Assessment of March 1, 2007 Tornadoes

Yesterday the National Weather Service (NWS) released its Service Assessment of the Tornadoes that struck Alabama and Georgia on March 1, 2007 (the same storms that struck Enterprise High School). The Assessment team was “tasked with documenting and evaluating the performance and overall effectiveness of NWS services and operational procedures for the event. In addition, the assessment team was tasked with examining 1) NWS operational and service aspects relating to how the Storm-Based Warnings approach would have affected any outcomes during this event; and 2) some of the societal impacts relating to this event, including tornado safety in residential homes, industrial plants, educational institutions, and other large facilities having the capacity to hold many people.”
From the Executive Summary:

“The safety actions of Enterprise High School during this event were a passionate topic of debate while the Team was conducting its interviews and gathering information. Some people indicated if the school had not been under Tornado Warnings for almost 3 hours (as a result, they sheltered in-place for nearly 3 hours), the school could have evacuated the buildings before the actual tornado hit. The Team was asked to evaluate if the Storm-Based Warnings approach could have improved public response by creating a shorter time that the high school was under a Tornado Warning. In most cases, Storm-Based Warnings will cause smaller areas to be under Tornado Warnings for shorter periods of time. However, in this case, three successive supercell thunderstorms moved over or near the Enterprise area during the 3 hour time period. As a result, the high school would have been under Tornado Warnings for approximately the same amount of time, even if the Storm-Based Warnings approach had been used. The Team believes that, given the ongoing danger from the successive supercell storms, the safety response of the school was the proper one and would have been the same whether County-Based or Storm-Based Warnings were used.”

The team released 6 recommendations, including the need for hardened safety rooms in large public facilities such as schools and office buildings.

We’re #49!

The Campaign Disclosure Project recently released its report, Grading State Disclosure 2007, in which states were evaluated on “four specific areas of campaign finance disclosure: state campaign disclosure laws; electronic filing programs; accessibility of campaign finance information; and the usability of state disclosure web sites.”

Alabama received an overall grade of F and rank of 49 (Wyoming is #50; Washington is #1).  In the state-by-state summary, it is noted that Alabama’s rank in usability of the disclosure web site dropped 15 places from the 2005 to 2007 reports.

Previous reports available: 2005, 2004, 2003

Ah, tax season

2008 inches closer and closer, meaning that once again wage earners will have to file their income taxes.  And since IRS publications can be hard to understand for native English speakers, just imagine how difficult it can be for all of those ESL citizens!  The IRS has tried to make that a little easier for 2008: recently they issued several new glossaries of tax terminology for taxpayers in the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Russian communities.

From the news release:

“The Virtual Translation Office of the IRS helped create these glossaries of tax terminology to help taxpayers and the professionals who assist them. The publications were developed in cooperation with professional translators and editors to establish uniformity in language usage in IRS tax products and to function as reference materials for these products.

Although the publications are not legal documents, the IRS hopes that these glossaries will be useful to members of the U.S. Chinese, Korean, Russian and Vietnamese communities in understanding IRS documents and clarifying tax-related issues.”

A Spanish glossary has been available since 2003.

I was unable to find similar information on the Alabama Department of Revenue’s web site.

FDLC Official Proceedings

The official proceedings of the fall 2007 Depository Library Conference are now available from the GPO web site.  In addition to a short recap of events (including a photo gallery), podcasts of the Council sessions are included.  Materials from the educational sessions are available in GPO’s file repository.

Terrorism in the United States

For years, the FBI produced a publication entitled ‘Terrorism in the United States’ - basically an annual report of terrorist activities in the U.S. Around 2000/2001, they began to change the scope of the publication, and it was no longer produced annually. A 2000/2001 report entitled ‘Terrorism’ was produced, and that was the latest information available, until now. The FBI recently released ‘Terrorism 2002-2005,’ and according to the forward, it “provides an overview of the terrorist incidents and preventions designated by the FBI as having taken place in the United States and its territories during the years 2002 through 2005 and that are matters of public record. This publication does not include those incidents which the Bureau classifies under criminal rather than terrorism investigations. In addition, the report discusses major FBI investigations overseas and identifies significant events—including legislative actions, prosecutorial updates, and program developments—relevant to U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The report concludes with an “In Focus” article summarizing the history of the FBI’s counterterrorism program.”

Reports dating back to 1996 are available from the FBI’s publications page; Gorgas Library’s government documents collection has reports from 1988-1998 (call # is J 1.14/22:year).

Yearbook of Immigration Statistics

The Department of Homeland Security has released the 2006 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. This publication, compiled annually, provides data on legal permanent residents, refugees and asylees, as well as naturalization and enforcement information. The yearbook includes a variety of data on immigrants, including country of origin, gender, age, marital status, and occupation. Selected data is available by state - for instance, if you’re looking for the total number of persons naturalized in Alabama for the years 2005-2006, table 22 has what you need (795 and 1,946, respectively). If you’re trying to find out what percentage of those naturalized in Alabama are female, or are working in the construction industry, that level of detailed data is not available.
The data tables are available as Excel spreadsheets; the reports are available as pdf files. Previous editions of the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics are also available - dating back to 1997.

Another nuclear power plant in Alabama?

Last week the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to operate a new nuclear power facility in North Alabama.  From the press release:

“If approved by the NRC, the license to build and operate a two-unit plant at the Bellefonte site in Hollywood, Ala., would be issued to TVA. The TVA Board would decide whether to build a new nuclear plant at the site.”

The TVA press release is available from their web site.  For more information on how the NRC will determine whether or not to grant the TVA an operating license, check out the NRC web site.  The AP’s take on it is available here.

DLC: Harvesting for the Future: the Indiana Light Archive of Government Information

Wednesday, October 17th, 10:30 am

4 Indiana libraries (IU Bloomington, Purdue, Indiana State Library, and U of Notre Dame) have joined forces to create a light archive for federal depository materials in the state.

Lou Malcomb (IU Bloomington) :

One trigger – increased discard lists & the realization that they couldn’t check everything
Another: space issues at IU-Bloomington (remote storage facility, alf, is preservation environment)

- used ddm to assess duplication/overlap of item selection

ALF (Auxilliary Library Facility)
- defined delivery standards, which keep improving
- alf has a scanner so that some materials can be scanned, if not borrowable
- try to deliver electronically (ie, and make this a true light archive)

had to define restricted use criteria
examining shared cataloging responsibilities and shared records mgmt

licensing – try to include ILL for print, if not electronic

reason for overwhelming support – not telling anyone they have to get rid of anything; it is a state of Indiana collection; wanted to keep the regional in place

ALF is now 80% full – ALF2 is on the way. This meant that IUB could not house anything

Distributed model – 1 archive, 4 places

In worldcat, trying to indicate whose copy is the Indiana light archive copy – this will facilitate ILL

Trying to figure out what is missing, so that it can be ‘harvested’ – from other collections, offers lists, etc.

Guidelines for disposal instruct depositories that they don’t need to list anything between 1976 and 5 years ago; - assumption that the 4 collection stewards will have allows focus on pre-76 items

Katie springer (regional perspective)

Using gpo model for state-wide needs & offers site - hosted at the state library

Lou for bert:
Q: how was sudoc collection broken up? Based on collection strength?

- see bert’s slides on determining agency steward responsibilities (ppt slides 23-32)
- determined collection strengths
- used knowledge of selective depository strengths

stewardship responsibilities do not assume that you own everything or even want everything

Cheryl truesdell - IFPW

superseded materials??
- still trying to decide what responsibilities exist regarding superseded materials
- from now on, will be keeping supserseded copies; not sure what to do about previously weeded items

role of other Indiana selectives (collaborators):

- assist in the completion of the collection in a selected sudoc area by filling in gaps
- cataloging materials in agreement with the collection steward
- provide reference and/or instruction for a selected SuDoc area
- provide or assist in professional development training in a specific SuDoc area
- assist in publicizing the light archive

Q&A:
breakdown of sudoc – not just a’s, c’s, etc. (also: a collection steward is responsible for all iterations of an agency, usually. Dates are also used)

- compiled a written history of cataloging practice w/docs in each institution

- IU’s alf – anyone can request, with just a name; 24 hour turnaround

- trying to keep the tangible in the light archive – emphasize looking for digital version first
- adding urls to catalog records
- IU negotiated for ILL access to digital serial set
- Are scanned documents available for preservation?
- Nope; don’t meet digital library standards; some larger documents are available as access copies

Goal is to create a light archive – NOT a digital library

Collection stewards – catalogers are getting together (project subcommittee)
Are talking to oclc as well
Conser, bibco, naco level
Still trying to work out cataloging of items not owned by a steward
Balancing cataloging with delivery – also wrestling with detail of records

more info about the archive is available from IU

National Strategy for Information Sharing

Yesterday the White House released its National Strategy for Information Sharing (subtitle: Successes and Challenges in Improving Terrorism-Related Information Sharing).  The document outlines strategies for sharing information among government officials on the federal, tribal, state, and local levels, as well as the private sector and foreign partners.