Citizen Power... Activate! Form of... Upcoming Elections

I was robbed!

Well, I'm not sure that Penn and I were ever actual city residents before, but with the recent redistricting process, we've lost our membership in the elite group that gets to go to the polls next Tuesday (or earlier if you like) and vote in the Greensboro city election.

You city-tax-payin' swells, on the other hand, will be voting for a mayor, a city council member from your district, and three at-large council members. You'll also be asked to approve or deny $20,000,000 in bonds for the Natural Science Center. You can determine your city district and polling place at the State Board of Election's Voter Lookup site. (Click "My Districts" once your personal information comes up.)

Candidates' financial reports are available here. The Greensboro News & Record's Vote '09 page has a sidebar listing the mayoral/council races with links to each candidate's personal website (if available). Winston-Salem residents, follow your races here (or tell me how to navigate your local newspaper's website well enough to find the municipal website that certainly must exist, somewhere.)

So have fun on Tuesday, and I'll see you at the polls... next year.

Docs Office Update

Did you know that the University Libraries house approximately 400,000 government documents? Don't feel bad -- neither did very many other people! But that's changing, thanks to the awe-inspiring efforts of our Cataloging Department, especially Katherine Nunnally, Jennifer Ormsby, Ed Waters, Jenny Raabe, Paul Hessling, Clara Kelly, and Sue Brusnahan (retired) who started the whole process.

Thanks to the unbelievable efforts of these folks, documents from the departments of Education, State, and Defense, along with the Smithsonian Institute, Library of Congress, Civil Rights Commission and the state of NC are now listed in our catalog. Most Congressional and online-only docs are available as well, and catalogers are currently tackling the Health Department.

This project has been a long time coming, and we've already seen some very tangible results; there have been definite jumps in local and ILL circulation of documents that are now listed in the catalog and OCLC. When I mention the project to people from other depositories, they tend to get a far-away look in their eyes and whisper, "maybe someday..." We're very lucky to have the ability to make these resources so much more easily accessible to our patrons. Thank You to everyone involved, and to the librarians and administrators who were willing to back such a huge undertaking!

Autumn Sunshine

Whether you're a citizen journalist, a researcher, or just a promoter of an informed electorate, the NC Open Government Coalition's "Sunshine Center" and the City of Greensboro are sponsoring two workshops that should prove useful. The presentations take place tomorrow, October 22, at 2pm and 7pm, at the Greensboro Historical Museum (get directions) and both are free and open to the public.

The 2pm workshop will focus on NC's open meeting law and requests from media. The 7pm workshop will emphasize NC's public records law and FOIA requests. Both presentations will feature representatives from Elon University's School of Law to anwer questions and provide a review of state legislation.

We have laws in place that protect our right to information, but they only work when we know how to use them.