Have you heard of the Cyber Cemetary?

It's a partnership between the Government Printing Office and the University of North Texas that provides access to defunct government websites. "The Cyber Cemetery archives sites when commissions or panels expire, allowing the online work of defunct government bodies to live on and remain accessible to the public. "

Check out the AP news story about the service here.

A neat resource put out by the National Park Service...

Click here for the 2009-2011 National Parks Index. It lists parks by state or area, gives a small description, and lists contact information.

Washington Post releases war assessment of the Afghan war by Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Read the Washington Post article about the assessment here. View the redacted assessment here.

The Washington Post says:

"The assessment offers an unsparing critique of the failings of the Afghan government, contending that official corruption is as much of a threat as the insurgency to the mission of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, as the U.S.-led NATO coalition is widely known.

"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," McChrystal says."

Did you know Google has its own government search page?

Try it here!

Read what the American Library Association has to say about the new legislation having to do with the PATRIOT Act here

Want to learn about the Government Printing Office's new website?

GPO has posted some tutorials for searching its updated (and work in progress) website, FDSys. Check them out here.

The tutorials include the background on the FDSys website, simple and advanced searches as well as browsing.

New issue of the National Technical Information Service Technical Reports Newsletter is available here.

It features " subject categories Natural Resources & Earth Sciences (48), Environmental Pollution & Control (68), Urban & Regional Technology & Development (91) and Energy (97)."

Previous issues are available here.

Interested in National Intelligence?

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released the National Intelligence Strategy for 2009.

The Intelligence Strategy is "the blueprint that will drive the priorities for the nation's 16 intelligence agencies over the next 4 years. The National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) is one of the most important documents for the Intelligence Community (IC) as it lays out the strategic environment, sets priorities and objectives, and guides current and future decisions on budgets, acquisitions, and operations. "

The strategy includes coverage of the office's goals and objectives and discusses strategies to prevent terrorism both inside and outside the United States.

Do you know about OPAL?

From their website:

"OPAL is an international collaborative effort by libraries and other organizations of all types to provide web-based programs and training for library users and library staff members.

These live events are held in online rooms where participants can interact via voice-over-IP, text chatting, synchronized browsing, and more.

Everyone is welcome to participate in OPAL programs. Usually there is no need to register. Nearly all OPAL programs are offered free of charge.

Examples of OPAL public online programs include book discussion programs, interviews, special events, library training, memoir writing workshops, and virtual tours of special digital library collections."

Even better, and more relevant for the purposes of this blog, the Government Printing Office has its own training and programs available through OPAL. These programs address topics like the Federal Depository Library Program, how to use and effective search the GPO's websites, presentations on preserving materials, geology librarianship, GIS maps and more.

Check out the GPO's presentations here

Did you know...

...that September is Recovery Month? From "about Recovery Month":

"The Recovery Month observance highlights the societal benefits of substance abuse treatment, lauds the contributions of treatment providers and promotes the message that recovery from substance abuse in all its forms is possible. The observance also encourages citizens to take action to help expand and improve the availability of effective substance abuse treatment for those in need. Each year a new theme, or emphasis, is selected for the observance.

Recovery Month provides a platform to celebrate people in recovery and those who serve them. Each September, thousands of treatment programs around the country celebrate their successes and share them with their neighbors, friends, and colleagues in an effort to educate the public about treatment, how it works, for whom, and why. Substance abuse treatment providers have made significant accomplishments, having transformed the lives of untold thousands of Americans. These successes often go unnoticed by the broader population; therefore, Recovery Month provides a vehicle to celebrate these successes.

Recovery Month also serves to educate the public on substance abuse as a national health crisis, that addiction is a treatable disease, and that recovery is possible. Recovery Month highlights the benefits of treatment for not only the affected individual, but for their family, friends, workplace, and society as a whole. Educating the public reduces the stigma associated with addiction and treatment. Accurate knowledge of the disease helps people to understand the importance of supporting treatment programs, those who work within the treatment field, and those in need of treatment."

This year's theme is “Join the Voices for Recovery: Together We Learn, Together We Heal.” To check out the toolkit put together for this year's recovery month, click here

More State of Nevada electronic documents.

Check out the Annual Fire Statistics Report for Nevada; the newest one up is from 2006. This highly detailed PDF gives the percentage of instances per fire department including the kinds of calls, the number and type of staff involved in every call, as well as any injuries and the cost of responding to each fire. Did you know 21.28% of all fires started in Nevada began in an engine, gear or wheel area? Or that a male is involved 72.41% of the time in a fire? The report also gives detailed break-downs of causes of fires.

As detailed as the fire statistics are, we can study equally detailed statistics of crime in Nevada in the Crime and Justice in Nevada Reports. Each PDF gives detailed crime information for each year. For example, in the state there is a murder every one day and fourteen hours, and one crime of arson every thireteen hours and forty-three minutes. The PDFs include detailed charts and graphs that compare specific types of crimes from one year to the next.

The Nevada Supreme Court publishes its advance opinions online here. Opinions are posted online for ninety days and are given in PDF and HTML format.

And finally for the day, you can read the quarterly newsletter put out by the Nevada State Railroad Museum online too. The newsletter is available going back to 2001 and includes photos, oral history essays, muesum events and highlights of both staff and members of the Museum.

Check out this link to GovFresh.

It has live feeds of various government news from all the branches of the government as well as agencies like the CDC, the CIA, governmental departments like the Department of Agriculture, Homeland Security, and education.

It describes itself: "GovFresh features Gov 2.0 news, TV, ideas and live feeds of official U.S. Government social media activity, all in one place."

Here's a fun sample: watch a government-sponsored public service announcement with Elmo and seceratary of state Kathleen Sebelius.

A whimsical use for government documents.

The following link was posted on the Government Documents listserv: The Gonzales Cantata

See one columnist's thoughts on the opera here.

Some new Nevada electronic documents.

Although a lot of government documents are put out by the federal government (because the Government Printing Office is one of the largest single publishers in the world), we also try to focus on state-published documents because, hey, those are put out by government too.

Here are a few electronic documents published out of Nevada:

Nevada HealthNet: this project is sponsored by the University of Nevada School of Medivine, Savitt Medical Library. The resources were hand-picked by medical library staff. Look here for local health services and resources. It's free!

Taxpayers' Bill of Rights: this file is put together by the Nevada Department of Taxation. It gives a quick rundown of your rights as a taxpayer and includes contact telephone numbers and addresses for if you need help.

State of Nevada Register of Administrative Regulations: this page gives you year-by-year regulations going back to 1999. You can look up regulations by subject or by number and read the full text of each regulation. It also provides an alphabetical list of agency names so you can tell which agencies are affected by new or different regulations.

Nevada Traffic Crash Data: although the newest data on this page is from 2006, there's an update coming this fall. In this publication the Nevada Department of Transportation provides incredibly detailed information on car crashes in Nevada: how many collisions, severity of collisions, types of vehicles involved, whether alcohol or drugs were involved, demographics of drivers involved in crashes, even pedestrian and bicycle collisions.

This is kind of a grab-bag post to give you an idea of the kinds of government information your local Nevada government has available online!

Want a really excellent guide to finding common United States documents online? Click here.

Purdue University Library has a links page for national government information that covers tax forms, criminal statistics, national park listings, military personnel records, and tons more.

They also provide top-notch research guides on a variety of topics. Not sure how to find government documents about a particular subject? They've got guides on aviation, budget issues, housing, taxes and more. These guides give you subjects terms to use in a library catalog and extensive online resources. Check it out!

Nevada Parole Board documents on Phillip Garrido, abductor of Jaycee Lee Dugard are available online through the Reno Gazette-Journal; click here.

Trying to access government documents online?

Last week the Government Printing Office's permanant URL ("PURL") server crashed. This means that for the last week and probably for awhile to come, you won't be able to access many online government documents. Though the GPO is working on it, it spells serious trouble for open and free public access. Here's the latest that the GPO has to say on the crash, from the government document listserv:

"Since last Monday (August 24th), when the PURL server suffered a significant hardware failure, GPO staff has been working at the highest level of priority to re-establish server access.

Though the hardware configuration was restored, GPO has worked continuously, including this past weekend, to restore the system software configurations for this legacy application. Thus far this has resulted in re-established access to a small percentage of PURLs. Although back-ups of critical files ensured no loss of data, the reconfiguration of the software on the new server is still being enabled. GPO's approach is to properly construct a new configuration and to restore all the PURLs to enable use of the automated resolution process. GPO recognizes the criticality of having stable and redundant systems to access online content for the information community.

GPO knows that many institutions have automated URL checkers that run against the PURL server. Please be aware that the PURL restoration process is severely slowed by checkers repeatedly hitting the PURL server.

On- and off-site redundant back-up of all critical hardware and systems is and will continue to be performed by GPO. Additionally, GPO is exploring hosted services and expansion of real time failover capability. GPO is also finalizing requirements for migrating legacy applications, like PURLs, to FDsys for later system capability releases. Once FDsys is fully enabled, GPO will have migrated into a more modern and scalable/failover infrastructure.

The New Electronic Titles (NET) service will be delayed until the PURLs resolve properly. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused by the PURL server outage. Additional postings will be made to keep the community informed as restoration of the server progresses."

This crash is causing a lot of discussion about the best way to preserve public access to government information in the face of technology snafus. Read one librarian's thoughts here: http://freegovinfo.info/node/2704 Mentioned in his post are widely-held concerns that upcoming and ongoing changes to the Government Printing Office's website won't prevent technology crashes from happening in the future.

Please be aware that we are still dedicated to getting you the information you need; it just might take a little longer!