College navigator from the Dept. of Education

Federal web sites help students choose a college, calculate financial aid

 

College Navigator, the U.S. Department of Education’s web site for information for students and families about colleges, has been named by Money magazine as “the best first screen” for researching colleges.

In addition, Money points out that the Navigator, unlike many other college search tools, is not tied to a marketing department seeking students’ personal information. The magazine also credits the site for being “one of the simplest to use,” for having “a good comparison tool,” and for providing “a full set of the latest data on expenses, aid, enrollment, admission and graduation rates, majors, along with a Google map pinpointing location.”

College Navigator allows users to modify and fine-tune criteria without starting over, to build a list of favorites, and to search by such specifics as distance from home, intercollegiate athletic programs and size of school, to name a few.

For adult learners, it finds programs that offer extended learning opportunities such as weekend or evening courses, distance learning and credit for life experiences.

Launched last September, College Navigator is one of several resources the department has developed to provide information about federal financial aid and the college selection process.

Earlier this year the department unveiled another tool, the FAFSA4caster, which instantly calculates the federal financial aid that a student is likely to receive–Eric Fry, Alaska Dept. of Education 12/28/07

Start navigating:  http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ and http://www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov.

Smithsonian Blogs – Art, Science and More

Thanks to usa.gov for mentioning that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC is now publishing a number of blogs. You can find the list at http://www.si.edu/blogs/default.htm and I think most are worth highlighting to your patrons. Some I think are particularly interesting are:

• Smithsonian Magazine: The Gist
  Science, insight, and summary from Smithsonian Magazine
• Museums on Main Street
  Museum on Main Street brings rural Americans one-of-a-kind access to prestigious Smithsonian exhibitions and first-rate educational programs
• Face to Face
  Dedicated to art, history, and the telling of American lives, this blog is written and produced by a collaborative team at the National Portrait Gallery

Check these and other blogs out. They’re part of your tax dollars at work and a way to help the treasures of the Smithsonian get shared outside the Mall!

Background on Wasilla

With the recent nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be vice-President on the Republican ticket, there has been a surge of interest in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska. Here is a copy and paste of the Community Profile for Wasilla from the Community Profiles Database from the state’s Division of Community and Regional Affairs:

Wasilla (WAH-sill-ah) For Photos of Wasilla click here Current Population: 7,028 (2007 DCCED Certified Population) Incorporation Type: 1st Class City Borough Located In: Matanuska-Susitna Borough Taxes: Sales: 2.5%, Property: 0.0 mills (City); 9.6 mills (Borough), Special: 5% Accommodations Tax (Borough) National Flood Insurance Program Participant: Yes Coastal Management District: Matanuska-Susitna Borough Location and Climate Wasilla is located midway between the Matanuska and Susitna Valleys, on the George Parks Highway. It lies between Wasilla and Lucille Lakes, 43 miles north of Anchorage, about one hour’s drive. The community lies at approximately 61.581390� North Latitude and -149.439440� (West) Longitude. (Sec. 10, T017N, R001W, Seward Meridian.) Wasilla is located in the Palmer Recording District. The area encompasses 11.7 sq. miles of land and 0.7 sq. miles of water. January temperatures range from -33 to 33; July temperatures range from 42 to 83. The average annual precipitation is 17 inches, with 50 inches of snowfall. History, Culture and Demographics Wasilla was named after the respected local Dena’ina Indian, Chief Wasilla (also known as Chief Vasili). In the Dena’ina Athabascan Indian dialect, “Wasilla” is said to mean “breath of air.” Other sources claim the Chief derived his name from the Russian language, and that “Vasili” is a variation of the Russian name “William.” The townsite was established in 1917 at the intersection of the Carle Wagon Road (now Wasilla-Fishhook Road) and the newly-constructed Alaska Railroad. It was a supply base for gold and coal mining in the region through World War II. The Matanuska-Susitna valley was settled by many Colony homesteaders in the 1930s. Construction of the George Parks Highway through Wasilla in the early 1970s provided direct access to Anchorage. This enabled families to live in Wasilla and commute to Anchorage for employment. The City was incorporated in 1974. The population of the community consists of 9.1% Alaska Native or part Native. Residents are close to the urban amenities of Anchorage, yet enjoy a rural lifestyle. During the 2000 U.S. Census, total housing units numbered 2,119, and vacant housing units numbered 140. Vacant housing units used only seasonally numbered 34. U.S. Census data for Year 2000 showed 2,451 residents as employed. The unemployment rate at that time was 11.16 percent, although 37.04 percent of all adults were not in the work force. The median household income was $48,226, per capita income was $21,127, and 9.59 percent of residents were living below the poverty level. Facilities, Utilities, Schools and Health Care The majority of homes use individual water wells and septic systems, although the City operates a piped water and sewer system. Water is provided by a well at Spruce Avenue and two at Iditarod School, with a 2.3 million gallon storage capacity. Funds have been requested to develop an additional water source. Refuse collection is provided by a private company, for disposal in the Borough landfill. Residents also drop refuse at the Borough landfill in Palmer. Matanuska Electric Assoc. is part owner of the Alaska Electric Generation & Transmission Cooperative, Inc., which operates a gas turbine plant in Soldotna and also purchases electricity from Chugach Electric and the Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project. Piped natural gas, provided by Enstar, is used to heat homes. Electricity is provided by Matanuska Electric Association. There are 7 schools located in the community, attended by 4,145 students. Local hospitals or health clinics include Valley Hospital in Palmer (746-8600); Mat-Su Public Health Center (376-2437); Anchorage hospitals; numerous private. Valley Hospital Association, Inc. is a qualified Emergency Care Center. Specialized Care: Alaska Addiction Rehabilitation Services/Nugen’s Ranch (376-4534). Wasilla is classified as a highway town/Sub-Regional Center, it is found in EMS Region 2C in the Mat-Su Region. Emergency Services have limited highway, marine, coastal, floatplane, and helicopter access, and are within 30 minutes of a higher-level satellite health care facility. Emergency service is provided by 911 Telephone Service and volunteers Auxiliary health care is provided by Wasilla Ambulance Service (373-8800/745-4811); Valley Hospital in Palmer or Anchorage hospitals. Economy and Transportation Approximately 30% of the Wasilla workforce commutes to Anchorage. The local economy is diverse, and residents are employed in a variety of government, retail, and professional service positions. Tourism, agriculture, wood products, steel and concrete products are part of the economy. 120 area residents hold commercial fishing permits. Wasilla is the home of the Iditarod Trail Committee and Iron Dog Race. The George Parks Highway, Glenn Highway, and other local roads connect the city to Anchorage, the remainder of the state and Canada. The Alaska Railroad serves Wasilla on the Fairbanks to Seward route. A City airport, with a paved 3,700′ long by 75′ wide airstrip, provides scheduled commuter and air taxi services. Float planes land at Wasilla Lake, Jacobsen Lake and Lake Lucille. There are ten additional private airstrips in the vicinity. Commercial jet flights are operated out of Anchorage International Airport. Organizations with Local Offices Chamber of Commerce – Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce 415 E. Railroad Avenue Wasilla, AK 99654 Phone 907-376-1299 Fax 907-373-2560 E-mail info@wasillachamber.org Web http://www.wasillachamber.org City – City of Wasilla 290 East Herning Ave. Wasilla, AK 99654 Phone 907-373-9055 Fax 907-373-9096 E-mail cityofwasilla@ci.wasilla.ak.us Web http://www.cityofwasilla.com Media – Frontiersman 5751 East Mayflower Court Wasilla, AK 99645 Phone 907-352-2250 Fax 907-352-2277 E-mail editor@frontiersman.com Web http://www.frontiersman.com Regional Development – Mat-Su Resource Conservation & Development, INC 1700 E. Bogard #203 Wasilla, AK 99654 Phone 907-373-1062 Fax 907-373-1064 E-mail info@matsudevelopment.org Regional Organizations Borough – Matanuska-Susitna Borough 350 East Dahlia Avenue Palmer, AK 99645 Phone 907-745-4801 Fax 907-745-9845 E-mail Manager: John.Duffy@matsugov.us Web http://www.matsugov.us/ Regional Native Health Corporation – Southcentral Foundation 4501 Diplomacy, Suite 200 Anchorage, AK 99508 Phone 907-729-5235 Fax 907-729-4972 E-mail katherineg@scf.cc Web http://www.southcentralfoundation.com/index.cfm ======================== Other information on Wasilla may be available from a number of databases produced by Alaska state agencies. You can find a list compiled by the ALA Government Documents Roundtable at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Alaska.

Strange Bedfellows, Nice Widget

The well-dressed documents oriented site has a new must-have accessory.

Check out the CQ Political Bedfellows widget at http://www.cqpress.com/pages/bedfellows. It’s the most dead-easy way to compare congressional voting records. According to the site, this widget quickly answers questions like:

How closely aligned are Barack Obama and John McCain? Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?

Barney Frank and Newt Gingrich?

Try it for yourself. You can look at alignment overall or alignment by issue. After you’ve tried it, find some sites to stick it on!

Looking for a provincial Can Doc? Let Mike Show you

The Summer 2008 issue of Documents to the People has a good article on finding Canadian public information at the provincial level:

News from the North: Maintaining Bibliographic Integrity for Provincial Documents during the E-Gov Transition by Mike McCaffery. Dttp, v.36, no. 2, Summer 2008, p. 9

Mike first notes that no one source provides a truly comprehensive index of Canadian provincial documents, then embarks on a province by province tour of available documents indexes. Much of the material was new to me. I consider myself pretty good at finding Canadian federal publications, but provincial pubs pretty much have to fall into my lap.

The Alaska State Library has a small selection of Yukon and British Columbia publications. How about your libraries?

While I’m talking about Dttp, I want to make sure that all the readers of this blog knew about the Dttp page on the ALA GODORT wiki. Among other things, the page links to some new web-only supplement materials at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/DttP_Supplements. The first supplement is for the Documents 2.0 issue and I recommend it to anyone with a few spare moments.

To Drill or Not to Drill?

Hi all,

Another piece in the North Slope drilling debate. Read EPA’s new press release.

If folks want to file petitions for review of the revised permit
the deadline is in one month: July 21, 2008.

Here’s the news release:

“EPA Issues Revised “Minor”Air Permit to Shell for Drilling in
Arctic’s Beaufort Sea

(Seattle, WA – June 19, 2008) The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency has issued a revised minor air quality permit to Shell
Offshore, Inc. (Shell), to regulate air emissions from the Kulluk
floating drilling rig and its support vessels to conduct
exploratory oil and gas drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf
(OCS) of the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska.

According to Rick Albright, Director of EPA’s Air, Waste & Toxics
office in Seattle, the Agency is satisfied that Shell’s permit
application met all EPA requirements.

“This project has undergone extraordinary scrutiny,” said EPA’s
Albright. “Because local communities in the North Slope Borough
have expressed a wide range of important social and public health
concerns, we’ve taken an extra hard look at the complete
application package. We believe that from an air quality
standpoint, this project, as permitted, will meet all health-based
ambient air quality standards.”

EPA conducted informational meetings and public hearings in three
North Slope communities (Nuiqsut, Kaktovik and Barrow) between
March 25 and 27, 2008.

Shell’s revised permit will limit emissions of any single air
pollutant to 245 tons per year at each exploratory operation,
which includes a single planned well and any of its associated
replacement or relief wells. Above those limits, the project
would require a “major” source permit, which requires a more
rigorous permitting process and limits based on the best available
control technology.

According to EPA’s Albright, another important step in the permit
process involves the recent listing of the polar bear as
“threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.”

This last part may be of particular interest to some:

“While we have issued this revised permit to Shell today, it does
not become effective until consultation with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service regarding Endangered Species Act protection for
the polar bear has been completed.”

Isn’t She Lovely in Maps and Microfiche Envelopes?

How many times have you thought there must be some second life for all of those GPO wrappings as you dropped them into the trash? Here’s one use: Government Documents are wearable art, and three government documents divas set out to prove that have gov docs, will travel down the runway. In December, Kathleen Wiechelman at the UAS Ketchikan Campus Library asked us to send them our gov docs envelopes, and we were happy to have them recycled into well-tailored ball gowns. Here’s what Kathleen said about the event:

Here are a couple of photos of the gown that my library assistant [Kathy Graham] made me out of those lovely gov doc envelopes, as well as a shot of us all… The beauty queen librarians were a big hit in our Wearable Art Show this year! My boss, Judith, is wearing a skirt of nautical charts, and Lisa, the Adult Services Librarian at the Ketchikan Public Library, is wearing book covers. What fun.

Kathy, amazing talent! And the models all look splendid. Please click the image for a larger picture.

Blast (not quite) from the Past

With soaring energy prices, people around the country are talking up nuclear power. This might be a good time to pull the following item out of your depository collection:

Report on the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station
by United States. Dept. of Energy.; U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.; et al
Publisher: Washington, DC : U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission : Available from Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., [1987]
Edition: Rev. 1
SuDoc: Y3.N88:10/1250
WorldCat Link: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/25206856

This report is based on both American and Soviet sources. The report has chapters that expound on the following points:

• The unique design of the Chernobyl reactor.
• That the accident happened during a test where …
  • the test procedure had not been reviewed for safety
  • management control of the test was not maintained
  • the test procedure was not followed
  • safety systems were bypassed

The report also details post accident actions taken by the Soviet Union. This shouldn’t be considered the final word on Chernobyl, but might add information to the ongoing debates over nuclear power.

If Elected …: Unsuccessful Candidates for the Presidency

What do Thomas Jefferson, Charles C. Pickney, Rufus King, Alton Parker, Charles Hughes and Hubert Humphrey all have in common?

They are all profiled in:

“If elected–” : unsuccessful candidates for the presidency, 1796-1968

by Lillian B Miller; National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution). Historian’s Office.; et al

Publisher: City of Washington : Published for the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, by the Smithsonian Institution Press : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1972.

This book provides portraits, biographies and context for people who ran on major party tickets but who lost the presidency from the start of the Republic through 1968. Not all are losers. This volume from the Smithsonian Institution points out that one third of the men who have held the office of President also lost it. Several, like Jefferson and Nixon, had to run more than once before finally being elected.

This volume, which may come in handy for election year displays or civics classes, is available in a number of Alaska libraries. To see which ones, please visit http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/278385.

If you’re familiar with this book, please leave a comment and let us know what you think about it.

New EPA Senior Tribal Policy Advisor

Jim Woods, a Makah tribal member, was appointed to EPA Region 10 as Senior Advisor for Tribal Policy. An EPA news release from this morning quotes Elin Miller, EPA regional administrator in Seattle as saying that “Mr. Woods brings a wealth of tribal and environmental experience to EPA that will help us build stronger partnerships with our Pacific Northwest and Alaska tribes…We’re looking forward to working with him to help build tribal capacity, strengthen our communication networks with tribes, and better protect our natural resources.”

The release quotes Mr. Woods as saying: “I look forward to improving the effectiveness of government-to-government consultation between EPA Region 10 and tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. It is my hope that we will be able to strike a good balance among treaty guaranteed rights, sustainable resources and overall environmental protection throughout the northwest and Alaska

According to the news release, Mr. Woods has been working on natural resource management and tribal policy issues related to toxics, natural resource management, fisheries and marine ecosystems.
To read the full release, more detail about Mr. Woods’ career, and a quote from the Makah Tribal Council: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d96f984dfb3ff7718525735900400c29/8a87e77cb3bd1031852574560065079c!OpenDocument

For more information on EPA’s Tribal Programs in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, visit:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/r10/tribal.NSF

For more information about the Makah tribe, visit:
http://www.makah.com/

For more information on the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission,
visit:http://www.nwifc.org/