WebJunction

The following is a description of New Mexico News Plus, which has been implemented by the staff of our Federal Depository Library.  Our focus is on federal documents and information, and we include national issues in our updates, but any library could run with this concept by reading the local news and connecting daily with NGO web pages as well as local, state and federal agency pages and documents.  If you read through the following description and take a look at the site, you will have a better idea of what we are doing.  It would be a great way for public libraries to make “contact” with their communities, even by focusing on a few stories of local interest a day.   The usage of this page on our site has tripled in less than a year since we started taking statistics, which was three months after the site was launched.  It is a simple but powerful concept.

The New Mexico State Library has developed a web-based information research service designed to serve as an access tool for New Mexico’s libraries, students, teachers, citizen activists, and federal/state government policy makers. Updated each morning in response to the news of the day, New Mexico News Plus provides the user with links to government documents and agency contacts behind each story. For example, if the morning newspapers report that the New Mexico State Attorney General is joining with other state officials to challenge the federal government’s Clean Air Mercury Rule, or if the Bureau of Land Management has issued a draft Environmental Impact Statement for public comment on oil and gas exploration on New Mexico’s Otero Mesa, librarians from the New Mexico State Library and New Mexico State University team up to establish direct links to the text of the mercury rules and the draft EIS under discussion.  Each day brings on a new search for the text of a specific piece of legislation moving through Congress, a link to congressional testimony, or the text of a Supreme Court opinion. In response to the news, federal agency web sites are searched for the full text of reports, press releases, census statistics that reflect current population shifts, health statistics, reports concerning local endangered species, reports related to New Mexico’s national laboratories and military bases, as well as reports released by agencies such as the Surgeon General’s Report on The Health Consequences of Smoking or the Report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

With a dual focus on local newspapers from the north-central as well as the southern portion of the state, the site is intentionally designed to respond to the specific information interests of our state and local communities while still including pressing national issues and concerns.  All news articles that make reference to federal documents or agency contacts are listed in each day’s posting.

News Plus staff will contact the agency directly if the document in question appears not to be posted on the agency site.  If the agency verifies that the referenced information is not yet available online or, if it is not the agency’s intent to post the information online, News Plus staff will include a note to that effect in the daily report.  This agency verification process saves time for researchers that they might otherwise spend looking for information that is not on the net. It also increases the reliability of the site by assuring to the extent possible that News Plus staff has not missed information “hidden” on a referenced site.

New Mexico News Plus can be found on the New Mexico State Library

A companion A-Z site provides extensive subject access to federal documents, agencies and statistical resources.  The A-Z page is built primarily, though not exclusively, from News Plus, which gives the page a distinctive New Mexican focus. 

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