Memorial Day

Have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend! For information on the history of how Memorial Day came to be, check out these links:

Origins of Memorial Day
History of Memorial Day

If you can't visit these memorials in D.C. anytime soon, then visit them virtually:

WWII Memorial
Korean War Veterans Memorial
Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the virtual Vietnam Wall

Read about veterans' experiences at the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.

And learn ways you can support our troops!

Free Foreign Language Courses

Want to learn French? Hindi? How about "Igbo"?(West African language)You can study these languages and many more for free by accessing the course textbooks and audio tapes published by the U.S. Government's Foreign Service Institute now hosted at a non-profit website, the FSI Language Courses homepage. They also have links to podcasts for learning Chinese, French, and more.

Happy Mothers Day!

Did you know that President Woodrow Wilson established Mothers Day? He proclaimed it on May 9, 1914 and deemed the second Sunday of May to be Mothers Day. For more interesting Mom facts, visit the Library of Congress page, "Honor Your Mother" and the Census Bureau's Mothers Day Fact Sheet for some interesting statistics about Mothers (i.e. there are 82.8 million moms in the U.S. as of 2004!)

New Orleans Data Center

Although it is a non-governmental site from a non-profit organization, I'd like to point out a very useful website for those in need of recent demographic data on New Orleans GNOCDC: Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. Some of their information is obtained from census.gov and the Louisiana Department of Education. GNOCDC also has an interactive map of repopulation indicators for New Orleans based on who is receiving postal service mail! Check it out here.

Boll Weevils

Yes, Boll Weevils. Who knew that we had several documents in our Louisiana Government Documents collection about these little buggers? Including: "Proceedings of the Boll Weevil Convention called by Governor W. W. Heard in New Orleans, Louisiana, Nov. 30th and Dec. 1st, 1903." A Boll Weevil Convention!! I stumbled across these documents while browsing the Louisiana agriculture documents today.

I still refuse to look at our documents about Nutria Rats. *shudder* Ick.

If you desperately need information on Boll Weevils and Nutria Rats (or want to learn how to eradicate them from your crops) do a keyword search for nutria or "boll weevil" in our library's catalog and come visit the 4th floor, Government Documents Department.

National Small Business Week

Happy National Small Business Week! The U.S. Small Business Administration is pleased to announce Small Business Week April 21-25, 2008. You can view webcasts of the various forums, talks, and events right from your home or office computer.

If you want to look at government related small business sources online, you can visit the del.icio.us web bookmark page I created. It's also accessible from our department's homepage (scroll down a bit, and on the left hand side, click on "Government Website Tags" and then click on the "small_business" tag from the list on the right hand side).

Of course, the mother of all small business government sources is the website of the U.S. Small Business Administration, at www.sba.gov. They even offer 25 free online courses!

MyLOC.gov

The Library of Congress has launched "My Library of Congress" (MyLOC). It's a web portal into their collections, where you can take virtual tours, browse parts of the Gutenberg Bible, flip through the pages of Thomas Jefferson's books (his personal library) with the click of a mouse, or investigate Mayan artifacts! And the cool part is that you can create an account so that you can save certain exhibitions into your own "library" to return to later. If you are a teacher or aspiring educator, you will appreciate the Educational Lesson Plans feature. Word of warning: I spent over two hours on this site tonight. It's easy to lose track of time! Enjoy...

Rain Rain, Go Away

For most parts of the country, April is the month for "Spring Showers". Here in Louisiana, it's more like "Spring Monsoon"! Actually, our rainiest months are in May and September, but flood conditions can be a concern anytime of the year. Therefore, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has developed an online, user-friendly map that tracks flood conditions. Check it out at their Water Watch website.

Rains drive flood waters higher along the Mississippi River Valley and USGS crews are in the field collecting data needed to update the flood maps, prepare forecasts, manage floods, and warn communities.

Last FGI "Blogger of the Month" Posts

These may be of interest to you...some of my last posts as my "Blogger of the Month" experience comes to an end. What a fun time it was! But I'll still be posting on FGI occasionally. Hoorah!

Making a Passport-Video
MAPLight.org
Follow the Oil Money
NARA Cold War CIA Records
FDA.gov Gets a Makeover
Sssh! It's a Secret!
Congresearch: Congressional Research Tutorial
19th Century Passenger Arrival Records Now Online at NARA

Gov Doc 2.0 Resources

I want to let you know about my department's wiki page that I am working on: "Gov Docs 2.0" Resources as well as the link to my presentation that I gave at the Louisiana Library Association.

If you would like to contribute information to the Gov Docs 2.0 Resources page, let me know. I can give you a password to access just that part of the wiki. So far, the page contains mostly Web 2.0 resources but I would like to include examples of other Government Depositories using Web 2.0 technologies too.

McLeod Lecture Series on Thursday

Mark your calendars for the April 3 McLeod lecture entitled "The Congressional Record: Four Louisianian's Share Their Perspectives." It will begin at 7:00PM at Central School in Lake Charles, LA.

"Louisiana's United States Congressmen have had a unique place on Capitol Hill, especially as it relates to the oil and gas industry. The fifth annual McLeod Lecture Series is honored to have former representatives Jimmy Hayes, Chris John, Buddy Leach and Henson Moore share stories about representing Louisiana in the U.S. Congress. Topics relating to oil and gas, healthcare, wetlands and more are sure to make for a lively discussion".

IE vs Firefox Text Fixed

Goodness, I just realized that my blog posts had centered text in IE (Internet Explorer). How horrible looking! It looked fine in a Firefox browser. Lesson learned: check your HTML, XML, and CSS coding compatability with different types of browsers. Anyways, I fixed the coding and the blog looks great with both IE and Firefox. Hoorah!

If you are curious about web design and user compatability, we have a government document on that very subject both online and in print on the 4th floor, SuDoc Call No. HE 1.2:W 38/2006.

UC Berkeley's Media Database

Thanks to a recent entry at the MSU Philosophy Club Blog , I now know about a great new resource from UC Berkeley: The Online Media Database! You can view and listen to speeches by the Black Panthers, Anti-Vietnam War Protests, etc. You can even listen to the Watergate Tapes (transcripts from NARA). Just browse some of their holdings...it's fascinating to watch these videos. Here is a video from the "Red Scare" era, produced by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).

Virtual Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

If you wish to pay your respects but cannot travel to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in D.C., can now do so from your computer. NARA and Footnote.com have released a searchable digital replica of the Memorial Wall.


The site also allows you to "leave a tribute, a story or photograph about any of the 58,256 veterans killed or missing in the Vietnam War".

Word of warning, the site claims that due to recent high traffic, you might experience slow loading pages or images. They are working to improve this.

For more information about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, visit it's NPS official website and it's Library of Congress website.

Take me out to the ball game...

Are you a baseball fan? Then you'll love the webpage that the Library of Congress created: Historical Baseball Resources. They just launched it and it includes player profiles, historical news and events, collection guides, audio/video presentations, access to a sampling of visual images, and unique sound artifacts.

Duck and Cover!!

Several student patrons are working on research papers about the Cold War era and some are focusing on the nuclear arms race and the fear of nuclear attack. It's been fascinating finding and reading materials we have in our print collection, including information published by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) in the 1950s and the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM) during the Kennedy administration. (For a concise history of civil defense preparedness, read "Civil Defense and Homeland Security: A Short History of National Preparedness Efforts" published by the Homeland Security National Preparedness Task Force).

I thought I'd share some of these online government sources I've discovered in my hunt for all things Cold War/Civil Defense related:

* Clips of historical "test" films at the DOE agency website.
* "Mr. Civil Defense Tells About Natural Disasters!" A government document comic book!
* "In Time of Emergency: A Citizen's Handbook on Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters" (1968).
* The "Survival Under Atomic Attack" booklet can be found in federal depositories, but here is an online transcription.
* NARA records of the OCDM.
* "Atomic Culture" article by the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.
* Not a government source, but a virtual Civil Defense Museum website created by a Civil Defense enthusiast.
* "Civil Defense Log Dies at 67, and Some Mourn It's Passing" article at NYTimes.com.

And my favorite...Civil Defense videos!

* Internet Archive's collection of Civil Defense Films and other media/film resources on civil defense.
* Some of YouTube's collection of Civil Defense Films.

Did they really think ducking n' covering under a school desk would protect them from a nuclear attack?

Census Atlas

The Census Bureau has published the Census Atlas of the United States, available online and in print. According to GPO, the new Atlas is an "authoritative reference work that paints a fascinating and dynamic portrait of the American nation. It includes more than 700 full-color maps derived from 210 years of official Census data".

If you love maps or visual data, come see this beautiful atlas up here on the 4th floor, SuDocs Call No. C 3.205/8-3:29

OpenCongress Web 2.0 Tools

FYI, this is a post I created for the FGI Blog and based on an earlier post I created for this blog.

Here is a great example of "Government Documents 2.0" in action: OpenCongress.org offers several Web 2.0 tools such as the OpenCongress Facebook application, where you can put bills that interest you on your Facebook profile. You can show your support or opposition to each bill, or simply remain neutral by selecting the "just following" option. Each bill links back to OpenCongress, so your patrons or friends can get all the information they need in order to understand and become involved with the issues themselves.

One of their Web 2.0 tools that I use for my GovGuides Wiki (a work in progress, mind you!), is the "Bill by Issue Widget". I created one for the Environmental Law GovGuides Wiki page I'm working on. It displays the latest bills introduced in Congress on anything to do with environmental law enforcement.

If you are not familiar with OpenCongress, it's a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource "with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement". OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. It uses data provided by GovTrack.us, which collects data from official government websites, such as Thomas. For more info, see previous FGI posts about OpenCongress: My OpenCongress, Congress Remix, and FGI's "Remixes page".

OpenCongress makes it easy to understand each bill by giving a brief summary, who sponsored it, its status, and related bills. And yes, there are links to the full text of the bill and its voting history from Thomas. However, I do encourage students in my instruction classes to cite the original sources that OpenCongress leads them to, such as the full text of the bill from Thomas, congressional record references, or the homepages that OpenCongress links to for various committees and congressmen, etc. And of course I remind them that not everything is online, especially older government information, so they must turn to the print sources that I show them how to locate and use. By that time, the students are much more apt to pay attention and understand the importance of the exotic experience of handling/using the 1945 volume of the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications or a Congressional Record volume from 1918. ;-)

I find OpenCongress to be a very user friendly and a convenient "one stop shop" for learning about legislation. Students in my library instruction classes seem to love using it, so if it gets them excited about government information, then I love it too!

Economic Report of the President, 2008

GPO-FDLP Announcement, FYI: The Economic Report of the President, 2008 is available online from the U.S. Government Printing Office. Documents are available in ASCII text and .pdf format, with many of the tables also available for separate viewing and downloading as spreadsheets in xls format. The Economic Report of the President is issued by the Executive Office of the President and the Council of Economic Advisers and transmitted to Congress no later than ten days after the submission of the Budget of the United States Government.

The Economic Report of the President includes:
- Trends and annual numerical goals on various topics such as employment, production, real income, and Federal budget outlays
- Employment objectives for significant groups of the labor force
- A program for carrying out program objectives

Also included is the Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers. Each year, the Council of Economic Advisers submits this report on its activities during the previous calendar year in accordance with the requirements of Congress as set forth in section 10(d) of the Employment Act of 1946 as amended by the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978.

In addition, you can find the print version of the Economic Report of the President at your local federal depository libary or at the McNeese Library on the 4th floor:

Economic Report of the President
Sudoc No. PR 43.9:

FGI Blog Posts & Federal Finance Resources

Here are some links to my recent FGI Blog Posts that may be of interest to you (some are adaptations of postings I've previously written on this blog):

Government Agencies Tweet @ Twitter
EPA Declared Guilty of "Bad Faith" in its Library Closures
Creating Gov Doc "Libraries" in Google Books
Public Dissatisfied with Government Financial Transparency
Open Government: Sunshine Week March 16-22

Speaking of government financial transparency, here are some great resources on federal finance and spending:

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which went into effect on New Years Day '08 with the release of USAspending.gov, a site that "gives people access to information on government contracts, grants and other awards".

USAspending.gov is based on the software that runs Fedspending.org, a site created by OMB Watch. Fedspending.org is a "free, searchable database of approximately $16.8 trillion in Federal government spending, with complete annual data from FY 2000 through FY 2006 and partial data available for FY 2007".