Category Archives: Information Resources

The Library Commission has 8 copies of the latest Oprah reading group selection The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski in our book club kit collection. Celebrate National Reading Group Month and read this hot new book with your group. Don’t have a group? This is a great time of year to begin a reading group and here are some excellent resources to get you started. Contact the reference desk to reserve your copies today!

Some big changes are coming out of the American Library Association. Their American Libraries magazine is now available free and online, for everyone, not just ALA members.
Beside American Libraries, ALA is offering a couple more good ways to keep up with the library scene. AL Direct, the weekly e-newsletter of American Libraries, is available for anyone who wants to sign up for it, not just ALA members. AL Direct is emailed to subscribers (for free!) every Wednesday. See the sign-up form to subscribe and read more about it.
American Libraries has also started a blog called AL Inside Scoop. This covers what folks at ALA are thinking and doing,
So there’s 3 new free and convenient ways to help us stay in the know.

Participating in the Creative Commons
With the debate over copyright raging, with some calling for the end of the “all rights reserved” regime, and libraries feeling like they’re caught in the middle, just what are the alternatives? CC is the most respected alternative available today with its idea of “some rights reserved” as set by the content creators themselves. Sauers talks about the principles of Creative Commons, shows how you can easily apply it to your intellectual property today, and how you can use CC to find material that you can legally reuse in the creation of new content.
Presented online by Michael Sauers on 16 September 2008.

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Did you know that the Grand Island Independent newspaper has a Twitter account? Check it out at http://twitter.com/theindependent.

We’ve twitted over 1000 reference questions on the NLC Twitter Page so far, and it’s time again to share one of our questions and the answer. Many questions are about Nebraska government. When we get frequent questions we make FAQs to answer them. State spending, both overall agency budgets and salaries of public officials, is a common topic. Here is one from last week and the FAQs we used for the answer:
Where is budget info for the state of NE? What about salaries of individual state employees?
Answer:
Where can I find salary information for Nebraska public employees?
Where can I find Nebraska Budget and Financial Information?

We’ve reached 1000 updates (aka tweets) in our twitter account and once again it is time to share an answer to a question we’ve answered. Since this is the month of June (a traditional month for weddings) – here is a real question and the answer we provided:
What do we need in order to get a marriage license?
You should contact the county clerk in the county in which you are to be married:
http://www.dmv.state.ne.us/dvr/mvtitles/ctyofflist.html
Here’s what Lancaster County says about requirements:
http://www.lincoln.ne.gov/cnty/clerk/marriage.htm
And what Douglas County lists:
http://www.co.douglas.ne.us/dept/Clerk/marriagerequirements.htm

Here’s another question with the answer revealed to a twitter question:
Question:
There was an initiative a few years ago for Nebraska to sell Cuban Cigars. Can I have references to what happened to this initiative please? Who sponsored it and what is the name of the bill?
Answer:
Here are the steps I took to answer the question.
1. I searched the Omaha World Herald online and located an article from January 12th 2006 indicating that Senator Pam Brown introduced LB 1034 which stated … “under Legislative Bill 1034, the state could accept Cuban tobacco or tobacco products — such as those highly prized Cuban cigars — in payment for agricultural or medical products sold to that island nation.”
2. I searched the site below for past legislation to find the text of the bill from the 99th Legislature: http://uniweb.legislature.ne.gov/QS/session.php?mode=adv_search which I located here: http://uniweb.legislature.ne.gov/FloorDocs/99/PDF/Intro/LB1034.pdf
3. I searched the 2006 Legislative Journal for the voting record and determined this bill was indefinitely postponed by the Agriculture Committee: http://uniweb.legislature.ne.gov/FloorDocs/Current/PDF/Journal/2006/2006journal.pdf

Recently, we were asked if we received permission from our questioners to post their queries in our twitter feed. The answer simply is no however there are several caveats that need to be noted. In no case do we make the identity of our patrons known and if the question is perhaps too leading, that question will not be posted. Occasionally, a question might be reworded for brevity or to simplify the essence. Generally, we try to cut and paste exactly from the emails or IM chats so the reader gets the authentic question. As we near our 1000th twitter entry, we hope to celebrate more than a year’s worth of excellent questions showing the real day-to-day activity of the at the state library reference desk.

Occasionally we hear from the followers of our Twitter.com/NLC_Reference account. Inquiring minds that really, really want to hear what the answer was for a particular question we posted. This time we’re going to counter those questions, with the question: Do you know the answer to this one? Because if you do, we’d really like you to share it with us! Right here, right now! And it’s not too late. We can still pass along your suggestions to the person that originally asked.
The question that we’ve been asked about the most was this one:
“Would someone with a criminal record be able to have a successful career in Library Science?”
After searching the library literature, checking indexes in Library Science management books, and not finding the answer, we started asking people that are responsible in their organizations for hiring new personnel. There seemed to be a consensus on “it would depend on the nature of the crime and the nature of the library position”. We asked Mary Jo Ryan and Kit Keller here at the Commission because they are collecting and analyzing data on library jobs and hiring through our Now Hiring @ your library initiatives. Kit pointed out that there’s a growing trend in employment that requires technological competence and virtual interaction and she felt that someone that acquired the right technical skills might be a good fit for a position of that type, and that the virtual nature of the job might negate the criminal background issue.
When working on my library degree my reference instructor told me that he knew some reference librarians that kept on looking for the answers to questions that they weren’t able to answer in a satisfying way. He even knew one that had a 25 year old question that she’d yet to find the answer for. So help us out here….do you know of a heartwarming story or of an actual study that would put this one to rest?

Most users probably aren’t concerned about this, but having an authenticated version of a document is very important to the legal community. At NLC we have had to stamp and sign photocopies that we have made for attorneys to certify that they are authentic copies of the original document. The legal community has been concerned about the possibility that statutes and other documents needed in court would no longer be distributed in print through the Government Printing Office Depository Program. GPO has been working for several years on an authentication process to certify that .pdf versions are true copies, and made the following announcement today.
GPO is pleased to announce the release of Authenticated Public and Private Laws for the 110th Congress on GPO Access. In May 2007, GPO released a beta version of this database. The unsigned PDF files in the existing database for Public and Private Laws for the 110th Congress will be replaced with the authenticated PDF files previously in the beta application. Search or browse Public and Private Laws at:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plaws/index.html
GPO’s Authentication initiative focuses on establishing GPO as the trusted information disseminator and providing the assurance that an electronic document has not been altered since GPO disseminated it.
The Public and Private Laws application provides authenticated Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files for the 110th Congress only.
Authenticated public and private laws within this application contain digitally signed and certified PDF files that contain GPO’s Seal of Authenticity. These files have been digitally signed and certified using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology. GPO is using PKI and Digital Signature technologies to verify the authenticity of the electronic U.S.
Government documents that it disseminates through the FDLP. GPO’s Seal of Authenticity notifies users that a document has not been altered since it was authenticated and disseminated by GPO.

Are you signed up to get the weekly email from Marylaine Block with her “Neat New Stuff I Found on the Net This Week?”
It’s a message I’ve enjoyed getting every week for a number of years now. I don’t know how she does it, but Marylaine always delivers. This week she introduced me to BeyondIntractability.org, a site from the University of Colorado that offers resources on managing conflict–could be a good resource for our Basic Skills workshop when we discuss dealing with challenging customers. She also lists OrganDonor.gov and worldanimal.net, the world’s largest network of animal protection societies. Those look like great reference tools! There are a dozen sites listed this week. The current week’s list and a 6 month archive are available on Marylaine’s Web site, Marylaine.com.

Sunday’s Library Link of the Day sends us to 15 Trends to Watch in 2008 in Publishers Weekly. Looks like we should be watching e-readers and more changes in the traditional publishing world.
There’s some interesting discussion of the issues brought up in the Trends article on the if:book blog.

We love book clubs! We belong to book clubs and we promote book clubs. Do you have book club kits that you’d be willing to lend to other libraries across Nebraska? Add your holdings, guidelines, and contact information to our book club wiki! The beauty of the wiki is that you can add your information in the form and style that you like. Here’s the address for the Nebraska Book Club Wiki: http://nebookclub.pbwiki.com/ Take a look and please consider sharing your book club kits or borrowing new titles for your own club.
If you don’t have book club kits to share you can still take advantage of borrowing these book club kits from others. Perhaps you could start a book club if you don’t have one now. By using these collections already assembled, you can have years of programming!
If you’d like to add your holdings please contact us at the Nebraska Library Commission by going here: http://nlc.nebraska.gov/scripts/mail/mail2staff.asp?ready and we’ll send you the password. We’ll also answer any questions about adding your holdings to the wiki.
We’d also like your feedback on what you think of this idea and of the wiki. You can leave comments while viewing the wiki by scrolling down to the bottom and clicking on “Contact wiki owner” in the “Wiki Information” section. Thanks!