SLA Government Information Division

The Government Information Division Blog Has Moved

On June 1, 2011, the Government Information Division moved its website to http://govinfo.sla.org/ Please update your bookmarks.

The DGI Blog is now located at http://govinfo.sla.org/blog/

If you subscribe to the DGI Blog's RSS feed, you will need to update it to http://feeds.feedburner.com/SLADGI 

CERN joins ScienceCinema

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has opened its scientific multimedia collections to searches by the Energy Department's ScienceCinema. The ScienceCinema website performs searches of the audio in a database of audio and video presentations; results link directly to multimedia files. Aside from the CERN works, the content is from the U.S. Energy Department and its national laboratories. (For more information, see our previous blog post: ScienceCinema: DOE Multimedia Search, 9 February 2011.)

The CERN materials are audio files only at this point. They include recordings for both general and expert audiences interested in particle physics research. To limit a ScienceCinema search to CERN content only, choose the Bibliographic Search option and select the button for CERN under 'Media Source' in the lower right corner.

Also see the Energy Department press release, CERN Multimedia Now Playing at DOE's Science Cinema, 25 May 2011.

 

Public Online Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports

U.S. House members Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) have introduced legislation that would "require the Public Printer to establish and maintain a website accessible to the public that allows the public to obtain electronic copies of all congressionally mandated reports in one place." The bill, H.R. 1974, is endorsed by SLA. (See: Public Policy Connections, 16 May 2011).

The Sunlight Foundation's Daniel Schuman outlines the differences between this bill and a similar one introduced in the 111th Congress in his blog post Improving Public Oversight of Government: The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act.

The public benefit of the bill's "in one place" requirement is perhaps illustrated best by the guide Sources for Finding Mandated Reports to Congress by U.S. Federal Agencies, made available online by the Law Librarians Society of Washington, DC (LLSDC.org). The guide lists over 20 public and commercial sources for such reports and indexes to help in finding them.

Award-Winning Government Libraries -- Congrats!

Congratulations to the government libraries selected for special recognition by the Library of Congress Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC)! FLICC recently announced the recipients for the 12th anniversary of the awards, which "recognize the many innovative ways that federal libraries, librarians and library technicians fulfill the information demands of government, business and scholarly communities, and the American public."

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Library Network earned recognition as the best Large Library/Information Center (staff of 11 or more federal and/or contract employees).

Medical Library, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Ft. Detrick, MD, was recognized as best Small Library/Information Center (staff of 10 or fewer federal and/or contract employees).

Congratulations to FLICC's 2010 Federal Librarian of the Year, Eleanor G. Frierson of the National Agricultural Library (NAL), Beltsville, MD, recognized for her leadership and direction of NAL and her service as co-chair of the Science.gov Alliance.

And congrats to FLICC's 2010 Federal Library Technician of the Year, Laura (Layne) Bosserman, Library Technician, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC who, among many other accomplishments, helped to save DOJ $100,000!

Read the full press release, FLICC Announces 12th Annual Awards for Federal Librarianship.

Think Tanked: New on WashingtonPost.com

Today the Washington Post website began carrying Think Tanked, a blog about thinks tanks and public policy research. Think Tanked is the work of political writer Allen McDuffee, who began the blog independently a year ago. His post About Think Tanked and Allen McDuffee enumerates some of the questions he hopes to address with Think Tanked: "...somebody is asking the questions think tanks answer, but who and why? Just as important: which think tanks are choosing to answer them? And what are the relationships between governments and think tanks?" He describes the blog's geographic scope as "Washington and beyond."

The Washington Post carried similar columns in the 2000's, including Ideas Factory by Richard Morin and Claudia Deane and Think Tank Town by Ron Nessen.

In addition to the Post's website, you can find Think Tanked on Twitter (@ThinkTankedWaPo) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Think-Tanked/345615977470). You can also receive it as an RSS feed.

Transportation Librarians: Masters of Information

Kudos to SLA Government Information Division member Jennifer Boteler for her article Masters of Information published in the current issue of the Federal Highway Administration newsletter Public Roads. The article describes the work of transportation librarians and their collaboration with public and private transportation libraries and information providers. Along the way, Jennifer makes key points about librarians' roles as information filters, innovative researchers, organizers of information for retrieval, and networkers extraordinaire.

 

 

Expert Panel Discusses Future of CRS

The Advisory Committee on Transparency, a project of the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, set the stage for their 9 May 2011 program on the Congressional Research Service (CRS):

CRS director Dan Mulhollan's retirement on April 2 - after running Congress' think tank for 17 years - raises questions about the agency's policies and future.
 
Is CRS meeting the needs of Congress? Has its analytical expertise eroded? Are CRS Reports as relevant, accurate, and understandable as they need to be, and should they be available to the general public? What does a 21st century research service look like? 

A video recording of the full 1.5 hour panel discussion is available from the CSPAN Video Library at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/ResearchS. The Nextgov news site summarizes the panel's discussion of CRS report availability in the article Sunshine advocates say Congressional Research Service reports should be posted online. U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (D-IL) is expected to introduce legislation on the availability of CRS reports later this month.

 

New Guide to Searching State Legislative Databases

A new guide to searching the 50 public domain U.S. state legislation databases is available online for free, courtesy of the Prevention Research Center at the Brown School of Social Work in St. Louis, Missouri.

The 2011 State Legislative Search Guide, according to an email announcing its publication, "compiles hyperlinks, navigation directions, contacts for questions, search tips, and information for each of the 50 state legislative websites." The Center offers both a full-length guide with an introduction plus a guide page on each state and a two-page guide with links to each state legislature's homepage and its bill search page. (Note: the Law Librarians Society of Washington DC also has an online quick guide called State Legislatures, State Laws, and State Regulations: Website Links and Telephone Numbers.)

Standard information for each state in the Center's full guide includes:

• date range covered
• intructions for bill search, bill tracking, and statute searching
• general search tips, including how revisions to a bill's text are indicated
• general notes such as legislative session length, special features of the database, and changes made since 2009 when the Center last reviewed the sites

SLA/DGI members may also be interested in a Center project described in their Spring 2011 newsletter, Cancer Control Dissemination Research among State-Level Policymakers: Insight into how legislators gather and use information.

 

Inside Look at GPO's Congressional Record Prepress

A new video from the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) explains the work that goes on at night to deliver the Congressional Record in print and online the next morning. The Production of the Congressional Record video (4 min, 51 sec) is on GPO's YouTube channel along with other informative presentations on GPO's work and products.

The GPO's 9 May 2011 press release announcing the video explains one of the major points GPO would like to make:

Technology changes over the past generation have reduced the cost of this publication by more than
two thirds, and today the vast majority of the cost to produce it -- nearly 70% -- is in the creation of the digital file for dissemination online and in print.

 

Mobile Access to Mobile Gov Info Access News

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has a blog and Twitter account reporting news and tips on mobile access to government information.

Launched last month, the Mobile Gov Blog provides an RSS feed at http://blog.citizen.apps.gov/howtomobile/feed/. April posts included Predicting the Smartphone Market 2015 and There's An App For That: New on apps.usa.gov.

The Twitter account is @Mobile_Gov. Its scope: "Trends + tweets to help agencies build a citizen-centric path for mobile access to government. Via GSA Office of Citizen Services & Innovative Technologies."

Further information on mobile content solutions for government is available on GSA's HowTo.gov site for government web managers, at http://www.howto.gov/tech-solutions/mobile.