesota. "Integration of 2.0 tools like Instant Messaging (IM) for reference"
- Jim A. Jacobs, Data Librarian Emeritus, University of California at San Diego. "RSS for documents librarians"
- David Oldenkamp, International Studies Librarian, Indiana University. "Custom search engines with GoogleCSE"
- John Wonderlich, Program Director, Sunlight Foundation. (keynote) Open House Project
Surfing with an Unsafe Browser?
A comprehensive study entitled, "Understanding the Web browser threat: Examination of vulnerable online Web browser populations and the "insecurity iceberg"" was recently released. It concludes that only 60 percent of the world's Internet users surf with the latest, most-secure versions of their preferred browsers. Why is this important? Upgrading to the latest, most-secure version of your favorite browser will provide better protection from Web dangers, such as spyware, phishing, and viruses. It is also important because it relates to changes that are coming to the FDLP Desktop. A re-release of the FDLP Desktop is due in the next few months. This re-release will improve our dissemination of Program-related content and news, but also release new community-based interactivity. During the course of the redesign, our research has shown that many of our users are surfing with legacy browsers. In addition to these legacy browsers being vulnerable to various Web dangers, they are also not built to today's Web standards. While the upcoming re-release of the FDLP Desktop is being backcoded to allow for legacy browsers, such as IE6, we are not ensuring 100% compatibility. Meanwhile, users utilizing IE6 to surf the new Desktop will receive a warning at the top of their screen regarding the dangers of IE6 and an encouragement to upgrade. So, with that said, which browsers/versions should we be using? Based on the report, they are:
Stay tuned! Next week, I will be releasing more information about the upcoming re-release of the FDLP Desktop as well as some new tools that we have up our sleeves. Continue readingGPO Forecasting the Future With FDLP Partners
In administering the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) in partnership with Federal depository libraries, GPO relies heavily upon Title 44 of the United States Code, GPO's A Strategic Vision for the 21st Century (PDF) document, the Depository Library Council document Knowledge Will Forever Govern (PDF), along with policy documents, whitepapers, and of course feedback from our FDLP partners. At the Spring Depository Library Council Meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, GPO had a session on Shaping and Transforming the Future of the FDLP. A deliverable from this session is that we are preparing a draft Strategic Plan for the next Federal Depository Library Conference and Fall Depository Library Council Meeting. I am very interested in your thoughts on additional sources of information GPO should consider as we prepare this document, thinking 10 or more years out into the future, and the impact of potential technology changes. As an example, if you have not seen The Elon University/Pew Internet Project site Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast is worth reading. Of particular note is the Forward 150, Back 150 section. Continue reading