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.