Friday, February 24, 2006

The Ides of April are upon you
Yesterday, I filed my taxes for the year and thought this would be a good time to remind everyone about the .gov sites and links.
If you haven't tried Firstgovsearch.gov, try putting in "Christianity" and observing how the engine retrieves the results. The engine sorts the results by relevance, by topic, agency and source. The results include the Library of Congress.
My biggest reference challenge in government is locating information about laws and bills for Social Work students. I entered "nursing home administration act," an incomplete title, and the results quickly identified the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 0f 1987 which is where I wanted to be. I plan to incorporate this search site into any future lessons on government sites and maybe even databases.

Besides Factcheck.org, I receive (free) e-mail from three other sites which help track current issues in government. Stateline.org , a subsidiary of Pew Research, posts current material for--what else-- States. Governing.com sends posts about all levels of government. Unfortunately, my e-mail subscription seems to have vanished lately. Finally, WashingtonWatch.com keeps me current on pending bills, and the average cost or savings of these bills to families.

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