CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH REPORTS NOW AVAILABLE FREE

All reports (over 6780, 127,000 pages) from the US Congressional Research Service are now available for free from WikiLeaks. The reports date back to 1990 and “are highly regarded as non-partisan, in-depth, and timely.” There are alphabetical and chronological lists, but no index. All are in pdf files.

They are supposed to be included in OpenCRS, but I didn’t find one I had found in the WikiLeaks list. Maybe they haven’t indexed them all yet.

URLs:
WikiLeaks: http://mirror.wikileaks.morphium.info/wikileaks-crs-reports/
OpenCRS: http://opencrs.com

LISTS OF US GOVERNMENT DATABASES, BY SUBJECT

The Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the American Library Association has created a Subject Focused Lists of Government Databases site to go along with their 50 State Agency Databases site. It links to lists created by others, such as universities. So far, the only subjects are business (US State Corporations), history (biographical media, newspaper, museum, and official records), and prisoner locater tools. Let’s hope it grows.

URLs:
Subject lists: http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Subject_focused
State agencies: http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases

US LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

“METAVID is a project which seeks to capture, stream, archive and facilitate real-time collective (re)mediation of legislative proceedings.” Only in the development stage, this free and open source service is hosted by the University of California at Santa Cruz, but there is information there already. You can search the archives now, follow their blog, and read their wiki and FAQ pages. Video files include closed caption text.

URL: http://metavid.ucsc.edu
Blog: http://metavid.ucsc.edu/blog/
Wiki: http://metavid.ucsc.edu/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

PREFERENTIAL TRADE AGREEMENTS DATABASE

Library Boy blogger Michel-Adrien Sheppard [Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa] (http://micheladrien.blogspot.com/) called my attention to this database. Its goal is to "provide the text-searchable electronic versions of all the Custom Unions, Free Trade Agreements, and Preferential Arrangements that have been notified to the World Trade Organization's Committee on Regional Trade Agreements, and are in force, plus many that have not been notified to the WTO". The Faculty of Law at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) maintains the website.

URL: http://ptas.mcgill.ca/

FREE (US) PUBLIC RECORDS

The people from Facts on Demand have links to sites with free access to state, county, city, federal, court, and military records in the USA and some records in Canada and elsewhere. There are also links to for fee records vendors and other related resources. You can even sign up for a free monthly electronic newsletter, Public Record Update. Nice site.

URL: http://brbpub.com/pubrecsites.asp?h=1

RAND RADIUS R&D DATABASE, PART 2

I got my password for RaDiUS and did a quick search so I can tell you how it works. I entered the term “library” and got 1974 hits just for fiscal year 2006! They were listed by federal organization: the most were for Health and Human Services with over 1200. I chose one from the US Department of Agriculture.

What was in the record? I won’t give you the details because there are security issues, but it had a short description of the project, the department and division sponsoring it, the type of funding mechanism (this one was “extramural/cooperative agreement,” start and end dates, who is doing the work and their location (contact name and phone), “Average FY Federal Funding,” and “FY Actual Funding” (both Federal and non-Federal). It’s not a lot of information, but may be useful to some of your customers.

DATABASE OF (USA) FEDERAL RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

The RAND Corporation and the US National Science Foundation have created RaDiUS, “the most comprehensive database of information on federally-funded research and development.” It is free, but you have to request a password. There is a user handbook and glossary of terms—nice. Note: “Certain records in RaDiUS can only be accessed by employees of agencies of the Federal Government and/or entities that are a direct party to a contract with federal agencies, as defined in FAC 90-40, Part 2.101, or that are participating in formal potential contractor programs sponsored by federal agencies. Access to some of these records is further restricted to only employees of DOD [Department of Defense] and DOD contractors and participants in DOD's Potential Contractor Programs, while access to others is restricted to only employees of DOE [Department of Energy].”

URL: https://radius.rand.org/radius/index.html (be sure to type https)

FIND “TOUGH” US GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

PowerPoint presentations from a presentation on Tough Government Documents at the recent American Association of Law Libraries conference are available at http://washalr.pbwiki.com/toughgovdocs. The presentations are:

National and State Park Government Documents, Brent Johnson [Widener University, Wilmington, Delaware, USA]

Combative and Military Government Documents, Andrew Pulau Evans [Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, USA]

and the interestingly titled Dangers of Open Water Swimming that One Can Avoid (sites on oceanography and weather], Sarajean Petite [Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA]

USA GOVERNMENT INFORMATION SITES

Insanely Useful Websites from The Sunlight Foundation* lists 21 sites for finding information from and about the US government. Many of these sites are sponsored by the Foundation. If you need this kind of information, you should be able to find it on one of these databases. (Caveat: There is a decided left-wing orientation to them.)

*“founded in 2006 with the goal of using technology to enable citizens to learn more about what their elected representatives are doing, to help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency.”

URLs: http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/resources
Congresspedia.org, from Center for Media & Democracy, pages for each member of congress or committees, http://www.congresspedia.org
Contractor Misconduct Database, from Project on Government Oversight, top 50 contractors only, http://www.contractormisconduct.org
Department of Justice documents search engine, database of emails related to the recent firings of US attorneys, http://wwww.trainingdb.com
Fedspending.org, search contracts by state, agency, type, http://www.fedspending.org
Follow the Money, campaign contributions at state level, http://www.followthemoney.org
GovTrack.us, follow bills, information on members of Congress, RSS feeds, http://wwwGovTrack.us
LOUIS (Library of Unified Information Sources), search Congressional reports, Congressional Record, hearings, Federal Register, presidential documents GAO reports, and bills and resolutions, http://www.louisdb.org
MAPLight, analysis of legislation, interest groups, contributions (especially for California), http://www.maplight.org
Metavid, video of federal legislature, http://metavid.ucsc.edu
FOIA Document Review, review, tag comment, rate, on Freedom of Information Act Requests, http://foia.citizensforethics.org
OpenCongress.org, from US government sources, RSS feed, http://opencongress.org
OpenCRS, publicly released documents, http://www.opencrs.com
Open Hearings, schedules of current and future Senate committee hearings, http://openhearings.org/live/
Project Vote Smart, biographical information and ratings on elected federal and state officials, http://www.vote-smart.org
Taxpayers for Common Sense, pork barrel projects, http://www.taxpayer.net
WashingtonWatch, average cost or savings per individual of each bill introduced, pro and con arguments, http://www.washingtonwatch.com

OpenSecrets.org (and their databases), campaign finance data for candidates since 1989, searchable, http://www.opensecrets.org
Lobbying, http://opensecrets.org/lobbyists
Personal Financial Disclosure, hhtp://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/overview.asp
Revolving Door, tracks those leaving congress to work as lobbyists, http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving
Travel, http://www.opensecrets.org/travel

DATABASE OF US STATE DATABASES

The Government Documents Roundtable (American Library Association) is putting together a wiki of state agency databases on business, people, agriculture, and more. This site will attempt to collect links to them in one place. They hope to add search capability at a later date. Only the following states’ sites are active as of today, but this looks to be a great idea. Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming

URL: http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS BLOG

Kevin McClure [Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois] manages The Gov Docs Guy blog “highlighting newsworthy government documents.” Good stuff.

URL: http://govdocsblog.kentlaw.edu/wordpress