71 legislators sign on to save SIPP
Last month, FGI blogged about the SIPP program budget problem. Thanks to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and the action of many in our community, there is positive movement afoot. According to an email received from CEPR, "On Friday, 29 U.S. Senators and 42 Members of Congress sent a letter to President Bush asking him to reverse the administration's decision to eliminate the SIPP (see PDF of the letter). The "Save SIPP" sign on letter is approaching 500 names! If your representative is on either the House or Senate Appropriations Subcommittees, please consider calling them up and letting them know that the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) as well as the other work that the Census bureau does is extremely important to librarians, researchers, students and citizens. CEPR has created a handy call-in guide with talking points. Please keep the momentum going! Continue reading
Aftergood receives James Madison Award from ALA
First of all, happy Sunshine Week!! Check out these Sunshine week editorial cartoons while you're at it. Steven Aftergood, director of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, will be presented with the James Madison Award by the American Library Association for his work on secrecy. The Award which is "presented annually on the anniversary of Madison's birth (March 16) to honor those who have championed, protected, and promoted public access to government information and the public's right to know." US News & World Report has an excellant interview with Aftergood entitled, "Secrecy Under Scrutiny" By David E. Kaplan. Congratulations Steven! Continue reading
(WI) Statistics on the number of nurses by degree or education completed
A member of our nursing faculty was looking for statistics on the number of nurses by degree or education completed. I helped her locate Table 154, Health Professions--Practitioners and Schools: 1990-2002 in the online 2006 Statistical Abstract This table provided a portion of the information she needed, but the category "baccalaureate" combined data for all levels of nurses with advanced degrees. The rest of the data she needed was found on the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses Web site. Chart 2 of the summary included an initial nursing preparation chart. More statistics were located by searching the entire report. Our professor found what she needed and was very pleased. Mary Hayden Library Services Asst-Government Publications UW-Eau Claire McIntyre Library Continue reading
NORAD orders Web deletion of transcript
NORAD orders Web deletion of transcript, By Declan McCullagh CNET News.com, March 9, 2006. "The Bush administration has been criticized in the past by open government advocates for its aggressive efforts to avoid the disclosure of information that historically has been public. In 2003, the U.S. Army surreptitiously pulled the plug on one of its more popular Web sites after a report embarrassing to the military appeared on it. In another example, the names of the members of the Defense Science Board--an obscure but influential advisory body that influences military policy and had a budget of $3.6 million a year--have vanished from the group's public Web site." Now, "in an unusual follow-up to a public event, the Defense Department has ordered that a transcript of an open hearing on aviation restrictions be yanked from the Web." Some of the pilots who attended the meeting suggested that nothing sensitive was disclosed and that the transcripts were deleted because one of the pilots who testified, Lt. Cmdr. Tom Bush, criticized the government's security apparatus. Continue reading
Susan Golding, Blogger-of-the-month for March, 2006
This month's BOTM is Susan Golding, govt documents librarian at Temple University (see her bio for more information on Susan). And if anyone would like to be BOTM in the future, please contact us at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info. Welcome Susan! Continue reading