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For Jay Mendell's book on overcoming stigma in fund raising, please surf to http://black-sheep-library.com/order-now-black-sheep-fundraising.htm
That's Black Sheep Fundraising: Obtaining Dollars Despite
Stigma and Prejudice toward Abortion, AIDS, Alcoholism, Birth Control, Child
Abuse, Domestic Violence, Drug Abuse, Eating Disorders, Gambling, Homelessness,
Homosexuality, Mental Disorders, Partner Violence,
Sex Education, Teenage Pregnancy, the Unemployed, the Ex-Offenders, the
Illegal Immigrants, the Juvenile Offenders, the Elderly, and Other Outcast
Causes .
Click
here to add your name to a free electronic mailing list for the latest Florida grants information.
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here for the flyer and registration form for our fall 2003 grant programs in Fort Lauderdale and Jupiter.
Public Affairs Information on the
World Wide Web:
Jay S. Mendell, Ph.
D.
(mendell at
bellsouth dot net)
Start in the nearest scholarly library.
If you have a library card in a university library (or in a college that has cut a
sharing deal with a large university) you probably have access to an immense amount of
public affairs information, much of it over the Internet.
Visit your university's Web site. Probably there is a government documents subsite.
Probably there are various databases available if you type in your library card number.
Some of these, such as academic index, contain many articles in full text, even some with
illustration. Other very important services are not unlocked by your library card number,
but you can get to them if you use a terminal in the library, a faculty office, or a
student laboratory. You can use Lexus//Nexis for instance, from an on-campus terminal,
because the services can recognize the terminal as hard-wired into the system. You might
have to toss coins into a printer, however.
For use in FAU library lobbies, computer labs and faculty offices and for holders of
FAU library cards, here is access to the FAU library.
(Library card holders may connect from home by using the proxy server.)
Exercise: Locate the Congressional Universe
in the FAU library. Here is a link, http://www.fau.edu/library/dbsubj.htm,
which will take you part of the way. (10 min)
Don't neglect your public library.
Find your own library on line.
Some databases in the Broward
public library.
Use the online WWW virtual library and other academic portals.
Special site: Virtual libraries are
collections of links to important documents that generally are of scholarly value. The
libraries generally insert practically no original material: they just point to important
resources.
Use this link to located various
rooms in the WWWVL. Some of the pertinent categories in WWW VL are Journalism...
International Affairs ... International Security... Law... Business and Economics...
Regional Studies... Political Science... Religion... and Social Sciences
Exercise: Using various
rooms in the WWWVL, find the WWW Virtual Library which
guides you to census data. (5 minutes)
Other high-class resources are InfoMine at U. California and Argus
Clearinghouse
Locate documents of federal government .
By "archival," I mean documents not intended to have (or demand) immediate
action and decisions. Contrast this with Federal Register, say, which is very action
oriented, because it contains documents to elicit proposals, comments, etc. Contrast it
also with Thomas, with its compilation of current legislation.
Special site: The University of Michigan
Document Center is the best. Here is another entry point.
For legal documents, check the Cornell Law Library.
The Government Printing Office is online.
There you will discover materials from
Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States...
Intelligence Community... Bureau of Land Management... Congress of the United States...
Department of Interior Office of Inspector General... Executive Office of the President...
Council of Economic Advisers... Office of Management and Budget... Export Administration
Regulations... Federal Labor Relations Authority... Food and Drug Administration...
General Accounting Office... Merit Systems Protection Board... National Archives and
Records Administration's Office of the Federal Register... National Bankruptcy Review
Commission... National Council on Disability... National Gambling Impact Study
Commission... National Labor Relations Board... Occupational Safety and Health Review
Commission Office of Compliance... Office of Government Ethics... Office of Special
Counsel... Office of Technology Assessment... U.S. Census Monitoring Board... United
States Commission on Civil Rights... United States Trade Representative... U.S. Census
Monitoring Board... U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission... U.S. Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board... Budget of the United States Government... Catalog of U.S.
Government Publications (MOCAT)... Code of Federal Regulations... Commerce Business
Daily... Congress... Congressional Bills... Congressional Directory, 104th and 105th
Congresses... Congressional Documents... Congressional Hearings... Congressional Pictorial
Directory, 105th Congress... Congressional Record... Congressional Record Index...
Congressional Reports... Economic Indicators... History of Bills... Miscellaneous House
Publications... Miscellaneous Senate Publications... Public Laws... U.S. Code, 1994
edition... U.S. Constitution, Analysis and Interpretation: 1992 Edition and 1996
Supplement... Federal Register... GAO Comptroller General Decisions... GAO Reports...
Government Information Locator Service (GILS) Records... Privacy Act Notices... Sales
Product Catalog (SPC)... Supreme Court Decisions... U.S. Government Manual... Weekly
Compilation of Presidential Documents
Locate documents of "other" governmental units (not U. S. federal
documents).
Wow! This is a tough one. Documents that you would expect to find at the city level are
sometimes at the county level. Documents you expect to find at the county level may be
kept in the city or state archives. You had better know the governmental structure before
you go fishing.
Exercise: Go to the U. S. Geological Survey and
confirm that Stuart, FL, is in Martin county and discover what cities and towns are
nearby. (5 minutes)
Wow! This is still tough. You want to find information on "dog licences" in
Stuart. But maybe you need to check the county records. And maybe they call it by another
name.
Exercise: See what happens if you go into the
Oingo
and Ask Jeeves search engines using the search terms "dog
licenses". Use a pen
or pencil and write down the names of various governmental departments that issue
licenses. (10 minutes)
You may need to learn some fancy syntax to do careful searching. Here is the syntax for Alta Vista.
Exercise: Now go into advanced Alta Vista
and search for dog licenses in Stuart, by using the syntax "((stuart OR martin)
NEAR (florida OR FL)) AND ("dog licenses" OR "animal control OR
"..." OR "...)". (15 minutes)
Locate newspapers and magazines, transcripts, and live events.
On the Internet, the distinction breaks down between newspapers, radio, and TV. You can
discover on the Web that the principal TV news programs provide transcripts, summaries,
and documentary footnotes, a la newspaper; while newspapers provide multimedia
supplements. The Web is, after all, in a class by itself.
There are daily newspapers, weekly newspapers and newsmags, monthly magazines of public
affairs (mostly). There are sites associated with news programming, provided by radio and
TV. The originating agencies my be international, national, local (city, mostly) in scope;
or they may be concerned with various trade, sectors, races, or ethnic groups. The content
may be current (the latest day of a daily, the latest month of a monthly), or archival.
Miami Herald,
Sun-Sentinel, and
Palm Beach Post. Archives for Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, and Palm Beach Post.
New York Times and Wall Street Journal
Newsweek front page on
MS-NBC.com, Time, and U. S. News and World Report.
Some of newspapers and newsmags require you to apply for a free password, and
some may only be available to paidup subscribers. But if a paid subscription is required,
check and see if your local
library or university library has
taken a mass subscription for its cardholders.
Newspapers Online.
Yahoo! on news and media.
Radio and TV transcripts for sale.
Assess the extent and variety of information available on the Web.
- Some state and city resources
in the U. S.
- Hold on to your hat! A gigantic database of databases, many of
them in public affairs and government. A slow loader, but worth the wait. For
instance, see the section on government.
- American Information Network on a variety of
public records.
- Some items found on the World Wide Web: 10-k, 10-q, 8k, accidents,
addresses and telephone numbers, ambient monitoring, annual reports, appeals, arrests,
aviation, aviation records, background checks, bankruptcy, banks, bills, birth, budgets,
building inspectors, campaign, census, charitable organizations, child care, city clerk,
community profiles, company news, contractors, contracts, corporate registration,
corporate and trade names, corporation records, count clerks, county recorders,
courts--criminal, civil, other, credit unions, credit information, crime statistics,
crime, criminal history, criminal court, criminal records, death, demographics, dentist,
disasters, divorce, divorce, docket, driver and vehicle info, driver, economic data,
Edgar, Edgar, education and employment, election officials, elections, emergency,
environmental, environmental quality, escapees, examining boards, fatalities, federal tax
liens, federal departments, federal courts, federal records center, FEMA, fictitious or
assumed names, financial institutions, firefighter, foundations, gazetteers, genealogical,
geodata, geographic names, health statistics, how government works, how government works,
inmates, insurance regulators, jails, judgments, labor market, land records, laws,
legislation and regulations, legislature, licenses, regulations and permits, licensing,
limited partnerships, limited liability company, litigation and civil judgments,
lobbyists, maps, marriage, marriage, medical board, medical, military service, military
installations, military records, motor vehicles, national archives, news and current
events, parolee, personal financial disclosure, place names, planning, predators, press
releases, prisons, property assessment, property appraiser, public health databases,
public schools, real estate and assessor, real estate fannie mae hud , real estate sales,
real estate license, regulations, regulations, rules, sales tax registration, school
indicators, school report cards, SEC and other financial data, secretary of state,
securities offer and trading registrations, security regulators, security brokers, sex
offenders, social security, social indicators, speeches, state tax liens, state courts,
state data centers, state investigated accident reports, state archives, state courts,
statues, statutes, tax and other involuntary liens, tenant, thematic maps, trademark,
trademarks patents and copyright, UCC, UCC, UCC, vehicle and ownership, vital records,
vital statistics, voter registration, votes, warrants, workers' compensation records,
workers’ compensation.
Here are tutorials you can study later.
The federal Freedom of Information Act and Florida's public documents
laws.
Tiger maps from Census Bureau.
Public opinion and social science data. Public opinion from Clemson U.
Government documents, data, statistics, and reports.
U. Michigan on Local Governments
and Politics, the jumping off point for state, county, and city documents.
FedStats,
for statistics. Search through
FedStats. FedStats on Florida.
City and county data (1988, 1994) from the
Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, U. Virginia.
NASIRE, National Association of
State Information Resource Officers.
Use "engines," guides, indexes, and portals to
search for public affairs.
The content of the World Wide Web (alias WWW and the Web) changes so quickly that I
will expend more space on tools for searching than in naming sites that I especially favor
today.
Tomorrow new sites will attain momentary stardom and old sites will be gone. But there
will be tools for searching, and I need to point you to these tools and explain how to use
them.
By topical Web site, I mean one or more
documents following a theme that is easy to see and makes sense.
By a search engine, I mean a utility out on the Web
that continually visits and indexes Web sites, so that when you visit the search engine,
and feed it keywords, the engine searches its index and provides you a list of pointers to
relevant sites, most of them being topical Web sites.
By a metasearch engine, I mean a utility out on the Web that accepts keywords from you,
and queries several search engines, then collates the results for your use. An example is Mamma.
By a metasearch agent, I mean a utility that runs on your own computer, locally,
accepts keywords from you, and queries several search engines and metasearch engines out
on the Web, then collates the results for your use. I happen to be crazy about LexiBot.
By a topically-arranged portal, I mean a utility on the Web that has a menu of selected
links on various subjects, which have been evaluated for quality.
By Web database, I mean a collection of documents which may be keyword searched.
It is advisable to visit several search engines and metasearch engines, learn their syntax, and tune in to their quirks. Some will
be more useful in public affairs.
Here are some links to help you understand how the
search tools work. You may learn more than you want to know!
What to do if you cannot find what you want in one of the links above: How to cope
with overly "hyped" commercial Web sites.
Two search engines that avoid over-hype: Google and FAST.
Fine tuning FAST, to avoid commercial
sites.
What to do if you cannot find what you want in one of the links above: Here are two
search engines that will try to make sense of your inquiry,
Ask Jeeves-
Oingo
What to do if you cannot find what you want in one of the links above: The art of
snowballing.
Using Google Scout. Here is a search pre-set for birth rates.
If you like "http://www.ph.dhr.state.ga.us/"
then enter "link:http://www.ph.dhr.state.ga.us/" in Alta Vista. Here is the
result.
What to do if you cannot find what you want in one of the links above: Brute force
approach. Local client searches.
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