Monday, February 20, 2012

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports

Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a research agency of Congress and writes reports at Congress' request. These short reports (usually 10-40 pages long) cover recent topics of concern. This month brings us reports on the budget, foreign relations, military issues, and much more. Although these reports are in the public domain, there is no central database available to the public. To get a copy of a CRS report, you can request it from your senator or representative. These reports were discovered by  Secrecy News:
Interested in historical CRS reports? If you are here at the Boulder campus, check out the  Congressional database, which has reports dating back to 1916.

Not on campus but still want access to additional reports? The library has a guide linking to various additional sources of CRS reports. 
Posted by Jennie at 9:57 AM
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Eyes on the Economy

The state of the economy is one of the key issues during this election cycle.  Among the leading economic indicators are data produced by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   The Census Bureau reports on international trade, wholesale trade, retail trade, manufacturing, construction, home ownership, new residential sales and more.  Data and a calendar of future Census releases are in the Economic Briefing Room.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) gathers and publishes data on the consumer price index, employment cost, producer prices, earnings and employment, productivity, and U.S. import and export prices.   The BLS site is so huge and so complex that it's probably best to start on the News Releases page.

Economic Indicators from the Census Bureau
The Conference Board also produces statistics that are widely-cited including the Leading Economic Indicators Index and the Consumer Confidence Index.  According to the Conference Board, a composite index is powerful because it is "constructed to summarize and reveal common turning point patterns in economic data in a clearer and more convincing manner...."  Based on the latest numbers from 2011 we can be "cautiously" optimistic for the first half of 2012.

The Government Information Library has links for additional resources on its Business and Economics pages.  Check it out.
Posted by Margaret Jobe at 9:14 AM
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Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Government Accountability Office (GAO) Reports and Releases

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) which is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This month brings us publications from GAO investigating transportation, defense, banking, and many other issues. If you would like to know more about GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Testimony
  • Arlington National Cemetery: Actions Taken and Steps Remaining to Address Contracting and Management Challenges, by Brian J. Lepore, director, defense capabilities and management, and Belva M. Martin, director, acquisition and sourcing management, before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, GAO-12-374T, January 25.
    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-374T
    http://www.gao.gov/assets/590/587928.pdf
  • Department of Energy: Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy Could Improve Its Collection of Information from Applications, by Frank Rusco, Director, National Resources and Environment, before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology: Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee. GAO-12-407T, January 24.
    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-407T  
Correspondence
Special Publication
Posted by Jennie at 9:24 AM
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

National History Day

Lately we've had a lot of fun working with students on National History Day projects.  This year the theme is "Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History".  The program emphasizes using both primary and secondary resources.  The Society of American Archivists (SAA) has created a toolkit on using archives to locate primary sources.  The toolkit offers the following definition,  "Primary sources are unique materials that are created at the time of a historical event that can serve as proof of historical facts. Primary sources are unfiltered materials; the information is not interpreted by someone who was not a witness to the event. Primary sources provide a window into the past. How do we know about events that have passed? Through the primary sources that participants left behind."  The toolkit also contains tips on research, links to online primary sources and other information. 

In addition to archives, government information often contains a rich array of primary sources.  Here are some of the projects students have worked on and the tools we have suggested:
Children waiting to fill pails with soup, 1940.  American Memory
This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Check out our page on Historic and Archival Documents.  Many of the resources are freely available, but some are only available on campus. 
Posted by Margaret Jobe at 2:53 PM
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Finding Polling Data

Those of us here in the Government Information Library tend to be political junkies and I am no exception. In these election years I get to combine that with my love of data and then try infect the rest of you with the same enjoyment. How can I combine data and politics? Oh, there are so many ways, but the easiest is polling.

For example, all politicians love to talk about taxes, so what do we, the electorate, think about this issue?

Pew Report: Tax System Seen as Unfair, in Need of Overhaul
This graph and table give a quick summary of the issues without making us read a whole lot of words. In just a few seconds I go "Yeah, I totally agree" or "Who did they poll in this study?" These reactions are one of the reasons they continue to keep polling all of us and including these polls in newspapers and TV programs.

So, how does one go about finding these polls? Well, depending on if you are lucky enough to be here or at another library there are a number of different options.

Here at the University of Colorado Boulder we have two subscription databases that will meet the majority of your polling needs:
  • iPoll This database contains over 600,000 questions and answers asked in the US since 1935 by every major polling firm. In other words, lots of good stuff! It lets you download whole datasets, tables, or graphs for these questions. It is updated regularly and is a great place to search.
  • Polling the Nations This database contains over 4,000 surveys conducted by more than 1000 polling organizations in the United States and more than 100 other countries. In other words, a great place to go when looking for non-US opinion as well.
For those of you not at this fine institution, do not despair! There are a number of freely available resources:
  • Pew Research Center This is the organization who brought us the tables displaying above and they cover issues from the internet to taxes to the press and all of it is available for you to read and analyze to your hearts content for free.
  • Gallup While Gallup locks a lot of its research in a database, which we don't have access to here, there is still a lot of the current data available for free on their web site on both the US and the world as a whole.
  • American National Election Studies This group conducts national surveys of the American electorate in election years. Their datasets consist of the time series studies (conducted since 1948) collected around each national election and pilot studies conducted in "off-years" to test or refine the time series studies.
Not enough? Well, why not check out the library's guide to Polls. Happy number crunching!
Posted by Jennie at 9:00 AM
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