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 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!

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!

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.

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.”

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.

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.

They are all profiled in:

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.

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/