Each year, a group of librarians publishes a list of the best free websites.  There are several that showcase statistics and information about the government. 

The American Time Use Survey shows how much time we spend on various activities.  It has many charts and graphs, including how students spend their time and how Americans divvy up their leisure time.

FedSpending.org collects data from the U.S. government and makes it easy to search and understand.  Information is grouped by 3 general categories: contracts, assistance, and recovery. 

U.S. Economy at a Glance tracks key economic indicators across time. 

UNdata has statistics on many topics from over 30 UN databases.  You can search for information or browse by topic (such as crime, health, or population) or by country. 

The Library of Congress just completed another set of enhancements to THOMAS.  Notable changes include the conversion of all GPO Access links to FDsys links and having the most important bill types display first in a Bill Summary & Status Search.

For a complete list of enhancements, see In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress.

If you're a user of GPO Access, you will need to shift to GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) by the end of 2010, as GPO plans to sunset GPO Access at that time.  FDsys will then become GPO's sole electronic system of record.  According to GPO, less than 1% of the content from GPO Access remains to be processed and added to FDsys.  Otherwise, the data migration process for all 40 of its content collections is complete.

For more information on how to use FDsys, including both its search and browse capabilities as well as the types of collections it includes, select the "Help" link to the right of FDsys' main search box.  In addition, a PDF copy of the 97-page FDsys User Manual is available at http://www.gpo.gov/help/fdsys_user_manual.pdf.

This Veterans Day, we might reflect upon the progress made possible through the sacrifice of military servicemembers, and the tragedy, triumph, and trials of war. In legal history, the tribunals for war crimes following World War II have had a profound impact on our domestic and international jurisprudence and scholarship, and there are a growing number of online resources to help us research these important materials.

Transcripts and associated documents of the Nuremberg Trials (officially the International Military Tribunal for Germany) have been digitized, organized, and made available for free on the Web through several ongoing initiatives, including Yale’s Avalon Project, the Nuremberg Trials Project at Harvard Law, and the Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection at the Cornell Law Library. The National Archives has also converted many of their microform documents on WWII crimes and trials to PDF.

Although no comparably extensive online compilation yet exists for the Tokyo Trials (International Military Tribunal for The Far East), some of the most important and interesting documents are available on iBiblio.org through the HyperWar Foundation (the Tribunal’s judgment) and the Harry S. Truman Library website (official correspondence and photos). For now, full transcripts of the Tokyo Trials are only available in print, here at Georgetown in the Wolff Library.

The Law Library also offers a good selection of relevant print and electronic resources; try an Encore keyword search to see our cataloged holdings on the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials.

The Leadership Library on the Internet provides an authoritative list of the new members of the 112th Congress. Access it quickly by hovering over the blue Search button in the top left corner. You can then select One-Click Searches and you'll see the option to select Members of the 112th Congress or Newly Elected Members of Congress. The directory provides a local address for almost all of the new members and an e-mail address for some. This could be a good starting point if you're looking to join their Congressional staff.

Other resources which are following the new members of Congress, include the CQ Press Political Contact Suite and Wikipedia. As always, it's best to verify the information found on Wikipedia with another more authoritative resource, but their coverage of the 112th Congress is impressive.

The U.S. Government has created several iPhone apps and mobile websites.  With the product recall app you can type in the name of a product and see whether it was recalled.  With the TSA app  you can determine whether an item is allowed in your carry-on or checked baggage, find out more about ID requirements and liquids rules, and other travel tips.  It also shows security line wait times by airport.  The Find an Embassy app allows users to find and contact the nearest U.S. embassy.

For a full list of the apps and details on downloading them to your phone visit http://apps.usa.gov. 

A new, free version of the Federal Register is now available at http://www.federalregister.gov. The new version features browsing by type of publication (notice, proposed rule, rule), comments closing date, agency and topic. There is also an RSS feed.

The Pew Center on the States recently released their State of the States 2010 report which highlights trends in state governments as they cope with the worst recession since the 1930s. Policy changes and fiscal partnership with the federal government are discussed. Also, an analytical look at the 2010 state elections is featured, as 46 states enter legislative races in the fall.

The Law Library has added Congressional Quarterly's Political Contact Suite to its collection of databases. This resource contains contact and biographical information for over 170,000 elected officials and staff members from all branches of the federal government. The information is updated daily, so it is always timely and reliable, and the database is linked to Congressional Quarterly's other titles, like CQ Weekly and CQ Almanac, so researchers can look for related entries from one central search engine.

While there are a number of contexts in which this information could be useful, it might be particularly helpful to our students and alumni who are seeking federal jobs, and need to find accurate and current contact information.

As always, feel free to contact our reference department for help with using this resource.

A recent question from a student at the reference desk made me realize that for students working abroad this summer it's important to understand the business culture of the country to which they are traveling. The Department of Commerce produces Country Commercial Guides for U.S. companies conducting business abroad which provide some useful guidance on the  business culture in foreign countries. It's important to know that the Dutch are extremely punctual, while the Congolese prefer to be addressed as "Monsiuer" or "Madame". The "Doing Business in...." guides can be found here by selecting Country Commercial Guides(CCG) from the "Report Type" pull down menu. You can also narrow your results to a particular country or region.