WAAL09: Fake it 'til you make it with government documents

"Fake it 'til you make it with government documents"
Nancy Mulhern, Wisconsin Historical Society
Michael Current, UW Lacrosse

Usa.gov (was First.gov)
-- Top choice for starting points
-- Yahoo type subject directory
-- Official search engine for free government websites (plus images, news, maps...)
-- Faceted search
-- For popular, current information retrieval

Wisconsin.gov
-- News
-- Subjects
-- Agency index
-- Search engine
-- For popular, current information retrieval

Google.com/unclesam
-- Searches .gov, .mil, and other U.S. federal, state, and local (?) sites
-- May use less now that Usa.gov is so good
Catalogs:
-- CGP: Catalog of U.S. Government Publications = http://catalog.gpo.gov (was "the monthly catalog") - supposed to include all pubs back to 1976 - use Ex Libris' Aleph software - SuDoc sorting works!
-- Worldcat.org, WisCat, BadgerCat
-- Local library catalog

Official access:
-- www.GPOaccess.gov - supports their own staff too - documents by government branch - moving over to FDsys (Federal Digital System) which is already live - full text search (faceted) of unaltered official versions - currently back to ~1994

Country information:
-- CIA World Factbook - https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook - updated at least annually
-- State Dept. Background Notes - http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn - update data provided
-- Library of Congress Country Studies (formerly Army Area Handbooks) - http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs - most were last updated in early 1990's

Statistics:
-- FedStats - http://www.fedstats.gov - homepage doesn't look like much - by topic, geography, agency - search function
-- Statistical Abstract of the United States - http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab - lots more than statistics - annual, all online back to 1879 - summary data for social/political/economic - pulls in data from other organizations (ex: Am Vet Med Assn = pet ownership)

Strategy:
-- Think of the associated agency, not individual "author"
-- Challenge: what did the government call it?
-- Tutorial: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/ala/tutorials/agency.html
-- State gov agencies usually mirror fed gov

Census:
-- American Fact Finder - http://factfinder.census.gov - multiple variables - only 1990 and 2000 - "custom table" - slow between 10am-2pm
-- Historical Census - http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus - different questions were asked each time - ex: in 1940, how many people were born in Rumania, by state/county?

Other:
-- State Information - http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases
-- Wisconsin - http://www.getfacts.wisc.edu/?geo-mcd - from UW-Madison Applied Population Lab - multivariable - to municipality/tract/block group/basin/watershed (unless privacy could be invaded, for 72 years)
-- Bureau of Labor Statistics - http://www.bls.gov - ex: Unemployment: Mass Layoffs, CPI Inflation Calculator
-- Science.gov - http://wwww.science.gov - "Usa.gov for science" - includes Agriculture, Food, Biotechnology, Animals, Plants, Ecology, Genetics... - faceted results - includes Agricola and PubMed article records

Historical Laws & Congress:
-- Keep in mind that agency names change, and come in/out of existence
-- Century of Law Making - http://lcweb2.loc.gov/amem/amlaw - (1774-1875) - digitized documents - search function
-- Thomas Congressional Information - Library of Congress - http://thomas.loc.gov/cp111/cp111query.html
-- Google Book Search - Google afraid of being sued for posting government info after 1923 even though it isn't copyrighted - can still get limited preview or snippet -
-- WorldCat.org - more historic documents being added

Faking it:
-- Resources above
-- Agency approach
-- Robust referral to gov doc specialist - WHS, UW-Madison Memorial Library, Milwaukee Public Library