Each month, the Alaska State Library adds a batch of online federal documents to our library catalog. These publications come from many agencies and cover varied topics. Starting this month, we are highlighting up to five items we hope will be of general interest to Alaskans.
Big tech in financial services / 2022 / 36 pages Tierno, Paul, (Congressional Research Service) Overview of the efforts of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta in the financial sector, including describing currently available products.
Online consumer data collection and data privacy / 2022 / 26 pages Cho, Clare Y., (Congressional Research Service) Tools that can track consumer information, ways different types of information can be linked together and a discussion of the potential effects of Consumer Data Protection Requirements.
During his presentation to young readers at the Irene Ingle Public Library on Jan. 14, Alaska author Paul Greci shared the formula that helped him produce his first novel, "Surviving Bear Island" - experience plus imagination equals story.
Inspired by his personal outdoor experiences, he imagined the gripping narrative of Tom Parker, who is stranded on a remote island after a sea kayaking accident separates him from his father.
The middle-grade adventure story was chosen as the Alaska Center for the Book's 2023 title...
"Alaska author Paul Greci shares his work with young readers" by Caroleine James, January 18, 2023. Wrangell Sentinel.
June Pardue is an Alutiiq/Sugpiaq and Inupiaq multimedia artist and teacher, specializing in grass weaving, fish skin tanning, sea mammal sewing, jewelry making, beading and painting. For more than 50 years, she has dedicated herself to reviving, carrying on, and teaching these practices and materials of her ancestors to anyone interested in learning...
Since the start of the pandemic, she has taught online fish skin tanning workshops to students from a variety of ages, areas, and backgrounds — fashion designers, museum curators, conservators, tanners, traditional native councils, Native corporations, wellness programs, from Italy, Canada, Finland, Scotland, and the United States, including numerous Alaskan Native communities.
“It’s fun to gather with individuals who are genuinely enthusiastic and interested in turning fish skins into leather,” she shared. “We have a renaissance happening in the arts right now and I’m so grateful for the various places that want me to teach and that there are students who want to learn. I’m especially excited that young people are wanting to do this too because they will be the generation who remembers that their elders tanned fish skins.”
"Master Alutiiq/Inupiaq artist to teach salmon skin sculpture and jewelry workshops this weekend" by Christina Whiting, January 11, 2023. Homer News.
Denver-based poet and environmental consultant Sueyeun Juliette Lee [gave] a free talk 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, January 11, in the Sitka Public Library multipurpose room. Lee discuss[ed] her new book, “Aerial Concave Without Cloud.” Lee and SPL Librarian Margot O’Connell joined KCAW’s Erin Fulton to discuss the event.
"A bright idea! Visiting artist will share poems about light at Sitka Public Library," January 6, 2023. KCAW.org.
We're now accepting submissions for the 40th Annual Statewide UAA/Anchorage Daily News Creative Writing Contest. The contest began in 1981, the brainchild of newly arrived UAA English professor Ronald Spatz, who wanted to encourage new writers of all ages. He coordinated the contest with the Anchorage Daily News team until 2010. Since then, the Alaska Center for the Book has served as the coordinating partner, providing hundreds of volunteer hours to manage entries, judging, and contacting winners—the best part of all.
Speaker: Tobias Schroeder, Director of the eRulemaking Program, Technology Transformation Services, General Services Administration
Learning outcomes: Mr. Schroeder will describe Regulations.gov and the role that it plays in the Federal rulemaking process. This includes the legal mandates, purpose, history, and functions. This Federal shared IT service provides one-stop access for citizens to read and comment on rulemaking actions for nearly 200 Federal agencies. In combination with other Federal IT systems and legal sources, the dockets maintained in the system are also an important resource for legal researchers seeking a complete historical basis and rationale for regulations.
If you’re in the market for a new or used electric vehicle and are wondering if you can get a tax credit for it, you might be interested in this new IRS Fact Sheet.
From the FAQ:
These FAQs provide detail on how the IRA revises the credit available under § 30D (new clean vehicle credit) for individuals and businesses, and information on the credit available under § 25E (previously-owned clean vehicle credit) for individuals, and the new credit for qualified commercial clean vehicles under § 45W of the Code.
This information is provided as part of the Alaska State Library’s status as a Federal Depository Library.
Speaker: Louis Barbier, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Associate Chief Scientist
Learning outcomes: Dr. Barbier will discuss NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST views the sky in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. This talk will describe JWST and show some of the astounding early images being produced.
In 1990, Congress passed a law recognizing the unequal treatment of Native American remains and set up a process for tribes to request their return from museums and other institutions that had them. The law, known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or NAGPRA, sought to address this human rights issue by giving Indigenous peoples a way to reclaim their dead.
But 33 years after the law’s passage, at least half of the remains of more than 210,000 Native Americans have yet to be returned. Tribes have struggled to reclaim them in part because of a lack of federal funding for repatriation and because institutions face little to no consequences for violating the law or dragging their feet.
This database allows you to search for information on the roughly 600 federally funded institutions that reported having such remains to the Department of the Interior. While the data is self-reported, it is a starting point for understanding the damage done by generations of Americans who stole, collected and displayed the remains and possessions of the continent’s Indigenous peoples — and the work done by tribes and institutions to repatriate those Native ancestors since.
"Does Your Local Museum or University Still Have Native American Remains?" January 11, 2023 by Ash Ngu and Andrea Suozzo. ProPublica.
In the past, classified records were archived, preserved and eventually declassified — allowing researchers and casual history buffs to pore over them for new details about events in the past, such as the the Cuban Missile Crisis or the civil rights movement. But in his new book, The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets, [Historian Matthew] Connelly makes the case that huge numbers of documents will never be reviewed for declassification if the process isn’t reformed.
“Nobody’s ever going to be allowed to see any of [the documents now being labeled classified] unless some other official decides that information is safe to release to the public,” he says. But the method for reviewing these records and releasing them hasn’t changed in 80 years — despite the fact that the volume of data has changed; it’s still a requirement, Connelly says, that officials review “every one of these pages, page by page.”
If technology is part of the problem, it could also be part of the solution. Connelly and some data scientists have used artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop a system to analyze huge troves of records to determine which should be truly classified and which can be made public.
"Is the U.S. government designating too many documents as ‘classified’?" by Dave Davies, January 19, 2023. NPR.
“The term ethnomathematics is used to express the relationship between culture and mathematics (D’Ambrosio 1987).” Ethnomathematic efforts launched in Angoon in 2019 to bring numeracy, relevancy, and collaborative problem solving to learners of mixed high school ages often underserved in STEM experiences. Last year, the community of Angoon gathered around the efforts of Master Tlingit Carver, Wayne Price, in creating their first dugout canoe in 140 years. With his dedication, Wayne has lit a fire in the students by sharing his passion, expertise, and love for Tlingit canoes inspiring local students and educators alike to bring hands-on learnings from Wayne into the first Ethnomath Institute centered on Indigenous watercrafts in 2021. Wayne states “our culture and art connect us to ourselves.”
This year, the Ethnomath Institute has expanded to cover critical topics of food sovereignty. Angoon High School currently offers coursework grounded in a community garden, hydroponics, and agricultural science to raise awareness about potential solutions to food dependency in rural Southeast Alaska communities as “Alaska currently imports 95 percent of its food supplies at a cost of $2 billion per year (Office of Governor Dunleavy, 2022).”
"Angoon Expands Ethnomath Institute Initiative, Connecting Learning and Next Generation Leaders Across the Pacific," January 18, 2023. Alaska Native News.
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