What are your three reasons?
This isn't about government information, but it is about libraries, which is where a lot of government information can be found:
NJ librarians are trying to get the most commented video on YouTube. Watch the video, then make your comment giving your three reasons for loving the library. Must be a registered YouTube user to comment, but registration is free.
Librarians and friends, unite in an affirmation of library love!
What are MY three reasons? You'll have to go to the video and look up my comment under AlaskanLibrarian!
Anyone out there want to make a "Why I love my Depository Library" video?
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Oliver North, The Smithsonian, Abe Lincoln, Presidential Timeline, and more!
The current edition of the National Coalition For History newsletter (NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE (Vol. 13, #6; February 16, 2007)) has several interesting items including:
- OLIVER NORTH vs. THE SMITHSONIAN
The Smithsonian/Showtime deal leads to political controversy and a editorial (Selling America's heritage By Oliver North, February 11, 2007 ) in the Washington Times. - NATIONAL ARCHIVES ANNOUNCES PRESIDENTIAL TIMELINE WEBSITE
A new website, www.presidentialtimeline.org with digitized artifacts and historical archives from all of the U.S. presidential libraries. - HONEST, IT WASN'T ABE'S COMMENT
Thousands of supporters of the Iraq war including a member of Congress in the Congressional Record are quoting words that Abraham Lincoln never said and attributing the words to Lincoln. See: Honest, It Wasn't Abe's Comment by Mary Ann Akers, Washington Post, February 16, 2007; Page A21.
Transparency and the President’s Management Agenda
Peggy Garvin reported on the SLA Government Information Division blog that the Office of Management and Budget launched FedSpending.gov this past week.
"The website is intended to provide a searchable database of federal grants, contracts, loans, and other spending. This initial version fulfills a requirement in the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (PL 109-282), known as FFATA."The site is sparse right now, but it does have a PDF copy of the FFATA and its implementation schedule. The OMB has been using e-government websites as a method of providing transparency, as seen with ExpectMore.gov and Results.gov. The latter site is geared towards federal employees and aims to show how well government agencies are performing in relation to the President's Management Agenda. It's kind of a strange site, though. One of the boxes on the front page is entitled, "Don't You Agree? Apply to You?" This reminds me of a subject heading from a Nigerian scam email for some reason. I find the rating system for the Executive Branch Management Scorecard a bit silly:
The ratings are given for each agency at its highest level. This is understandable, but a classmate of mine pointed out that you're not seeing how divisions of the agencies are performing. If you work for the IRS, you're only seeing how the Treasury Department is doing on the whole. If you work for the USCIS, you're only seeing how Homeland Security is performing. (Or not performing, if you look at the PDF of the December 2006 scorecard.) I don't know how much guidance each division receives on how to improve or maintain their scores, though. If you have any insights on this, please feel free to comment. Continue reading
- Green for success,
- Yellow for mixed results, and
- Red for unsatisfactory.
Science.gov search better than ever
Science.gov, a search engine for government science information and research results, yesterday released its latest version of Science.gov search engine. Version 4.0 deploys "DeepRank" which allows search and relevancy ranking across full text of documents, when full text is available. In addition, users can now choose a "refine results" option to narrow returns within a search, as well as view search results in multiple ways: by title, author or date, as well as by relevancy rank or source. The search also includes Deep Web search capability of content not accessible by popular search engines. Science.gov searches authoritative science information from 30 federal scientific databases and more than 1,800 science Web sites. The search is made possible by members of the Science.gov Alliance: the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Government Printing Office, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation, with support from the National Archives and Records Administration. Continue reading
Thank you Bill Pardue!
In my haste to roll out the new FGI browser toolbar, I forgot a shout out to the person who inspired me to create it. So here is a belated thanks to Bill Pardue, Virtual Services Librarian / NorthStarNet Arlington Heights Coordinator of the Arlington Heights Memorial Library (http://www.ahml.info). On 2/12/2007, Bill posted a message to the Questionpoint-L mailing list talking about the toolbar his library had created for AHML using Conduit. It sounded like a wonderful way to promote library info. From there it was a small step to trying to create a tool that could promote all of us in the depository community, plus the main government information sites. I think one of the best things about the Internet is the quick way we can share information and techniques and quickly put them into practice. Some will fail, others will succeed, but we've got a wonderful laboratory to experiment with. Continue reading