Docs info: 2 more

1. From points around the blogosphere comes news of GovPulse.us, a way of searching the Federal Register (1994 and forward). It won first place in the 2010 Apps for Innovation contest and is definitely worth a look.

"GovPulse highlights proposed regulations currently open for comment, and it filters Federal Register items by agency, date published, "event" date (effective date, comment deadline), topic, and location (for items concerned with a U.S. location). GovPulse supplements the filters with visualizations designed to expose information about the information in the Federal Register. The site is managed by developers working in their off-hours."

2. From the DoD comes news of a new publication, Guide to Nongovernmental Organizations for the Military. Subtitled "A primer for the military about private, voluntary, and nongovernmental organizations operating in humanitarian emergencies globally," its 355 pages usefully describe characteristics of NGOs and give special emphasis to those concerned with public health and international "relief." Good reading in case SW 25 runs again!

Docs in the news -- and in Newsweek

From the blogosphere, come these two noteworthy items on government documents:

1. The New York Times apparently has a server dedicated to the reports, studies and documents (government produced and otherwise) its articles cite. Presumably because most readers would click into the documents from the article referencing them, there doesn't seem to be a direct and public link to the "Documents" page (though it sports a root directory of http://documents.nytimes.com). Type in that address, however, and you'll be redirected to an RSS feed to which you can subscribe.

Among some of the information posted here:

• the DOD review of the Ft. Hood Shootings
• the (as yet unpublished) first installment of the Army's history of the war in Afghanistan
  
• records the ACLU and NYT obtained on deaths of immigrants in detention (with annotations from editors)
  
• government reports on pathogens in ground beef (and the industry's ammonia treatment of meat)
• a first look at the Harvard Business Review's redesign
  

2. The January 18, 2010 Newsweek features an article on StatAb -- called, Suicide, Sex, and SUVs. Nice to see this resource being "mainstreamed."

LexisNexis White Paper Collection: another training aid

LexisNexis has a "Wiki for Higher Education" that's chock full of information and has a growing collection of user created guides to content.

It also has several "White Papers" that the L-N teams have produced for each of the main databases (Congressional, Statistical, etc.). Look for under under the "Product Pages" tab on the LN wiki home page.

These will be great introductions and overviews for those of us who are apprentices -- and, of course, are another kind of material

Meantime: here's the current white paper list for Congressional:

• An Insider's View of the U.S. Serial Set
• CRDC Collection [covers committee prints and CRS reports]
• Hearings and the L-N Digital Hearings Collections
• What is the Congressional Record?
  

CRS Reports on All Things Congressional

As part of its online Legislative Source Book, the LLSDC (Law Librarians' Society of Washington DC) has gathered together in one place all of the available CRS reports on Congress and its procedures.  Should prove useful as a reference tool for all of us -- and for our piloteers!

New look to State's Office of the Historian page

The new, usefully re-organized version was just launched.

The AHA blog has a nice overview of its features.

Judicial review of executive lawmaking

In the past few weeks, we've had students looking for presidential memoranda or presidential determinations and (of course) executive orders. But they're also tasked with finding out which of these memoranda, determinations, executive orders (etc.) would have been challenged in federal courts.

We have strategies for finding the presidential materials, in CFR Title 3, FR's Weekly [and now, Daily] Compilation of Presidential Documents, Public Papers of the President, and US Code Congressional and Administrative News. We can learn which  Executive Orders are still in effect by consulting the Disposition Tables maintained by NARA. 

But for gray zone materials -- like determinations and memoranda -- figuring out which occasioned judicial review can be harder. CRS Reports, Law Reviews, case law are options. 

Our friends in the Law School Library suggest Shepard's Code of Federal Regulations Citations as well. Except for the current issues, past volumes need to be requested from the Depository. Online searching can be done on the full version of LexisNexis and on Westlaw. Because undergraduates have limited options for accessing these resources, however,  we may want to recommend a consult with a Law librarian. 

If the bound volumes of the citator don't suffice, the Kennedy School Library may be the place to send them for their LexisNexis full version searching. LexisNexis Academic only seems to permit shepardizing of state and federal case law and law review articles.  

Hat tip to Terri Gallagher O'Rourke (Law) for this information.  

Obama speeches

A company called AskSam has compiled transcripts of Obama's speeches, dating back to 2002. The collection is not exhaustive: post-election radio/YouTube addresses aren't included, for example, and the latest speech on the AskSam site is from Inauguration Day. Still, at 220 speeches this site will probably be a handy tool for the first wave of students who'll be doing projects on our new president and his rise to power.

The speeches can be browsed and read online. But AskSam offers a (free) viewer that once downloaded, treats the speeches as a database of sorts and allows textual analysis by a variety of means.

It's unclear whether the Obama speech site will grow on AskSam, so obviously, students will need to be pointed to White House Briefing Room materials, too.

GPO Access Getting a Makeover

The public beta of the FDSys is now available.The Federal Digital System will be the replacement for GPOAccess. The migration will apparently be complete in mid-2009. Our Gov Docs colleagues will be able to give a better comparison of its features (or shortcomings) but have a look. It's really nicely designed: appropriate for the tech savvy administration now in place! SLA has an interesting post on it. Next up I hope: a better NARA site!

Weekly is now a Daily

According to this post the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents is a daily publication as of January 20, 2009.

How neat is this?

Check out Capitol Words. This site is one of the projects of the Sunlight Foundation.

International Legal Research: Basic Sources

From the December 2008 AALL Spectrum comes this article, identifying some of the core resources for international legal research.

Interesting post on docs and librarians

It's called The Elephant in the Academic Library, and appeared on the FreeGovInfo blog. The post links back to another that is equally well worth reading.

New Reference Books

All from the OECD

Insurance Statistics Yearbook: 1997-2006
REF. ROOM HG8045 .I57 (1997-2006)

OECD Statistics on International Trade in Services
Volume 1: detailed tables by service category, 1996-2005 REF ROOM HD9980.4 .O 387 (1996-2005)
Volume 2: detailed tables by partner country, 2002-2005 REF ROOM HD9980.4 .O 39 (2002-05)

Measuring Globalisation Activities of Multinationals
REF ROOM HD2755.5 .M42 2 volumes

Geographical Distribution of Financial Flows to Developing Countries
REF ROOM HC79 .F55 G45x (2002-06)

When good microform guides go missing . . .

. . . and you know they're published by UPA, you can certainly try looking form them among the finding aids in our LexisNexis Primary Sources collection.

But if that fails, browse the UPA Microform Collections Guides page that LexisNexis makes freely available on the web.

Many more finding aids are reproduced as PDFs there.

For the sake of convenience and redundancy, I've added the page to our del.icio.us links as well.

The Plum Book

No matter who wins the election next week, our patrons with an interest in public service may be interested in the Plum Book, the Congressional publication that lists all appointments that the U.S. president may fill, positions as varied as the Surgeon General and the Co-Chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission. The guide is published every four years just after the election, so the 2008 edition will be coming soon. Until then, the most recent, 2004, version, can be found here:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plumbook

New Reference Book: Constitutions of the World

Doc Ref
K
3157
.E5
M33
2008

Government Documents in Google Book Search

In our lightning session on the Google Book Project, we discussed the anomaly of government publications being treated as copyrighted works. There's an interesting discussion of the issue in the Prelinger Library Blog.

Geolytics and Census Documentation

A student came to the desk today to use the Census CDs (which we've recently received new versions of from Geolytics).

In the course of helping him get the physical CDs, he realized he had forgotten the distinction between "long form" and "short form" of the Census and which was the bigger sample size.

That information is in several places, of course, but I went to the Geolytics web site's Census Discussion for it.

Useful online guides (in pdf) are available for the CD products, incidentally.

What I learned at the Reference Desk today!

A student from the U of Denver, doing research while here in Boston was interested in accessing the 1850 census. The print volumes in the Reference Room only present aggregate data -- to his dismay, as he wanted a list of the actual heads of households (by name and such) for Essex County in New York.

Thanks to JC's knowledge and our online subscription to Ancestry.com (the "library edition," which you access via e-resources) we could get that level of detail. Ancestry has apparently scanned in the individual census records -- which include the names of heads of households -- back to 1790. Very neat indeed!

GRRR . . . Ger

A patron -- Ph.D. candidate in history, familiar with the collection, came in tonight trying to uncover the call numbers for certain statistical publications produced by the Third Reich. He remembered that the call number began "Ger Doc 9."

I tried Vida's famous rolodex, HOLLIS "other call numbers" and even -- in desperation -- "Government number," all to no avail. Ger Doc(s) never surfaced. Finally, I went to the basement with him, got him in the general area and set him loose.

Puzzled, I asked JC what I'd done wrong. Here's a tip: use Widener call number searches for paper documents with a geographic or country name prefix, followed by the abbreviation "doc." This system owes its origins in many cases to the old Widener class system, which identified countries thus. Ger= Germany; Ind=Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan); Afr=African continent, Br=British Isles (including Ireland), and so forth.

This system makes perfect sense as soon as you remember that Widener is the parent of Gov Docs -- the classifications that are neither LC or SuDocs are part of that legacy.