Government Information for Children Minutes—ALA Annual Conference 2017

Chicago

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Meeting Details

Government Information for Children

Agenda: fosters an awareness of the value of government information as a lifelong resource for living locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.

Time: 8:30–10:00 a.m.

Location: Palmer, Burnham 4

Contact: Tom Adamich, Chair

Email: toma@mitinet.com

Attendees: Siu Min Yu, Greg March, Debbie Abilock (NoodleTools—guest), Dwight Fouts (LC—guest), Rich Gause, Connie Williams, Tom Adamich

Meeting Summary

Discussions were very productive and interesting as the GODORT Government Information for Children (GIC) Committee met in Chicago to talk about current projects and identify new initiatives.

One of the most interesting topics focused on the continued development of the GIC Clearinghouse—http://guides.ucf.edu/gic. The University of Central Florida (UCF) is hosting the GIC Clearinghouse as a group within their LibGuides content.

The mission of the GIC Clearinghouse is as follows:

The GIC website is created and maintained by members of the Government Documents Round Table [GODORT], the Government Information for Children [GIC] Committee, and current/future ALA Emerging Leader Cohorts. We are a group of government documents librarians and K-12 school librarians who meet up and share the best information for students (of all ages) that comes from government sources. The project was originally conceived as a promotional tool for the value of government documents to K-12 students and teachers in addressing the requirement to integrate Constitution Day into public school curricula. We welcome new members.

Rich Gause, UCF LibGuides administrator, will authorize each page individually for editors. Jane Canfield (Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico) and a cohort of students will be adding Spanish language government documents to a designated Spanish language documents page starting in fall 2017.

Started by longtime GIC member Connie Williams, the National History Day (NHD) liaison program continues, with several new projects. One of those projects is the NHD/GIC questions support effort, led by Greg March (University of Tennessee Knoxville). Working with noted school library expert Debbie Abilock (NoodleTools), March developed and reviewed details relating to the NHD/GIC questions beta test (which began in April, 2017 and was slated to end following the conclusion of the ALA Annual Conference).

Additional NHD/GIC activities included the NHD liaison role transfer from Williams to March, strategic planning for future NHD/NoodleTools GIC Questions (workflow and questions transfer), discussion of GODORT-wide participation with NHD (GIC in particular) Plans were to create an awareness webinar with details forthcoming. The suggestion was to place the webinar on YouTube.

Another longtime GIC project is the Constitution Day Poster Contest. There was an inquiry as to which GIC Committee member would like to continue contest advocacy now that Tom Adamich has stepped down as Chair. There was also an inquiry from retired depository librarian Martha Childers to contact a company called Constitution Quest that produces a Constitution board game to see if possible programming could result or prompt development of a new Constitution-related GIC activity/contest.

Current Constitution Day Poster Contest promotion activities were reviewed and Williams asked if project restructuring be recommended to Constitutionfacts.com, with a possible connection to the Letters About Literature Project (Library of Congress Center for the Book: http://www.read.gov/letters) as a result? Adamich stated he would discuss restructuring with the publisher of Constitutionfacts.com, Keir Walton. Williams also suggested that additional school listservs be added as recipients of Constitution Day Poster Contest e-mail blasts.

Incoming chair Liza Weisbrod discussed briefly the new GODORT five-year plan introduced by Stephen Woods. It was discussed that GIC becomes a taskforce, and Abilock recommended attending “Libraries Foster Community Engagement,” Sunday, June 25, 2017, Hilton Chicago Lake Ontario, 8:30 a.m.–10:00 a.m., as a prompt for further group strategic planning.

As mentioned earlier, the idea of creating GIC webinars was discussed, with Williams and March mentioning interest in creating a NHD/NoodleTools webinar. Weisbrod pointed out that both the ALA (http://www.ala.org/godort/webinars) and GPO (https://www.fdlp.gov/about
-the-fdlp/fdlp-academy) both have webinar infrastructures available to use.

—Tom Adamich, Outgoing Chair, GIC (June 28, 2017)