Government Documents Roundtable

of the Iowa Library Association

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DOCUMENTS ROUNDTABLE NEWS
Number 74, June 2006


Iowa GODORT Workshop. July 14. Iowa City. Register now!

Join us for this year’s GODORT workshop which will be held at the Main Library of the University of Iowa in Iowa City. We have a variety of presentations and activities that should make for an interesting and stimulating day for participants. Morning refreshments and lunch from Iowa City-based Sweet Pea catering will be served. The day will conclude with a guided tour of the newly restored Old Capitol building.

A list of presenters can be found on the GODORT web site; see the Agenda.

This program has been approved for 5 hours of Library Continuing Education Credit from the State Library of Iowa. Students in the School of Library & Information Science can sign up for ILA membership for free and get the reduced rate.

Send registration to me by Friday, July 7th.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at the workshop.

- Brett Cloyd, Iowa GODORT Chair
University of Iowa Libraries
brett-cloyd@uiowa.edu

GODORT Membership Survey Results

Last fall, the GODORT Executive Board decided it would be useful to survey members and potential members to see what kinds of activities, programming and information sources would be useful to those working in libraries. We felt this would help us better plan the summer workshop, create newsletter stories relevant to readers, and choose a speaker for the ILA Annual Conference. Our survey results are in, and can be seen on the surveyor web site.

Thanks to many announcements requesting feedback via the survey, we had 96 responses. Most were from non-GODORT members and a majority worked in public libraries. The GODORT Executive Board hopes it might be able to reach out to this constituency group in order to expand GODORT’s membership and the resources / services it can provide to library workers in Iowa. There appears to be a good deal of interest in government information and GODORT is working to meet this interest with relevant and interesting fare.

Reaching out to a wider audience by soliciting input on the survey increased awareness of the GODORT newsletter and offered some preliminary promotion of the GODORT workshop. This summer’s workshop will include a tour of the newly restored Old Capitol and a session on health information – both popular choices among survey respondents.

We will also work to include newsletter content that will highlight new, useful information sources so that library workers in the state can stay current and up-to-date on resources that might help them better serve their users.

If you have questions or comments about the survey or about Iowa GODORT, please feel free to get in touch with me or other members of the GODORT executive board.

- Brett Cloyd

DocStar Beats Microfiche

DocStar http://docstar.legis.state.ia.us/dswv/ is a database containing scanned images of Iowa Legislative materials dating back to the early 1950’s. Created by the Iowa Legislative Service Agency, DocStar provides comprehensive coverage of Iowa House and Senate Files, amendments and accompanying Indexes from the year 1953 to the present. You may also access Iowa Interim Study Committee Reports and the publication Summary of Legislation. If you are conducting a search for known material the system can be easily browsed by year and file, if you are interested in searching for various subject matter you can keyword search the House and Senate File titles. According to LSA librarian Jonetta Douglas the project to scan in the material began in earnest in the year 2000, initially the information was stored on optical disks, later DVD’s were employed and currently the data is just uploaded onto their network.  They are currently working on plans to include the House and Senate Study Bills back to their inception in 1987.  The next time you are looking for an old bill I would suggest checking this site out; for my money it beats sifting through microfiche.

- Cory Quist, Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect
State Library of Iowa
cory.quist@lib.state.ia.us

Midwest Gov-Doc Librarians “Kicking Butt”: Iowa’s Neighbors Advocate Government Information

Roundup of recent gov-doc news from Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Minnesota:

The Wisconsin Library Association Government Information Round Table (GIRT) hosted “Government Information Day” on Friday, May 19, 2006 at University of Wisconsin Madison's Memorial Library. The gov doc "Wisconsin Citizen Lake Monitoring Training Manual" received GIRT’s 2005 Distinguished Document Award.

Jocelyn Tipton, 2005-2006 Manager of Illinois Library Association’s Government Documents Forum (GODORT), will moderate a program called “Every Library a Depository?” at the Annual Illinois Library Association Conference, Chicago on Thursday, October 5, 2006. The program will review recent changes to the ways the Government Printing Office disseminates information. Illinois GODORT members also participate in Government Information Online, a “free national online information service supported by nearly thirty public, academic, and state libraries throughout the United States.”

The Missouri Library Association Government Documents Special Interest Group sponsored “Digitizing Historical Economic Data” at the October 2005 MLA annual conference in Kansas City. Robert Suriano, Electronic Research Information Supervisor of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, discussed the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER) and the Archival Federal Reserve Economic Data (ALFRED).

At Wichita, Kansas on April 6, 2006, the Kansas Library Association Government Documents Roundtable participated in a speaker panel called “Tough Government Documents for Butt Kicking Librarians” at a “Tri-Conference” of KLA, the Kansas Association of School Librarians, and the Kansas Association for Educational Communications & Technology. The panel promised to “help you turn into a Butt Kicking Librarian by sharing government information resources and strategies to locate and utilize them.”

James T. Shaw, Government Documents Librarian at the University of Nebraska Omaha, wrote “Nebraska State Depository Library Program Transforms to Electronic Distribution” in the Winter 2005 edition of the Nebraska Library Association Quarterly. The article describes how “electronic distribution has replaced the production of microfiche,” and that the “transformed depository program will offer much wider and more convenient access to Nebraska documents.”

Members of the South Dakota Library Association participated in “Sunshine Week” on March 12-18, 2006 to “raise awareness of the value of open government.” This event was sponsored by South Dakotans for Open Government, a group dedicated to promoting “access to government officials, records, meetings and actions.”

The Minnesota Library Association Government Documents Roundtable held the “19th Annual Minnesota-South Dakota Government Publication Forum” on April 20-21, 2006 at the University of Minnesota Duluth Library. Highlights included a presentation on the Iron Range Research Center and a tour of the Environmental Protection Agency Mid-Continent Ecology Division.

- Michael May, Secretary/Treasurer
Carnegie-Stout Public Library, Dubuque
mmay@stout.dubuque.lib.ia.us


GODORT to sponsor ILA Annual Conference Program

Can’t afford to buy the eight-volume set of the Iowa Code every year?  What about the annual Iowa Acts or the 30-volume set of state regulations known as the Iowa Administrative Code?  How do you tell which state laws have been changed at the end of an Iowa legislative session?  Do you have to subscribe to the List of Code Sections Affected?  All of these expensive documents are available absolutely free on the Internet!  Learn how to navigate and manipulate the online versions of these valuable reference tools that your customers want and need.  Don’t panic the next time you’re asked a question about the law—find out where our laws come from, how to locate them in various stages of the process, how to help your customers find them and how to retrieve them from this handy Web site! 

Mandy Easter, Librarian at the State Law Library, will offer this informative presentation in Council Bluffs.


Calendar of Events

ALA Annual Conference
http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/annual/2006a/2006an.htm
New Orleans, LA, June 22-28, 2006

Iowa GODORT Annual Summer Workshop
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/govpubs/ilagodort/
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, July 14, 2006

FDLP Interagency Depository Seminar
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/events/interagency.html
Washington, D.C., July 31-August 4, 2006

ILA Annual Conference
http://www.iowalibraryassociation.org/displayconvention.cfm?conventionnbr=1493
Mid-America Center, Council Bluffs, IA, October 11-13, 2006

Federal Depository Conference/Fall Council Meeting:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/events/index.html

October 22 - 25, 2006, Washington, DC

ACRL 13th National Conference
http://www.ala.org/baltimore
March 29-April 1, 2007
Baltimore, MD

GODORT Officers 2006

Brett Cloyd, Chair
University of Iowa Libraries
brett-cloyd@uiowa.edu

Cory Quist, Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect
State Law Library
cory.quist@lib.state.ia.us

Michael May, Secretary/Treasurer
Carnegie-Stout Public Library, Dubuque
mmay@stout.dubuque.lib.ia.us

 

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This Page Last Updated: Thursday, Jun 15, 2006