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Last week Rep.Phyllis Kahn was mentioned in a blog posting from the National Conference of State Legislatures. "No Modern Experiments with a Parliamentary System in the States" noted her proposal a few years ago to change Minnesota's government to a parliamentary system. Minnesota gets mentioned every now and then in the NCSL blog, The Thicket. Minnesota-related postings include a charming description of "The Minnesota Legislature Through Russian Eyes," posted in 2007 by guest author Dmitry Polyakov, from St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Minnesota State Demographic Center has done a terrific job with their Population Notes publication over the years. Two new readable and interesting issues reflect a good news/bad news scenario. We learn from Minnesota Per Capita Income Grows Modestly between 2006 and 2007 that between 2006 and 2007, Minnesota's per capita income grew 5.6%, slightly higher than the national average of 5.2%. Minnesota ranked twelfth among states and had the highest per capita income of any state in the Midwest. On the other hand, Minnesota Housing Prices, 2006-2007 includes a number of simple and depressing statements, like, "The number of sales fell dramatically."
The Legislative Reference Library has notebooks on past sessions of the Legislature with clippings, seating guides, articles, excerpts from books, and session overviews. For example, here is a Legislative Summary1973-74 from the House and Senate DFL Caucuses. A new addition to the 1973 notebook is an article by former House Research Analyst John Helland, "The Environment's Greatest Legislative Session," from the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy's June, 2008, Advocacy Update. (See page 8.) "Breakthrough legislation passed that year included the Environmental Policy Act, Critical Areas Act, State Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Mineland Reclamation Act, energy conservation policy, enhanced evaluation of pesticide use and its effects, and more." John noted that the biggest push came on Valentine's Day, 1973, when Governor Wendell Anderson gave the first ever environmental address to the Legislature, "Securing a Quality Environment in Minnesota." Here is a list of members of the 1973 session who likely heard that address and participated in that notable session.
It's always interesting to see how our state is represented in national magazines. This month's Homeland Security Today includes an article about security at the upcoming Republican National Convention (RNC), "Twin Cities Security: Readying for Republicans." Our area handles larger events routinely; the RNC anticipates 45,000 visitors while the State Fair has 1.7 million visitors each year. However, this is the first time that St. Paul has faced the unique security challenges of a National Special Security Event (NSSE). The 2004 RNC was held in New York City, but that city is
more used to such events and has a police force of
approximately 40,000 officers compared to St. Paul's 600. The 2008 RNC will benefit from additional resources from the Secret Service and from the seven-county metropolitan area and beyond. Secret Service Agent Darrin Blackford said, "It's been a bit of a learning curve with the partners in Minneapolis/St. Paul, but we couldn't be happier with them."
A new book in the library from the Brookings Institution, The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education, tackles a complex issue in chapters written by a variety of researchers. Do high school graduates earn more than those who drop out? From the chapter on labor market consequences, "Over a lifetime, an 18-year-old who does not complete high school earns approximately $260,000 less that someone with a high school diploma and contributes about $60,000 less in lifetime federal and state income taxes." Regarding health status and costs, "Each and every annual cohort of high school dropouts represents a cost of $23 billion in public funds and $110 billion in forfeited health and longevity." From the chapter on crime and criminal justice, "A 1 percent increase in the high school completion rate of all men ages 20-60 would save the United States as much as $1.4 billion per year in reduced costs incurred by victims and by society at large." These statements are isolated from the larger context of the research presented, but serve as examples of the compelling way the authors quantify many aspects of the issue. In addition, the book includes chapters on interventions to raise high school graduation rates and early childhood education interventions.
A recent article from the Minnesota Independent, Hemorrhaging Fish and Algae Blooms Predicted for Minnesota Waters, included a link to a Chicago Tribune graphic showing the entire Mississippi River as an "area of concern" for the fish virus hemorrhagic septicemia. Thank goodness legislators have already acted by passing a a group of measures designed to prevent the spread of the deadly fish virus. They probably just had to look at a couple of pictures of fish with viral hemorrhagic septicemia before voting to pass Chapter 307 (Act, House Research Summary). It passed the House 130-4, and the Senate 66-1. Also, in Sec. 71 of Chapter 297 the commissioners of the Departments of Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Health are required to form a work group to develop a plan for detecting and responding to the fish virus. They will report to the Legislature by January 5, 2009. Learn more about the fish disease threat from a Department of Natural Resouces description or downloadable flyer.
There have been several articles in the past few days regarding a lawsuit by the state against Excel Dairy near Thief River Falls. (Here's one from MinnPost.) Appropriate to that topic, the Library recently received a new book from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: A Survey of State Policies, with a page describing each state and a number of tables comparing specific policies. (See the table of contents.) That report is not free online in full text, but NCSL also has a great webpage with background on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, including a link to recent studies from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. CAFO issues are likely to continue in Minnesota. The list of Recent Environmental Reviews of Interest from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency include many for feedlots and feedlot expansions. (As an aside, a few years ago there were fewer environmental assessment worksheets for feedlots and ethanol plants, and a lot more for residential housing developments with names like Kingsbury Hills, Grand View Estates, and Prairie Lake.)
The Minnesota Historical Society has a great new wiki-based site, Placeography, where people share the history of and stories about houses, buildings,
farmsteads, public land, and neighborhoods. I wonder how many people who work at the Capitol could name all of the memorials on the Capitol grounds. On these beautiful summer days you could could visit all of the memorials or go for walks to check out sites featured in St. Paul's Gangster History Tour. 
It's a great thing that Minnesota state government keeps evolving to meet the needs of citizens, but it can be difficult to keep up with name changes! An article in today's Star Tribune notes, "New Future, New Name for Minnesota Technology," A 2008 law (Chapter 290) changed the name of "Minnesota Technology, Inc." to Enterprise Minnesota. People who have been around state government might remember that Minnesota Technology was a name change in 1991 (Chapter 322) from the Greater Minnesota Corporation, which was created in in 1987 (Chapter 386). Originally chartered by the Legislature, Minnesota Technology Inc., soon to be Enterprise Minnesota, operates as a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
A colleague asked, "Is that the same as the Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)?" No, OET is a state agency formed in 2005, combining the Minnesota Office of Technology and the InterTechnologies Group. But I understand that the mix of the words 'enterprise' and 'technology' and 'Minnesota' might lead to confusion!
In a continuing effort to make important documents available to a wider audience, the Library has a new database of executive orders from the past seven governors, 779 in all. The orders were scanned from our print notebooks and cover all of the governors since the Library began. (Although Governor Pawlenty's executive orders can be found on his website, any other electronic orders disappeared after the governors left office.) Executive orders often deal with emergencies, like Governor Pawlenty's order declaring a state of emergency due to the winds in Hugo (08-09). There are 285 orders in this set with the word "emergency" in the title or description.
Now you (or your dog) can star in your own mini READ poster thanks to ALA (American Library Association).
Just upload your photo, add some text if desired, choose a poster style, and you're done! How fun!
The Wisconsin Law Journal reports that "on Oct. 14, 2008, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will, for the fourth time, consider a proposed rule to allow citation to an unpublished decision for persuasive authority." Read more.
I was very pleased to share that Legal Research in Wisconsin, 2nd edition is finally available. The authors are Ted Potter (main author), Jane Colwin, Mary Koshollek, and UW Law Library's own Bill Ebbott and Sunil Rao.
Here's the abstract from Hein:
This new edition continues to offer a comprehensive reference tool about legal research in Wisconsin. It revises and updates chapters and also expands them to include electronic tools and other new sources. Basic research tools are discussed with an eye toward showing their best uses in locating useful information. It remains a guide for attorneys, judges, paralegals, law librarians, students and others needing ready access to information contained in Wisconsin legal materials.The cost of the volume is $57.50.
Yesterday a representative from Zotero, Trevor Owens, gave a demo to our law school faculty. To say that they were impressed would be an understatement - there were actual squeals of delight.
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. I've know about it for a while (in fact I posted about it last year) but until this week, I had no idea how powerful it is.
It's not just a free version of RefWorks or EndNote which help you capture citations and create bibliographies. Zotero does that, but also much more: it manages the entire research and writing process.
For example, say you're viewing a journal article in HeinOnline. If you look up in the Firefox address bar, you'll see a little paper icon. When you click on the icon, Zotero will capture the full citation information. BUT--and here's the kicker--you can also download the entire PDF article which will attach itself to the citation information.
Now imagine doing this a hundred times over, and not just with articles but with all kinds of documents - web pages, books, gov docs, images, audio, video, etc. Then add content from your own desktop - word files, PDFs, MP3s, PPT files, etc. You can attach pretty much any kind of file to a citation.
Then organize it all into folders (more like iTunes playlists than folders actually) for different projects. And the really cool part is that you can keyword search it all - even the attached articles, word files, web pages, etc. Wow!
But wait - there's more! When you're ready to sit down and write, up steps the Zotero MS Word add on which automatically creates citations for you in your choice of citation style - INCLUD ING BLUEBOOK! (The Bluebook style is still in beta, but neither EndNote or RefWorks offer Bluebook at all) Or, if you don't use MS Word, you can simply drag the citation from your Zotero library into any document (WordPerfect, Google Docs, email, etc.) and it will paste in the correctly formatted citation.
Just amazing - Zotero is an absolute must have for anyone who writes. For more information, watch this short video or read the informational flyer.
I'm pleased to announced that the entire run of the University of Wisconsin Law School's alumni newsletter, The Gargoyle, has been digitized and is freely available on our Web site. The collection spans from volume 1 (1969) to the present.
The digitization project was organized by the UW Law Library in collaboration with Technology Services. It was graciously funded by the Benchers Society.
The collection is currently browse-able by issue and article title. A search box will be added soon.
Must be the week for new interfaces - this time its a new look for del.icio.us - or make that Delicious (hold the periods). Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.
Here's a look at my list of the bookmarks I've tagged PhotosImages in Delicious:
According to the Delicious blog
We've updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we're hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn.
Check out all the changes, including navigation, tag bar, bookmarks, side bar and action box, on the What's New page. Or, watch a short movie which visually depicts the changes.
Behind the scenes, Delicious has also improved the speed and search capabilities according to the blog.
It appears that SSRN (Social Science Research Network) has made some interface improvements to its author and article pages. Very nice. For those that may not be familiar with it, SSRN is an open access repository of scholarly papers.
Article page:
Notice the large download buttons at the top of the article page. They appear when you "Choose Download Location" link. This is a nice improvement since it wasn't entirely clear how to download on the old format. If you click on the "Share" link at the top, you'll see links to save/share the url on Digg, Del.icio.us, etc. At the bottom of the page, you have the option to export the cite to EndNote, BibTeX and RefMan. That may or may not be new, but I've never noticed it.
Author page:
The author page also has some nice options. At the very top, notice the RSS feed which will notify you of all new papers and revisions by that author. (This isn't new, but it's worth repeating.)
In the listing of articles, statistics to number of downloads and citations appear on the right. In the actions bar across the top, you can email or export citations to selected articles in the list. You can also choose to view or hide abstracts in the article list.
A new service called Slydial connects you directly to to someone's mobile voicemail - without ever having the phone ring. Sneaky.
Here's how it works:
I tried this out on my husband's cell phone and it really works. It put me right in his voicemail with no indication that I'd done anything differently. I can think of a few good uses for this. Can you? Here are some from Slydial.
Genie Tyburski has announced that she's closing down The Virtual Chase. Wow - the end of an era.
I will take down the site gradually over the next several months unless I find someone willing to archive it or continue its development. I anticipate that the site will be completely offline by no later than May 2009 (and quite possibly, sooner) except in the event of a new owner.
Criminal Searches is a new site that allows you to do just what its name implies - run a criminal history check on specific people or generally for a geographic area.
From an AP story:
Created by the folks behind PeopleFinders.com, the new site crunches monthly government data down to the state and county level, says Bryce Lane, president and chief operating officer of PeopleFinders.com."What we're really good at is establishing connections across all these different data sets, linking it back to a particular person," Lane said, acknowledging, however, that some data might be missing. The company also doesn't tap into federal crime data.
The Neighborhood Watch feature lets you focus your search by address or ZIP code. You can also search by a person's name or specific home address, and there's a separate search with a detailed map of registered sex offenders.
All I can say is WOW. I ran a general check of my street (I live in small town USA) and was completely shocked by the number of people listed - and all overlayed on a Google map of my neighborhood. Criminal Searches also includes an legend of the type of crime for which an individual was charged. See, for example, this map of the UW Madison campus area.
Not surprisingly, some are questioning the product.
Yet, if a neighbor was not convicted and is otherwise innocent this may not matter to CriminalSearches.com. If you land on the list, prepare to save money on Halloween candy and rest assured you'll have a less cluttered social calender -- as word moves along about the free criminal background search website.
 State Legislatures magazine presents
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The National Conference of State Legislatures: The Forum for America's Ideas www.ncsl.org |
State Legislatures magazine presents
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The National Conference of State Legislatures: The Forum for America's Ideas www.ncsl.org |
State Legislatures magazine presents
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The National Conference of State Legislatures: The Forum for America's Ideas www.ncsl.org |
State Legislatures magazine presents
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The National Conference of State Legislatures: The Forum for America's Ideas www.ncsl.org |
The most innovative, user-friendly state and local government portals plus outstanding agency and department Web sites and applications.
State plans to provide a more competitive environment for suppliers to vie for state contracts and a preferential position on its eprocurement network.
"We have massive data sitting in government computers that represent pieces of the puzzle. If you put it together we can better understand our children, and our parents and us as humans."
The city built a spatial data warehouse in 2000, followed by enterprise geospatial Web services in 2001.
"A powerful tool that leverages the eyes and ears of many toward the apprehension of criminals who threaten our protectors."
"Individually, none of our towns can afford the number of police needed to keep track of all the activities of an increasingly mobile population of offenders."
Collins' resignation ends probe into possible improper use of city property.
In 2007 each Alaska resident received a dividend of $1,654.
"State information technology best
In today's edition, colleges: Drinking age not working. 2008 state elections: What is at stake? And fuel crisis cuts down on carnival fun. Go to 
In today's edition, alternative energy's front lines. Filling backpack a burden for more families. And measures could bring youth to state races. Go to 
In today's edition, North Texas school district will let teachers carry guns. College kids scrimp this year. And medicaid bears brunt of states' budget crunch. Go to 
In today's edition, handgun bans are under fire after high court's ruling. Some states seek integration path for immigrants. And foreclosure filings surge 55 percent over July '07. Go to