SLA Government Information Division

African American History Month

The Library of Congress has launched its 2009 African American History Month website at www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov. The site links to the Library's online exhibits and image, audio, video collections relevant to the month. It also links to selected resources from other institutions such as the National Gallery of Art and the National Archives. The For Teachers section links to online educational resources from a variety of sites.

The Library and Archives Canada also has a portal to its collections for the Canadian Black History Month.

California State Furloughs Employees

The Los Angeles Times reports on the latest court loss for California state employees in today's article California is told to furlough employees. State employees are to take two days off without pay each month, and state services will be affected.

Here is a link to the judge's decision [Word .doc file], courtesy of the Sacramento Bee newspaper's State Worker blog, which is tracking the story.

The California State Library website now carries a notice that "the California State Library plans to close its offices and public service desks in Sacramento and San Francisco the first and third Friday of each month, beginning February 6, until further notice."

Hey there! librarycongress is using Twitter.

The Library of Congress has begun to use the Twitter messaging service under the name librarycongress. As LoC blogger Matt Raymond promises on the post announcing the new Twitter feed, "we are [the Library of Congress is] on the cusp of many more forays into the Web 2.0, and I hope to bring more announcements soon (most likely weeks, not months)."

Looking for more government Twitter feeds? Consulting firm Bearing Point has started a directory, described in a previous DGI Blog post.

Reliable Research at State Legislatures

State legislative service agencies are the focus of the February 2009  State Legislatures magazine article Reliable Research. The article particularly emphasizes the nonpartisan nature of these agencies. The online version of the magazine also features an interview with Terry Anderson, the director of the Wisconsin Legislative Council.

State Legislatures is published by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

USAJOBS Security Alert

The USAJOBS.gov website, managed by Monster.com, has posted a new security alert at www.usajobs.gov/securityNotice.asp. The notice says, in part:

We recently learned that the Monster database was illegally accessed and certain contact and account data were taken, including user IDs and passwords, email addresses, names, phone numbers, and some basic demographic data. The information accessed does not include resumes. The accessed information does not include - sensitive data such as social security numbers or personal financial data.

As a further precaution, we want to remind you that an email address could be used to target "phishing" emails. USAJOBS® will never send an unsolicited email asking you to confirm your username and password, nor will Monster ask you to download any software, "tool" or "access agreement" in order to use your USAJOBS® account.

PC World offers Safety Precautions for Monster.com Users after Hack Attack, 26 January 2009.

(Hat tip to FedBlog.)

Washington State Digital Archives in the News

Kudos to our colleagues at the Washington State Archives for coverage in the modestly-titled 22 January 2009 Spokane Spokesman-Review article, Facility in Cheney Serves as Archive for Digital Data. The article reports:

The state-of-the-art facility in Cheney has seen visitors from China, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Canada, to name a few. Many of the groups are from agencies that would like to learn how Washington has been pioneering the way records are kept.

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Direct link to Washington State Digital Archives site.

New Agriculture Thesaurus & Glossary

The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library (NAL) has released the 2009 edition of the agricultural Thesaurus and Glossary it produces in cooperation with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture.

The thesaurus and the glossary are online in both English and Spanish and can be searched or browsed. NAL has also made the thesaurus and glossary files available to download. The glossary can be downloaded in either zipped PDF or zipped XML; the thesaurus can be downloaded in these formats or in  MARC or RDF-SKOS.

(Hat tip to InfoFarm, the NAL blog.)

GPO Presidential Documents Update

Some updates and further details on our previous post, Text of Inaugural Ceremony, FDsys News, about the new GPO product Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents launched on 20 January 2009:

• The FDsys version of the Compilation of Presidential Documents--a combination of the Weekly Compilation and the Daily Compilation--has a handy shortcut URL, www.presidentialdocuments.gov.
• While the preferred location for using the Daily Compilation is GPO's new FDsys system, the content is also available on GPO Access but functionality there is limited to browsing, no search. The GPO Access URL for the Daily Compilation is www.gpoaccess.gov/presdocs/browse.html.
• The Daily Compilation and the Weekly Compilation are available only in electronic format. Going forward, there will be no paper copy of the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents.
• For full details, see the final rule [PDF] issued by the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register on 20 January 2009 (74 Fed.Reg. 3950). The rule provides background information on the Weekly Compilation and the committee's justification for discontinuing the print edition.

Many thanks to bespacific for pulling together this news.

Bush Whitehouse.gov Archived

The content of Whitehouse.gov as it was on 20 January 2009 is available online via the National Archives site at:
http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/visit/bushgw.html.

The archived site is linked from the National Archives web page for the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

Text of Inaugural Ceremony, FDsys News

The text of the presidential inauguration ceremony is printed in the Senate pages of the 20 January 2009 Congressional Record; see page S667 through S670 [PDF].

The link above is to the Congressional Record on the Government Printing Office's new FDsys system, currently in a beta test version. (For more information on FDsys, see our previous DGI blog post.)

While most government content will be available on both the existing GPO Access system and the developing FDsys system for the near future, GPO has announced one product available only from FDsys: the Compilation of Presidential Documents, a database combining the standard Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents with a daily update. From GPO: "In conjunction with the change of administration in 2009," Presidential Documents will be updated online on a daily basis, while "the Digest of White House Announcements, Nominations Submitted to the Senate, Checklist of White House Press Releases, and Acts Approved by the President will continue to be made available electronically on a weekly basis." The documents are also likely to be made available promptly on Whitehouse.gov, as they have in the past.

(Oh, and Whitehouse.gov has a new look, but you already knew that, didn't you?)