Alabama Library Association Government Documents Roundtable November 2019 Volume 2, Issue 4
GODORT Connection Moderator’s Corner It’s hard to believe but as 2019 starts coming to a close, we are rapidly nearing the end of the second decade of the twenty -first century. Was it really twenty years ago that we were worrying about the “Y2K” possibility of computers going haywire as we entered the new millennium? Speaking of the passage of time, this issue of the GODORT Connection features one more anniversary-related article, this time on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the D-Day invasion of World War II. Focusing more directly on government documents, I’m sure you will enjoy Editor Kelly Wilson’s article concerning the Occupational Outlook Handbook, an extremely useful resource for finding career-related information, and Liza Weisbrod will provide a wrap-up of the 2019 Federal Depository Library Conference. The late country singer, Little Jimmy Dickens (19202015), enjoyed a hit record (one of many) in 1950 with his humorously self-referential, “I’m Little but I’m Loud.” Similarly, GODORT is a little round table in terms of membership numbers (for now) but we are loud in terms of being active. In addition to this newsletter, I am happy to report that Kelly Wilson is working on plans to host a webinar concerning the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Liza Weisbrod is working on arrangements for a possible speaker from the U.S Census Bureau at next year’s ALLA annual convention – very timely with 2020 being a census year. With all of this going on, let me remind you that GODORT officer nominations are welcome! Specifically, we need nominees for Moderator-Elect and Secretary-Treasurer. If interested, please contact Moderator Tim Dodge at dodgeti@auburn.edu or (334) 844-1729 as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I would like to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, followed by Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year. With your help and participation, I look forward to bringing ALLA GODORT into a new decade.
Tim Dodge Auburn University
This fun little image was retrieved from https:// www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015646683/
Inside this issue ALLA GODORT Steering Committee….….…….2 75th Anniversary of D-Day………………….....…3 FDLP/DLC Wrap-Up…………..………….....…...4 Occupational Outlook Handbook…….…….……..5 What’s Happening?.................................................6
Officers
Tim Dodge, GODORT Moderator 2019 - 2020 He has been employed at Auburn University Libraries since 1992, starting out as a government documents reference librarian. Since 2000, he has been serving as History and since 2008 as Political Science Subject Specialist in the Reference Department at Auburn. Tim held previous positions as a special collections librarian and archivist, serials librarian, and reference librarian at the University of New Hampshire (twice) and at Barry University (Miami, Fla.). Tim has held numerous offices in the Alabama Library Association including President (2004-2005) and ModeratorElect and Moderator of GODORT in
1994-1996. He has also held numerous offices in the Alabama Association of College and Research Libraries including President (20002001 and 2008-2009), and is currently President of the Southeastern Library Association. Under the name Dr. Hepcat, Tim Dodge has hosted the Golden Oldies radio show on WEGL – Auburn FM 91.1 since May 1998. His radio career extends back to 1975, and Tim is the author of The School of Arizona Dranes: Gospel Music Pioneer (Lexington Books, 2013). He is also the author of Rhythm and Blues Goes Calypso (Lexington Books, 2019)
OPEN POSITION: GODORT Moderator-Elect, 20192020 We are currently looking for someone to volunteer for the Alabama Library Association’s GODORT Moderator-Elect position. According to the GODORT Bylaws, the official role of the Moderator-Elect is as follows: “The Moderator-elect shall perform the duties of the Moderator in the absence of the Moderator; shall be a member of the Steering Committee; shall be responsible for the program at
the annual meeting; shall serve as Membership Chairperson; and shall serve as an aide to the Moderator.” Furthermore, the Moderator-Elect takes part in the Steering Committee which provides leadership for the round table, which includes meeting regularly. For more information, please contact Tim Dodge at dodgeti@auburn.edu.
OPEN POSITION: GODORT Secretary 2019 - 2020 We are currently looking for someone to volunteer for the Alabama Library Association’s GODORT Secretary position. According to the GODORT Bylaws, the official role of the secretary is as follows: “The Secretary-Treasurer shall handle correspondence, keep minutes of general and Steering Committee meetings, be empowered to receive and authorize the disbursement of funds as approved
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by the Association treasurer, and keep necessary and proper records.” Furthermore, the Secretary takes part in the Steering Committee which provides leadership for the round table, which includes meeting regularly. For more information, please contact Tim Dodge at dodgeti@auburn.edu.
Seventy-Five Years Ago: D-Day By: Tim Dodge, Auburn University
World War II, the world’s greatest military conflict, is rapidly fading from public memory as the numbers of those old enough to remember the war or to have fought in it continue to shrink. D-Day was one of the truly important military operations of that war and deserves to be commemorated before completely disappearing from living memory. The term “D-Day” was simply a designation for the “start of an Allied military operation” but has since become synonymous with the most famous D-Day of all, that of June 6, 19441. The origins of what became known as D-Day lie in the Tehran Conference of November 1943 when Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met. Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to an invasion of France crossing the English Channel with Stalin to organize a major offensive against Germany from the Eastern Front. Planning for a massive invasion, code named Operation Overlord, had to take into account the strength of German fortifications along the shore including the presence of four million mines2. Working in favor of the Allies was the fact that the Germans had relatively few aircraft and other mechanized vehicles on hand in northern France. Consequently, the Allies engaged in extensive aerial bombing during the two months leading up to D-Day to soften the German defenses3. Planning for the largest amphibious invasion in history included a close watch on weather conditions. The Germans were not expecting an invasion of this scale and a long spell of bad weather also served to lull the Germans into a false sense of complacency. The pressure on General Dwight Eisenhower, the commander in charge of the invasion, was immense since conditions of moonlight, tide, and timing of daylight had to be exactly right to avoid a massive failure. In Eisenhower’s words to close staff members on June 4, “I’m quite positive we must give the order. I don’t like it, but there it is. I don’t see how we can possibly do anything else.”4 The invasion of Normandy began at 5:30 a.m. on June 6 on a 50-mile stretch along the Cottentin Peninsula following a preliminary drop of troops by parachute. Allied ships also did some preliminary bombardment of German fortifications. The invasion involved 2700 vessels with 195,000 men; 2000 tanks; 17,000 “other vehicles,” and 10,000 tons of supplies.5 The initial invasion involved six locations on the coast with code-named beaches, the most famous being the section designated Omaha Beach. While
“American soldiers on Omaha Beach recovering the dead after the D Day invasion of France.” Image used from the LOC.
both British and American forces landed at Normandy on D-Day, Omaha Beach was solely an American operation. Conditions were brutal as the Germans at first had the landing American troops pinned down with machine gun fire and nowhere to hide or retreat. Sgt. Hy Haas, in charge of an artillery unit at Omaha Beach, described the scene: “Coming in on the landing craft approaching Omaha beach [sic], it was very peaceful. When we landed it was pandemonium; it was complete terror. You didn’t know if you would be alive the next minute. You saw nothing. But you heard artillery shells, machine gun fire. There were bodies everywhere.”6 Ultimately, the Allies prevailed but at a terrible cost. The first day resulted in 6000 American and 4300 British casualties. 7 Two thousand of the American casualties took place at Omaha Beach alone.8 This was the beginning of a hard-fought campaign that took until the end of July before the Germans finally retreated, leaving northern France open to Allied invasion, ultimately, leading to Allied victory in the European Theatre of World War II. By this point 2,000,000 Allied troops (including American, British, Polish, French, Italian, Belgian, Czech, and Dutch troops) and 250,000 vehicles had arrived in northern France - but it all depended on the successful D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944.9 References: 1. D-Day” in Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen. World War II: The Encyclopedia of the War Years 1941-1945 (New York: Random House, 1996), 586. 2. Spencer C. Tucker, “Normandy Invasion (D Day, 6 June 1944) and Campaign” in Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of World War II: A Political, Social, and Military History (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005), Vol. 3, 1088. 3. Ibid, 1088. 4. “’D-Day’ #1485” in Howard J. Langer, comp. and ed. World War II: An Encyclopedia of Quotations (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), 391. 5. Tucker, “Normandy Invasion,” 1089. 6. “#771.” In Langer, World War II: An Encyclopedia of Quotations, 211. 7. Tucker, “Normandy Invasion,” 1091. 8. “D-Day” in Polmar and Allen. World War II: The Encyclopedia of the War Years 1941-1945, 587. 9. Ibid, 586 and 588.
Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking to paratroopers prior to the Battle of Normandy. Image used from the LOC.
Image taken at Omaha Beach. Image used from the LOC.
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2019 Federal Depository Library Conference Wrap Up By Liza Weisbrod, Auburn University
Trevor Owens, Keynote Speaker
NHHC Logo retrieved from https://www.history.navy.mil/
NIST at 100, Image retrieved from https://www.nist.gov/pao/ nist-100-foundations-progress
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The Federal Depository Library Conference was held in Washington, DC, on October 21-23, 2019. This annual conference provides an excellent opportunity to hear interesting speakers and participate in educational sessions. It is also a great way to meet and talk with others who work with government information. Every year that I attend the conference, I come away convinced that documents librarians are some of the nicest and most knowledgeable people around! I would like to report on a few of the sessions that I found particularly noteworthy, beginning with the keynote address by Dr. Trevor Owens, Head of Digital Content Management for Library Services for the Library of Congress. An engaging speaker, Dr. Owens gave a thought-provoking talk about the challenges of preserving digital content. If you would like to get his take on this subject, his book, The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation, is available at https://osf.io/preprints/lissa/5cpjt/. One of the benefits of the conference is hearing from different government agencies and offices. One of the sessions I attended, Naval History and Heritage Command: An Introduction for the Library and Research Communities, was a fascinating look at the organization responsible for the “institutional memory” of the U.S. Navy. The Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) (https:// www.history.navy.mil/) collects “documents, artifacts, photos, oral histories, and art that best represent the history of the U.S. Navy.”1 It’s a goldmine for those researching naval topics or looking for information about a specific ship or sailor. While many of the archives are only available onsite, the website provides digital copies of selected naval publications, historical monographs, manuscripts, artwork, and photos. For a direct link to the slides, go here. Another interesting session was NIST Databases and Resources: Hidden Gems. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is the agency responsible for, broadly speaking, measurement and standards to support innovation. The agency is responsible for maintaining the atomic clock and ensuring standardized weights and measurements in many different areas. NIST also publishes such standard works as the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (https://dlmf.nist.gov/), and the Chemistry WebBook (http://webbook.nist.gov). Less well known may be that the agency also publishes research reports in areas such as cybersecurity, bioscience, manufacturing, forensic science, and communications. One unexpected area is resilience, which focuses on disasters, both natural and man-made, and their impact on communities. Events such as fires, terrorism (the World Trade Center investigative documents are here), hurricanes, and construction failures are studied to improve the building practices and codes for buildings and infrastructure systems.2 For more about this wide-ranging agency, see their website at https://www.nist.gov/. For a direct link to the slides, go here. There were many more fascinating and informative programs; in fact, too many for one person to attend. Fortunately, several of the sessions were recorded and slides and handouts are available for most of the others (https://www.fdlp.gov/events-andconferences/2019-federal-depository-library-conference). You can learn about using government documents as primary sources, promoting depository collections, how to make Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and many other topics here. Enjoy a small taste of an interesting and educational conference! References 1. “Who We Are,” accessed October 31, 2019, http://public2.nhhcaws.local/about-us/ organization/who-we-are.html. 2. Robin Materese, “Resillience,” NIST, June 30, 2016, https://www.nist.gov/topics/ resilience.
Occupational Outlook Handbook By Kelly Wilson, Troy University The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) is maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a subset of the United States Department of Labor. This wonderful website provides information on numerous career paths which can be accessed through a variety of ways. On the main page, you are instantly provided with a list of Occupation Groups, an A-Z Index, a Featured Occupation (which changes with each refresh of the screen or access to the page), and a search box entitled “Select Occupations By” which allows the user to search for a job through these methods: by 2018 Media Pay, Entry-Level Education required, On-the-job Training availability, the project Number of New Jobs, and the projected Growth Rate. If you scroll down on the page, you will find a couple of other ways to navigate the site: “Browse Occupations” (by highest paying, fastest growing (projected), and most new jobs (projected)); and “Browse Resources” (FAQ, Glossary, Teacher’s Guide, and Career Outlook). Before proceeding with a tour of all the neat offerings of the OOH, I wanted to briefly mention the new OOH app called CareerInfo which is now available for both iOS and Android devices. As it just released (in the last few weeks), it still has a few kinks, but it is a work in progress. From my own experience with the app, I can say that it is very easy to use and has a simple design which I feel makes it easy to use for people at any age. Now, back to the OOH! Across the top of the homepage, there’s a blue bar that reads “Occupational Outlook Handbook”. To the right of the title is a little search box. This is what I use to look up specific jobs. Many patrons will come in wanting to know information for a specific job or field. I recommend pointing them to the aforementioned search box. For those wanting to browse jobs within a field, I recommend using the “Occupation Groups” box or the “Select Occupations By” box. It is important to remember that not all jobs have their own page. For example, the page for Librarians does not separate pay by type of librarian, only a page for librarians in general. Under the “What They Do” tab, there is a list of example types of librarians along with a brief description: User services librarians, Technical services librarians, Academic librarians, Public librarians, School librarians, Special librarians, and more! Similarly, if you look up “Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists”, you will also get a list of professions available in this area. Once you find a job you want to look into, say Editor, you are taken to a page that provides the following information on Editors (these are listed as tabs under the title of the profession you have pulled up: a summary of the professions, What They Do—a summary of possible job duties; Work Environment—possible jobs that would hire editors; How to Become one—Education and work experience needed to become an editor as well as important qualities; Pay—median annual wages based on the prior year; Job Outlook—job prospects over the next ten year period; State and Area Data—links to other sites where you can find information about the profession by state; Similar Occupations—a table containing occupations the BLS has named to be similar to the one you’re looking at (for example, for editors, the list includes technical writers, authors, and reporters); and More Info—here you will find a list of other possible sites to find more information (for Editors, they have listed associations that editors might want to be affiliated with such as the American Copy Editors Society and the American Society of Magazine Editors. If you want to learn more about the OOH, I highly recommend playing around with the database—searching for various jobs and comparing them or try browsing the A-Z list, I’m sure you’ll find a job you’ve never heard of before! Also, the FDLP Academy provided a webinar on Occupational Outlook Handbook on September 26, 2019. The presenter was Domingo Angeles from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is a very thorough overview of the website, and I highly recommend it to those who are unfamiliar with the OOC Handbook. The recording can be found here. I hope you have found this article helpful. I, personally, love the OOH, and I highly recommend that we spread the word of it to our patrons. Please see the list to the right for more useful links.
For more information… Link to OOH: https:// www.bls.gov/ooh/ Link to FDLP Academy webinar on the OOH: https://www.fdlp.gov/theoccupational-outlookhandbook-information-onhundreds-of-occupations-in -the-united-states BLS Blog: https:// blogs.bls.gov/blog/ category/occupationaloutlook-handbook/ Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/
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Alabama Library Association GODORT Provides a forum for librarians working with government documents. Objectives also include the promotion of availability, use and bibliographic control of documents; and the promotion of communication between documents librarians and other librarians. GODORT is an affiliate of the American Library Association. Membership is open to any member of the Association who subscribes to the objectives of the roundtable.
What’s Happening? We are currently seeking volunteers for both the Moderator-Elect and Secretary positions for ALLA GODORT. Please contact Tim Dodge (dodgeti@auburn.edu) for more information. The Troy University Library in Troy, AL, is currently housing the Remnant Trust. It will be there until the week of Thanksgiving. It is open to the public during the library’s normal open hours. Some of the artifacts currently at Troy include the following: • The Federalist (1st ed.) • Leviathan (1st ed.) • The Prince (1st American ed.) • Quran Manuscript (from the late 18th Century) • Torah (Scroll from the 16th Century) • Magna Carta (Manuscript from ca. 1350) • Fables of Aesop (1st ed.) • And much more!!!
Submit Your Work Do you have an interesting experience with local, state or federal government information? Write up an article and share it with us! You can send it to: Tim Dodge: dodgeti@auburn.edu
Kelly Wilson: kelly.m.wilson2011@gmail.com
This is a greeting card featuring an image of Rosa Parks and Elaine Steele. For more information, visit: https://www.loc.gov/ pictures/item/2015648781/ Elaine Steele and Rosa Parks co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute in February 1987, according to the Institute’s website which can be found here: https://www.rosaparks.org/ biography/