The U.S. Census Bureau puts out an occasional press release called "Facts for Features" (great for those sidebars in your local newspaper) . Here are some fun facts for Christmas:

• 1.9 billion Christmas cards are mailed every year, making Christmas the largest card-sending occasion in the U.S. (Valentine's Day is a distant second with 192 million cards sent).
• The Post Office delivers about 1 million packages a day through Christmas Eve. The busiest delivery day? December 21.
  
• There were 20.8 million Christmas trees cut in 2002; most of those trees were grown in Oregon (6.2 million).
• In December 2004, retailers reported holiday sales of $31.9 billion, a 54% jump over November 2004 sales.

Want to find out more? You can read the entire release at Facts for Features: The Holiday Season.

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Posted by Tami Smith to gov docs at 12/19/2005 11:56:00 AM

Labels: gov docs, renovation

The Washington Post has created the U.S. Congress Votes Database, which covers every vote in the since the 102nd Congress (1991). No only can you search by state, region and gender, you can also search by "baby-boomer status" and even astrological sign (really!)

Here's more from the press release:

"The data for washingtonpost.com's U.S. Congress Votes Database is taken directly from several official Internet sources:

• House vote data comes from the Web site of the Clerk of the House of Representatives.
• Senate vote data comes from the Web site of the Senate.
• Member biographical information, including birth dates and hometowns, comes from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Member gender information comes from Women in Congress site and the Women in the Senate page.
• Representatives' district information comes from the Library of Congress' THOMAS site.

For each congressional vote in each chamber beginning with the 102nd Congress (1991), the Post has assembled detail and summary information about that vote and the members who took part. In addition to displaying the details of every vote, washingtonpost.com calculates a majority position for Republicans and Democrats, if one exists.

The Post uses additional sources for certain types of summary information. For the vote totals by region, regional definitions from the U.S. Census Bureau are employed. For totals by "Baby Boomer" status, the Post defines Baby Boomers as those born between the end of World War II (Aug. 1, 1945) through Dec. 31, 1964, inclusive. Vote totals by astrological sign are calculated using each member's date of birth.

Statistics on most-voted on bills include votes in both the House and Senate for a two-year Congress. Late-night votes are defined as those occurring between midnight and 7 a.m."

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Posted by Tami Smith to gov docs at 12/13/2005 06:40:00 AM

Let’s face it. Most college research assignments don’t get students excited about research. Here is an article about a history instructor (and librarian) whose innovative assignments sparked her students’ interest and got them to do some fantastic research:

Mudrock, Theresa. Engaging Students in the Game of Research. Perspectives, December 2005 p. 15-17.

Instead of having students write yet another annotated bibliography about WWI, Mudrock assigned students the roles of archetypal young people of the era: Earnest Hitchens, a pilot from Chicago; Henry Lewis, an infantryman; or Viola Williams, a civil rights activist. Students were no longer researching abstract ideas like "Treatment of prisoners in German POW camps" or "Race relations in American cities during WWI." They were researching their characters’ lives.

Enthusiasm swelled, as did the number of sources that the students used in their assignments. Not bad.

Here’s the article:
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/Issues/2005/0512/0512tea1.cfm
and Mudrock’s syllabus and course materials:
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/perspectives/

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Posted by Tom to langsdale at 12/12/2005 05:05:00 PM

This site is not from a government agency, but from the wonderful folks at the University of Michigan Documents Center. Get summaries of the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, mayoral election results and ballot intitatives from all around the country. You can find the election page here:

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/elec2005/elec2005index1.html

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Posted by Tami Smith to gov docs at 12/12/2005 10:21:00 AM

Labels: gov docs, renovation

Langsdale will be closed for some holidays and all weekends during the winter break. We will be closed from Dec 22-Jan 2 and Jan 16.

Except as noted above, from Dec 19 - Jan 29 Langsdale will be open Monday - Friday from 8:30 - 6:00.

You can always find Langsdale's hours, as well as our reference desk schedule, on our website.

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Posted by Michael to langsdale at 12/12/2005 08:53:00 AM

Labels: closings, hours, langsdale

What's going to happen to gas prices? Just how much can you expect to spend heating your home this winter? Take a look at the Short Term Energy Outlook, which is released every month by the Energy Information Administration (a division of the U.S. Department of Energy).

By the way, the average estimated heating fuel costs in the northeast are:

Natural Gas: $1309
Heating Oil: $1487
Propane: $1779
Electricity: $1206

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Posted by Tami Smith to gov docs at 12/08/2005 09:42:00 AM

Labels: gov docs, renovation

The House Rules and Manual for the 109th Congress is now available from the Government Printing Office on GPO Access:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/hrm/browse_109.html

From the press release:

"The House Rules and Manual is published by the the House Parliamentarian's Office. This document is formally entitled Constitution, Jefferson's Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives and contains the fundamental source material for parliamentary procedure used in the House of Representatives, including:

• the Constitution of the United States;
• applicable provisions of Jefferson's Manual;
• rules of the House;
• provisions of law and resolutions having the force of rules of the House; and
• pertinent decisions of the Speakers and other presiding officers of the House and Committee of the Whole interpreting the rules and other procedural authority used in the House of Representatives."

The complete document is very large (1400+ pages), so the GPO made each chapter a separate file, viewable in HTML or PDF.

Previous editions (back the 105th Congress) are also available on the site.

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Posted by Tami Smith to gov docs at 12/06/2005 10:37:00 AM

Labels: gov docs, renovation

The Atlantic hurricane season ended (finally!) on November 30. Just how many records were set this year? Take a look at this Fact Sheet from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

Noteworthy Records of the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season

The page also includes lots of links to other NOAA hurricane websites. So what's coming next summer? Look for the first hurricane outlook in May 2006.

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Posted by Tami Smith to gov docs at 12/05/2005 12:21:00 PM

Labels: gov docs, renovation