America Recycles Day, Nov. 15, 2010

America Recycles Day
November 15, 2010



Do you know how, where, when, and what to recycle in your community? If not, check the America Recycles Day website to find answers to those questions. The site includes a widget that lets you fill in what kind of material you want to recycle along with your zip code or city/state to find when and where to recycle that material. Their Links & Resources page provides recycling information from federal and state agencies and  battery, glass, paper, plastic, and steel industrial sites. If you would like to sponsor a recycling event, you can use their America Recycles Day Tool Kit. You can also find them on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

For campus environmental and recycling information see the Enviro-Web of Rice University.

Election Results

Harris Votes from the County Clerk's office (upper left link) has as yet unofficial results from Harris County for the Nov. 2, 2010 elections.  A pdf or html format is available and includes data showing the number of people voting straight party tickets, the number of people registered to vote, and the percentage who actually voted.

Preliminary election night returns are available for Texas from the Office of the Secretary of State. You can choose to view a statewide race summary, a county race summary from a county drop-down menu, or county by county results from a dropdown menu of specific races including judicial elections.

The wiki Ballotpedia, a free online encyclopedia about state politics with contributions from the public, includes preliminary election results for Texas and other states and extensive background information about candidates and issues. To see the results, under ballots and elections choose a link for the 2010 races (gubernatorial, senate, house, etc.).

New Multimedia Congressional Timeline

The Dirksen Center has created a fun and informative multimedia Congressional timeline by session from 1933 to the present. Using a clever revolving cube to access audio, videos, photos, and documents, the site spotlights major legislation during each session and includes information about women and African American members, measures of productivity, and the partisan composition of each Congress.  A wiki allows for participation by viewers.

Consumer Protection Act Reports, Summaries, and Commentaries

The Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C (LLSDC) has created a new Web site to provide a comprehensive history along with summaries and commentaries on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act (http://www.llsdc.org/Dodd-Frank-Act-Leg-Hist/). The site enables a user to determine when a provision got into the bill and how that provision changed in other versions when applicable. It also makes looking for related reports, hearings, and other documents easier.

New Federated Government Search Tool

The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications has just released a new MetaLib federated search tool. The tool searches across more than 50 U.S. Federal government databases with more to be added in the future. Use it to retrieve reports, articles and citations. MetaLib offers basic, advanced, and expert search and includes an A-Z resource list to locate specific databases and to create a personalized set of databases to search at a user's convenience. It also offers a session-based My-Eshelf so that users can create their own resource lists, save records, and define preferences for the display of results for that session only.

Focus on American Education

Combating the decline in American educational achievement has been the focus this week of the following events/sites: NBC's Education Nation, the new Teach.gov recruitment site, and President Obama's press release announcing plans to recruit 10,000 new Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) teachers over the next two years. Highlights from the September 26-27 education summit in New York are available on the Education Nation website and include interviews with such notables as President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell to name a few. Teach.gov is the United States Department of Education's effort to let young people know what it is like to be a teacher and give them the tools to become one. In his STEM press statement President Obama stressed expanding education and career opportunities for underrepresented groups such as women and minorities, giving American students the tools to catch up with their peers in other high performing nations, and helping them learn to think critically in STEM fields. Now the challenge is to turn the focus into results.

2010 Secrecy Report Card

On September 7, 2010, OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of groups committed to open government, released the 2010 Secrecy Report Card. In the corresponding press release, Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org, states, "In general, after hitting high water marks during the Bush Administration, statistics indicate the creation of new national security secrets is slowing ebbing." However, the report also highlights "looming secrecy problems the Obama Administration should address."