Attention fellow FDLP Librarians! If you are going to the ALA Annual 2009 Conference in Chicago next week, please come to the ALA Unconference where I will be leading a broad discussion on Friday, July 10th from 11:10-12:00 on the library's role in current & emerging trends of civic engagement, transparency, preservation and access to Government information. The supporting materials and presentation will be linked in the Unconference wiki.

Also, please come to the LITA BIGWIG Social Software Showcase to discuss and learn about Government Information Mashups! I will be presenting on this topic and would love to have you help out and/or join in on the conversation! The presentation will be posted on their website but the face to face portion of the BIGWIG Showcase presentations will take place Monday, July 13th from 10:30am - 12:30pm in the McCormick Convention Center West, Room W-184.

Be sure to check out the  presentation "Libraries and Obama's Information Policy" featuring Jim Jacobs, co-creator of FreeGovInfo.info. 

And of course, a listing of all the GODORT sponsored presentations and meetings are listed at the GODORT Wiki.

I started a Government Information Interest Group at ALA Connect. If you are a member of ALA, please consider joining. It is pretty bare bones right now and I could use some help in developing it and making it grow. It is a great way to connect with all types of librarians who share an interest in government information, but may or may not be part of a depository library or a member of GODORT. It is another way to provide outreach and educate our fellow librarians about the world of government information!

The group is for those interested in government information (federal, state, local, and international). Various topics of interest include depository libraries, government information collections, open access, transparency, and preservation of government information, E-government, Government 2.0, and using social networks to collect and disseminate government information (”Gov Docs 2.0″) and more!

Dr. Mark Drapeau writes a wonderful series of posts on Government 2.0 ("from an insider's perspective") at Mashable.com.

Dr. Drapeau is the 2006-2008 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security policy of the National Defense University in Washington. He also has his own fun blog and tweets at Twitter under the name "Cheeky_Geeky". How cute is that?

Via Huffington Post:

President-elect Barack Obama has launched the website change.gov, where one can find news about the transition and inauguration and information about his agenda. The site also has a place for people to share their ideas for government and their stories about the campaign.

According to DemConWatch, the site change.gov is slated to go live later today.

I've caught the widget bug, thanks to Daniel Cornwall, who mentioned on Twitter that he found some nifty EPA Widgets.

So, out of curiosity, I did a search for other Government Agency widgets and widgets that use government information (such as those found on Govtrack.us or the Sunlight Foundation website). I found quite a few but I know there must be more out there.

I've compiled a "government widget guide" at my Gov Docs 2.0 wiki page. Please feel free to suggest others by commenting here or on the wiki page.

I thought it would be nice to have a guide so you can quickly browse widgets that you may want to add to your blog or webpage. For example, see my Environmental Law guide (a work in progress, mind you) for ideas!