Arlene Weible : Okay. Well, welcome everybody to our next session. I'm Arlene wible from the state library of Oregon, and I'm a member of the planning committee for the conference. And I'm very pleased to
Arlene Weible : Introduce our next speakers met, both of which I assume if you are involved with the federal depository library program at all. You are familiar with these two and
Arlene Weible : They are Laura Flint and Jamie HAYES, WHO ARE Outreach Librarians at GPO and I found out a interesting fact. They both started at GPO on the same day, about seven years ago. So, and we unlike the FDA LP Academy webinars were able to have
Arlene Weible : A get to see them while they present this time. So thank you very much for joining us today and I'll go ahead and turn it over to Laura. To get started, just one thing.
Arlene Weible : We do. We're going to save questions to the end of the presentations, but feel free to put your questions in chat as we go. And we'll get to them at the end of the set. After they've finished speaking. So go ahead, Laura.
Lara Flint: Thanks, Arlene hello everybody as Charlie said my name floor plans and Jamie Hayes and I are Outreach Librarians at the government publishing office or GPO
Lara Flint: And we're going to talk to you today about how everyone can learn to love government documents which I think we both truly believe that anyone can
Lara Flint: Then we're going to start out with a little background about what the GPO and the FDA LP are the federal depository library program in case any of you aren't familiar with it.
Lara Flint: I'm going to talk about getting comfortable with government information and debunking myths, which is part of learning to love it.
Lara Flint: And then Jamie will talk about best practices tips and training. So we're packing a lot into this half hour and I wanted to say just at the beginning that just contact us anytime. If this is all kind of overwhelming. Just talk to us.
Lara Flint: So the GPO and FB LP background, the government publishing office or GPO is a federal agency. It was established in 1861 as the Government Printing Office. So what our agency does is
Lara Flint: Primarily printing and publishing services for federal agencies and for Congress. We also run the superintendent of documents programs. And that's where the FDA LP falls within the agency.
Lara Flint: So the FDA LP, the Federal depository library Program was established by Congress to ensure that the American public has access to its government's information so we feel it's really important. What we do all of us.
Lara Flint: The enabling legislation is and 44 United States Code title 44 sections.
Lara Flint: And the FDA LP has been overseen by GPO since 1895 it's actually a government has been sending publications out to libraries circle societies and other places. Since 1813 but it was overseen by some other agencies before us.
Lara Flint: And our mission, which again we really believe in is keeping America informed.
Lara Flint: So,
Lara Flint: I really think that part of learning to love government documents is getting comfortable with them.
Lara Flint: And you have to debunk these frequent myths that come up maybe before you get really comfortable with them. So these are the mess. I'm going to talk about
Lara Flint: First, the government information isn't important or isn't relevant to my library, but nobody at my library is using it that government information is boring.
Lara Flint: That everything is online. I'm sure you've heard some or all of these before.
Lara Flint: And that government information is intimidating and scary to learn about. So I would just rather not. I'm going to just pass that question off, you know, to somebody else. I'm not gonna, I'm not going to learn this stuff.
Lara Flint: So the first one.
Lara Flint: Is this persistent mess of government information being boring or irrelevant or nobody's using it.
Lara Flint: And I wasn't going to quote Thomas Jefferson at you. And then I realized it was better to quote my mother you so when my sister and I were children. My mom had no patience with us, saying that we were bored that something was boring, she said.
Lara Flint: There's too much to learn too much to talk about too many books to read, you know, she just did not accept I'm bored or this is boring. And that's kind of how I feel about
Lara Flint: Different information I don't accept that it's boring at all, it just covers all topics that comes in all formats. It's fascinating.
Lara Flint: So what I've listed on the slide here is you know just consider if any of your patrons have ever asked you about any of these things. History The Titanic crime, the weather, you know, the hurricane that just happened, food, health care, the environment genealogy comes up.
Lara Flint: Really various government information about all of these topics.
Lara Flint: So it's very interesting. It's very relevant. And the thing about nobody is using it or the claim that nobody is using it. I think what's more often happening is that people are using it, they may just not recognize that what they're using is government information.
Lara Flint: So here's some visuals to I've got a couple of slides of
Lara Flint: fun thing to illustrate that it really isn't boring. You have beautiful art work going on. You have fonts and styles and graphic design that you can analyze and consider you'd have the famous CDC comic book on preparedness for the zombie pandemic.
Lara Flint: You've got photos from space.
Lara Flint: publications and other languages. I don't know if you notice this ice cream sundae one that's kind of personal to me.
Lara Flint: I came across that when I was working in a depository library myself and sort of what is this. Oh, this is a pamphlet from the government about breastfeeding.
Lara Flint: And they have a whole series of them, you know, dandelions and ice cream and you know it was a little bit startling
Lara Flint: was certainly not boring and it actually got me going on, you know, well this is I'm going to digitize the poster collection and get that out there, so everybody can see all these which I did, which was very satisfying.
Lara Flint: I'm also very fond of nautical charts. So if that's what you have there. And if you look closely at the tiny print you see things like unexploded rockets local magnetic disturbance. Oh, here's a dump site, you know. It's all completely fascinating.
Lara Flint: One of our favorites in the office is this instructor guide to combat skiing, you know, which is funny and practical
Lara Flint: And this 1870 census Atlas on the top right, there's an illustration from that and I threw that in there to show that you know early on, you had
Lara Flint: Data visualization. This was very similar to a sort of tree map data visualizations visualizations that you'll see now, but they were way ahead of the game. They were doing it in 1870 by hand, you know, and these beautiful colors.
Lara Flint: And I'm also kind of fond of on the bottom right. The Encyclopedia of ethical failure. It's a, you know, true stories document of bad things that people working in the government did. So it's interesting reading.
Lara Flint: If we start talking. Then about, okay, nobody's using it.
Lara Flint: I don't believe that either. These are some examples of real life reference questions that came from Doc, Doc, l the listserv. So you have things like
Lara Flint: People are looking for truck tonnage data for 1947 or for defense spending by US state for a certain range of time or for import duty and Tara
Lara Flint: On automobiles that are imported
Lara Flint: Those top three actually all you've got, answered and the screenshots or, you know, from the publications or websites where the answer was found. So the Interstate Commerce Commission. The census.
Lara Flint: And I can't remember the agency and I can't see their logo there but
Lara Flint: There was a government agency that had the exact information about automobile imports terrorists.
Lara Flint: Now the last one I put as a segue into the next bit. So someone was looking for. Truman Capote his testimony before the Senate Committee on the judiciary.
Lara Flint: Definitely government information. There was a lot of back and forth. People were following a lot of leads as I remember how it ended it was that this was probably something that's unpublished
Lara Flint: So I bring that up because it leads into that mess of everything is online.
Lara Flint: A lot of stuff is online for sure a lot of government information is online but not everything as we just heard, not everything is free when it is available online.
Lara Flint: And again, even if it is available online. Can you find it. Can you find it easily. Can your patron find it.
Lara Flint: It really can take an expert and librarians government information librarian really are expert at
Lara Flint: filtering through potential barriers like the ones that are listed on the slide about, you know, can you make sense of it. Can you use the online interface.
Lara Flint: And also about getting to the correct source evaluating does it contain reliable information is this actually the information that the user is looking for
Lara Flint: So some other things. I asked around our office, you know, what are some examples of things that aren't online and some things that came up for publications from agencies that are what we call dead agencies agencies that are
Lara Flint: No longer current you know where their publications and
Lara Flint: Some soil surveys, you know, most of them are online but a couple of them aren't.
Lara Flint: Things that are superseded like posters and pamphlets and things of that ilk come up frequently people will be looking for. Well, I want to see.
Lara Flint: The version that the government published in 1940 and the one they published in 1970 and the one from 1990 and maybe a library kept the one from 1990 but you know the old ones.
Lara Flint: got thrown away may or may not have gotten digitized. So an old court decisions. So we started we started getting a pretty long list but wasn't even all of them.
Lara Flint: And again for the visual. Here are some other things that are not online. I also took a look at the very first monthly catalog of US government publications from January 1895
Lara Flint: And the first publication listed in there was this document alleged cruelty is committed upon our median.
Lara Flint: And I could not find it online. It may be out there. I didn't find it. Same thing with the beach apparatus drill
Lara Flint: And I also highlighted this congressional hearings texts from our gov info site because a lot of times when people are looking for government information and even know that they are looking for government information. Maybe they're looking for a congressional hearing
Lara Flint: But they may not realize that it's very common for it to take two months to two years for hearing to be published, so it can take quite a while for that information to get out there.
Lara Flint: And then also very importantly, the hearing might or might not be published in an online format. It's entirely up to the committee who held the hearing. They decide
Lara Flint: Whether the hearing gets published and what format it gets published in. So that's sort of one of the little secrets that a government information librarian or person who loves government information would know, and could help you figure out
Lara Flint: And then the last minute.
Lara Flint: Is like government information is intimidating and scary that it's hard to learn
Lara Flint: There is a lot to learn.
Lara Flint: But it's like anything else. It just takes practice. And you know just keeping at it and there is a lot of help and expertise available.
Lara Flint: Two of the things I highlighted on this slide in particular where government information online. So that is a really wonderful website where government information librarians answer.
Lara Flint: Questions related to government information. So if you have a question that you can't quite answer. You don't know what to do with it, you've exhausted your resources you can forward it on to their and get help answering it.
Lara Flint: And alternatively, if you are a government information expert yourself if you already have learned to love government documents and know a lot about them. You can volunteer for this website and
Lara Flint: Answer the questions that come in there really is nothing like answering a bunch of reference questions to really learn the sources and and get to become an expert.
Lara Flint: Also, it's a really welcoming community. I put these two listserv on there because dot dot L and maps L are both active list serves they concentrate a lot on
Lara Flint: Government Information and they're just very friendly and welcoming and everybody takes up the challenge when a reference question comes up, that you know someone's having trouble with
Lara Flint: So it's, it's a great place. And that's the point. I really want to bring home is that as you're learning about government information if you are finding it scary. Just ask for help. There will always be help
Lara Flint: Available to you and I didn't put them on the slide, I really should have. But the GPO outreach staff Jamie and I and anyone else who works at GPO are also very happy to talk about government information and the FDA LP at any time.
Lara Flint: Okay, I was trying to be super fast and I might have been extra fast, but now I'm going to pass it over to
Lara Flint: Jamie to talk about best practices.
jaime: Thanks, Laura.
jaime: Um, okay. So are you going to share the slides. Or you want me to look
Lara Flint: I just stopped. Okay, well that you can you can be in charge of your own.
jaime: All right. Can you see it.
Lara Flint: Yeah alright so
jaime: What I want to talk about is best practices. So if you're a member of the FDA LP or federal depository library program.
jaime: We want you to celebrate your accomplishments. So here you can see some photos of depository library celebrating their anniversaries.
jaime: Their anniversaries as part of the FDA LP, but also for their commitment to providing free access to government information for the community.
jaime: So typically when libraries have a celebration of their depository status or providing access that involve sheet cake. So plenty of sheet cake. Everyone loves food, free food.
jaime: We also do plaques or awards and you can see here in the pictures for libraries that have hit milestones and it's really kind of nice because sometimes GPO staff gets to come out and visit your libraries. When you're celebrating these milestones.
jaime: But libraries can get really creative with how they celebrate
jaime: And so I've seen libraries, where they've taken really interesting and important government documents and I'd read passes use of them. And I've also seen one library that actually had a pudgy eagle.
jaime: In for their celebration. So you can get really creative and draw more people into the library to see what kind of information you have.
jaime: So my my number two best practice is to make it fun. So a lot of people as Laura had talked about, think of government information as really boring and scary and intimidating and it doesn't have to be so.
jaime: At the top of the screen. Here you can see the Declaration of Independence, that was created at a maker space and below that is an interactive exhibit on voting, which it's about time to do voting again.
jaime: And on the right you can see a GOV info disrupt now we actually made that at here at GPO and we created it to take on the road to to go to different conferences. So, this particular one we took to Texas and
jaime: The Texas Public Library conference and and did a session on government information with that and it was received pretty well.
jaime: And then on the far right side you have the National Archives of the United States. Coloring Book of patents from 2016
jaime: So what I've heard that libraries like to do with this book is they actually will put it out at academic libraries for in between sessions or during finals, because it's a nice way for students to kind of blow off some steam but kids will like it too.
jaime: So my next tip is to make it relevant. Make sure that your government information is relevant.
jaime: So on the left hand side you can see an advertisement for citizenship class so hosting citizen classes is a great way to not only help your community, but to showcase the government information that you have available at your library.
jaime: And in the middle you can see my colleague, Ashley dahlin taking a photo next to a 1940 census poster.
jaime: And so it's census time again that does cemil census so highlight the decennial census in your library and the fact that you can provide help to anyone who's filling that out.
jaime: That's a pretty relevant topic. And then on the right hand side, you can see a poster from the movie Hidden Figures. That was a big blockbuster movie on Hidden Figures
jaime: And so this library showcased that movie, but also the NASA information that they had in their collection. So that was a really interesting way to draw attention.
jaime: From people who are passing by. There they see the movie Hidden Figures, and then they see all the NASA publications that this library has
jaime: And this is by far my favorite one. Get sneaky and this is probably not what you would think about when you are thinking of best practices for government information but
jaime: I'm going to explain why getting sneaky is perfect for government information.
jaime: So most of your patrons don't know what a su doc number is or what a government document is and really it's not important that they know that
jaime: What they want is the best information that they can find and government information is authentic and reliable and most cases. So providing access to it is a great source for your patrons.
jaime: So you can add government information to library displays. If somebody in the library is creating a display suggest different government resources that would be good for the display.
jaime: That way it doesn't have to be a full on government documents display, but you can have some government information inserted into the display.
jaime: Don't forget about library instruction sessions, make sure to include government information.
jaime: To show the variety of resources that your library has and it's a great way to introduce government information.
jaime: And I also want to give you guys a little way that I got sneaky at my library. When I was the coordinator. It was at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Wilmington, North Carolina.
jaime: And I was the coordinator there. And one of the ways that I got sneaky was I sent out a weekly email that highlighted government information. So I did state and federal and each email I would send out would have a different topic. So one time I sent out an email about
jaime: Coloring Books science coloring books from the federal government and the science teacher or the Science Library and actually came up to me said, we actually have a
jaime: A class that requires this very topic.
jaime: I had no idea that that was a topic, but it was a great way to start the conversation with that librarian and other staff members. So they started seeing the different things that were in the collection.
jaime: And it started being a conversation piece and people were becoming more interested in government information. So get sneaky with your government information.
jaime: Okay, switching now to training.
jaime: I want to talk a little bit about training other library staff members.
jaime: So if you're if you conduct your training in a fun and interesting way your colleagues will come to love government information just like you do.
jaime: And so I want to point out a couple places to get training. So one of the ones that I would recommend is the help. I'm an accidental government information librarian series. They do quite a few
jaime: Different webinars and they have them on YouTube. So it's pretty easy to watch the ones that they've had. And then, of course, I have to point out GPUs F DLP Academy which Laura and I help host webinars for that.
jaime: We have a page on the left hand side, where you can see many of our training recordings
jaime: And what I wanted to mention about this is you don't actually have to
jaime: recreate your own training GPO is a federal agency so you can actually go and take our presentations and then just alter them. However,
jaime: Would be fitting for your present presentation and then use them. Of course, you can always contact FTP outreach and request training FTP outreach@gpo.gov we do provide training. So that's another way to get in person training if you if you need that.
jaime: Okay, my next tip is promote promote promote. So one of the most important things you can do is to promote your government information and what you have at your library. So people don't know that you have government information they're not going to ask for it.
jaime: And so what you can do is have interesting promotional material that you can hand out. So if you're part of our federal depository library program on the right hand side you can see some of the goodies that you can
jaime: Claim, and you can have sent to your library. And we actually will send those to you for free. So even pay for the shipping. There's no cost. And you can hand out that material to all of your library staff and also your patrons.
jaime: Now, if you're not out of the Depository library. I got some goodies for you too. And that's at co dot GPO cuffs on the left hand side of the screen, you can actually go to Pueblo gpo.gov and order some free promotional materials as well that you can hand out at the library.
jaime: Okay, so another big tip. I am a big fan of not reinventing the wheel. If the work has already been done. Try not to redo it. You all have enough work to do. You're wearing so many different hats. So try to help each other out.
jaime: So,
jaime: One of the things I can recommend is checking out other libraries social media accounts and blogs
jaime: Or you can check out other displays and a good example for that. On the left hand side is the Minnesota State University of Maine KAOS government documents display Clearinghouse.
jaime: I really like this website because people can post the different displays that they've had on various issues such as voting census holidays and civil rights.
jaime: And you can see what their display looks like, but they also will give you a list of the documents they use. So when I was a coordinator, I could just go into my collection. I had a fairly large collection find those documents and new documents and I had a head of easily made display.
jaime: Also, another good place is gov doc, l can be a great place to bounce off any ideas from government documents library. And so if you have, you need some help with something or you need some help with promotion or something like that Google Doc gallows. A really great listserv.
jaime: My last tip is to subscribe to agency emails so federal agency often will have emails that they will send out to update people on the information
jaime: That they provide or the services that they provide. And so subscribing to them. You can get some information about their new products and services.
jaime: And also a lot of federal agencies want to partner with with library. So, usually they have some giveaways or information that they make available.
jaime: To libraries. So that can be great to get that material to hand out.
jaime: Okay, so I know we talked really quickly. Um, but is there any questions.
Arlene Weible : I thanks Jamie we there's been a little bit in the chat mostly sharing some of the resources that you you and Laura have talked about, um,
Arlene Weible : Example, Jen. Jen, Kirk asked about go to sources for scan documents and Laura shared a couple suggestions and those links are in in the chat.
Arlene Weible : Jennifer asked about getting pushback on government information is not bias. And I think you might Jennifer mean that it is bias is am I
Arlene Weible : reading that correctly. I mean the the notion of addressing bias in government information, I guess, is really the question.
Arlene Weible : Yes. Okay. So Jamie or Laura, do you have anything to suggest when asked about that question.
Arlene Weible : Laura, you need to unmute
Lara Flint: Thank you. You could tell I was talking away with the video, um,
Lara Flint: So yeah, I think basically the
Lara Flint: The answer here is the same as the answer for anything. Is that the person has to take on the responsibility ultimately I'm evaluating the information themselves whether it's government information or
Lara Flint: A book in your library, written by an author, you know, you have to take it examine it. Look at it.
Lara Flint: But I guess the only other thing to maybe mention is that government is very long term. So, and government is publishing things for the long term. So it's not necessarily always about who's an office. It's about it is frequently about data and the mission of the agency and that just continues.
jaime: I agree.
Arlene Weible : Um, thanks. Suzanne also makes a comment about not being allowed to send out information about documents because they are too political
Lara Flint: So who I mean who would be not allowing the information to be sent out. I'm not sure I'm following the question.
Arlene Weible : Now, Suzanne. Do you want to
Arlene Weible : Maybe provide an example.
Arlene Weible : Okay, she said a supervisor is is suggesting, not to promote
Arlene Weible : Maybe certain types of government information because it's viewed as political
jaime: Like some material.
Lara Flint: Congress is
jaime: Is obviously, there might be a political spin
jaime: To it, but
jaime: It's just as Laura said, you know, you got to evaluate every piece.
Arlene Weible : Yeah, I do think there. There was a time when we used to promote government information as unbiased and and that kind of thing. And I'm not saying that.
Arlene Weible : Everything is bias, but I think we're in a climate now where I think that is one thing that government information specialist do need to take pretty seriously is thinking about those issues.
Arlene Weible : Within within the things that are published. And so I do think that is an important thing to consider as you are doing promotion.
Arlene Weible : Yes.
Arlene Weible : And Amy is sharing a suggestion about how she addresses it and information literacy classes.
Arlene Weible : And I think, yeah, it gets back to putting things into context. And, you know, and just using you know examples that that demonstrate yeah there is there is bias. It's a real teaching moment when you're in those kinds of situations with information literacy for sure.
Lara Flint: It can be fun to to go back and look at historic documents and see if you can compare and contrast, if you think there was a bias them.
jaime: Is the government has
jaime: provides information on
jaime: Everything. So it would be hard not to find something from a government agency, there's so much information out there.
Arlene Weible : Okay well we're at the end of our session. So I want to thank our presenters Lauren Jamie for sharing some great looking documents and
Arlene Weible : You know, we've got some great links in the chat for people to follow up on. So thank you very much. And we'll go ahead and wind this session down, but we will start up again in 15 minutes with our next session, which is
Arlene Weible : This traveling exhibit is a disaster. So this is, I think, a good to follow up to our session right now. So please stay tuned and we'll be back in about 15 minutes. Thank you.