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11/19/2009
Management of Minnesota's Natural Resources
lakes image Following Norman Borlaug's recent death, Senator Satveer Chaudhary speculated that the next green revolution in Minnesota could be in the area of natural resources management. See the press release: "Natural resources management reform is the next step." "Are we spending new and old dollars for natural resources wisely? Does our money fund the mission, or the institution? Are state agencies meeting the needs of Minnesotans? And, how much of what we do should be for the long term?"

Current discussion can often be informed by earlier research. These older reports, mandated by the Legislature, are from investigations into the finances and administration of the Department of Natural Resources.

The Library has many other reports on various aspects of natural resource management in the state. Here's a narrow search of our catalog specifically on "natural resources - Minnesota - management."  E-mail or call a librarian at 6-8338 if you would like to borrow and of the reports. *

11/16/2009
Football Stadiums and the Minnesota Vikings
football image Quick! In what year was the Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington demolished? Our newest Minnesota Issue Guide, "Football Stadiums and the Minnesota Vikings," includes a great timeline, and the answer to that question - 1985. When we are asked about policy topics that have unfolded over decades, our first task is often figuring out when a specific event happened. We think the football guide will prove as useful as our other sports stadium guides, "Baseball Stadiums," "NHL Hockey in Minnesota and the Xcel Energy Center," "Target Center Arena and the Minnesota Timberwolves," and "Financing Professional Sports Facilities."
 

11/4/2009
Copper Nickel Studies Take Up a Lot of Shelf Space
EIS books image EIS page image The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is seeking comments on the proposed Polymet, Inc. open pit copper, nickel, cobalt and precious metals mine in northeastern Minnesota. Here's a good overview story from Minnesota Public Radio on the proposed mine, "PolyMet Takes Next Steps for Controversial Mine".

We just received a print copy of the three-volume Environmental Impact Statement, PolyMet Mining Inc./NorthMet Project EIS. It seems like an amazing amount of text, but the issues are wide-ranging and important. Sections in volume three, just found by opening to random pages, include "Effects on Groundwater at the Mine Site," Projected Future Wetland Resources," "Cumulative Mercury Emissions," and "Potential Estimated Human Health Risk from the Plant and Mine Sites." The second volume of the print version is all maps. An interesting - and sobering - one that is pictured above shows "Mercury Impaired Waters in Minnesota" (Fig. 4.5-4 in this online section)

Copper nickel mining in Minnesota has been studied extensively. A search of the Legislative Reference Library catalog for reports relating to copper-nickel mining brings up 210 reports. 32 reports relate to the Minnesota Regional Copper-Nickel Study done in the late 1970s by the Environmental Quality Board, and funded by the Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources.

 E-mail or call a librarian at 6-8338 if you would like to borrow the report. *

10/26/2009
Not Everything is Online?
old clips image We are consumed each day with digital media. Scan it! Put it online! Link it! Put more notebooks on the web! Still, our Library visitors often sit with tables full of print - old clippings, journals, reports, and books. In this case, Susan Damon (pictured) is working with Jay Krienitz on a forthcoming law review article on the origins of the Wild and Scenic River Act. Susan said they were finding many useful clippings.



 




10/23/2009
Professional/Technical Contracts (P/T Contracts)
Image Although tracking state professional and technical contracts is not a hot topic in the news this week, it's a good bet that an issue will arise in the future. Ensuring that money is spent wisely by state government for contractors has been a recurring concern of legislators and citizens. The Library has released a new "Resources on Minnesota Issues" guide, Professional/Technical Contracts (P/T Contracts). It lists all of the materials we have received over the years on professional/technical contracts. There are links to materials that are available on the web, including several older reports scanned by the Library. This list won't answer any questions, but will hopefully lead researchers to the information they need.



 

10/22/2009
Connecting Up
Image Librarians love to bring together information in useful ways. And all of the people who work on the Legislative Web Site are constantly improving the way our systems work together. Recently the Senate and Revisor's Office made small changes that add interesting links to Library information within the Legislative Web Site. On the Senate site each member page now links to the senator's service in previous sessions as detailed in the Library's Legislators Past & Present database. As an example, look at Senator Ellen Anderson's record. There is a blue arrow beneath the picture leading to a lot more information on her activities and bills during earlier sessions.

Also, the Revisor's Office recently added links to the Library's collection of scanned veto messages. For example, if you scroll down the list of 2004 laws, you will see small pdf icons next to the vetoed laws, linking to veto messages from the governor. Library staff members scanned many messages when preparing the recently revamped "Bills Vetoed - 1939 to Present"  

10/19/2009
Dimes and Quarters
String of capitols image Last week the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library hosted the 2009 Professional Development Seminar for the Legislative Research Librarians Staff Section of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Our speaker line-up made it a great conference. Read more about it on this quickly-prepared blog. One of the benefits of hosting a seminar with speakers from your own state is hearing new stories and learning new things from people you've known a long time. During the session "Lobbyists as Information Providers and Information Seekers," Phil Griffin noted that he has been around since the days when lobbyists lined up at banks of pay phones to keep in touch with their offices and clients. "We carried rolls of quarters," he said. Much later in the presentation Iris Freeman noted, "I just remembered. The phones were only a dime; the quarters were for parking."  

10/1/2009
A Brief Berlin Byline
quadrigas image I see the Minnesota Quadriga most days, but soon I’ll see the one atop the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.  It’s a privilege to be chosen to join the “Library & Archives Tour of Reunified Germany 2009 for 11 American Colleagues from Parliamentary and Government/Law Libraries, including a Couple of Journalists.”  The study tour is funded by the Checkpoint Charlie Foundation. I began a blog to follow the week's activities, A Brief Berlin Byline, if you'd like to follow along.

Out of jet lag fear I chose to travel one day ahead of time - a lucky choice! That turns out to be October 3, the Day of German Unity, commemorating the 19th anniversary of German reunification and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Let's hope the Northwest Airline flights - or Delta, I suppose - arrive on time, so I can see the giant puppets in the streets.

Robbie LaFleur  

9/16/2009
Innovation in Action Award
SLA logo Another feather in the LRL cap! The Library's gubernatorial veto database was recognized by the Minnesota Chapter of the Special Libraries Association with their annual Innovation in Action Award. Betsy Haugen and Mike Schatz accepted the award at a ceremony on September 21.

Betsy spent many hours verifying data on vetoes, adding descriptions for each line item and figuring out how all of the inconsistencies and special situations should be represented. Mike provided the behind-the-scenes programming and table design. Library aides scanned veto messages to add to the database. The result is a great online resource, available to all citizens, that will be useful for years to come. This database is part of an ongoing effort to take important government information out of notebooks and drawers and make it available online. We assume that governors will continue to use their veto pens, and people will always want to compare those vetoes to the ones in years past!  

8/19/2009
Learn More About Minnesota Statutes, Laws, and Rules
statutes page image Each year the Office of the Revisor of Statutes sponsors a series of educational seminars. As part of the first 2009 seminar, Sheree Speer, a drafting attorney in the Revisor's Office, gave some background on Minnesota Statutes, Session Laws, and Rules online. Her useful points were based largely on questions that come in to the Revisor's Office. If you missed this talk, or if you joined the many other audience members who arrived after the handouts were gone, a copy is posted. What is the difference between the print and electronic publishing schedules for Minnesota agency rules? Are you aware of statutory notes? What if a law has a delayed or contingent effective date? What happens if a law is amended more than once in a legislative session? Sheree's handout has the anwers.

And here's an answer to a popular question without even going to the handout -- when are the 2009 Statutes expected to be available online? This year, as early as September 15!

 

8/7/2009
Public Health Is People: A History of the Minnesota Department of Health from 1949 to 1999
Three Women Smoking The Barr Library at the Minnesota Department of Health has posted an extensive history of the agency, Public Health Is People: A History of the Minnesota Department of Health from 1949 to 1999. It's an important historical reference tool, with details of divisions and department initiatives. But given the drama of human health, it's a wonderful story as well. Dipping into Chapter 5, I learned that while the department didn't really take a public stand against smoking until the release of the Surgeon General's report in 1964, it responded within three days with a strongly worded resolution. Even so,

"Public support for no-smoking initiatives was not strong. A December 1963 poll conducted by the Minneapolis Star and Tribune found that 69 percent of the people believed cigarette smoking "had proved to be a health hazard." Half of the people interviewed did not want a national campaign to discourage people from smoking. Their objections were based on the grounds that "the individual should decide for himself whether he will smoke.""

Also from the chapter: "A 1966 survey discovered that 37 percent of the ambulance attendants in the state did not even have basic first aid training." We certainly depend on ambulance attendants to be skilled now! Finally, there has been a lot of attention this year on the transmission of disease between animals and humans. It was a concern in the 1950s and 1960s too. There is a cringe-worthy story in the Chapter 5 section "Public Health Challenges: Animal-to-Human Diseases".

The great image, "Three Women Smoking," from the Minnesota Historical Society, is from their Visual Resources Database.  

8/3/2009
Photos of Long-Ago Legislators
Johnson photo Over time we are adding photos to as many records as possible in our Legislators Past & Present database. That's easy for the recent past, with digital photos from the House and Senate photographers, but more difficult for earlier years. Thanks to three separate grants from the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) over the past few years, we have added scanned images from the Legislative Manuals for members from 1913, 1923, 1949, 1969, 1973, and 1981. In addition to our database, the portraits are available from the Minnesota Digital Library. So far in 2009 they have had 213,246 hits! The portraits link users to biographical information from our database. It's been a great partnership. At left is a photo of Victor Johnson, who served in 1913. He was one of four Johnsons during that session; one of the 90 Johnsons who have ever served.

 

7/28/2009
Found in the Library's Notebook Collection - Today, Historical Silliness
tree image Over time much of the information in our huge collection of three-ring binders has been converted to tables or scanned or otherwise made available on the Web. This includes the statistics found on the Historical Information - Legislature and Historical Information - State Government webpages. We're also working to expand access on the web to non-copyrighted material in many of our subject notebooks, like the Minnesota’s BudgetCrisis 1980-1983 : Selected Background Materials notebook and the Unallotment in Minnesota notebook. Still, many notebooks filled with valuable news clippings and other materials continue to get steady use in the Library. They cover individual legislative sessions, or topics like Legislature - Women, Legislature - Minorities, and Legislative Staff. It would not be legal to post the sets of copyrighted news articles on the Web.

One of our legislative subject notebooks is titled Language, Humor, and Customs. We haven't been adding to it so much in the past few years, but it's fun to look at the materials that were added over the Library's 40-year history. Many years ago the notebook was divided into these categories. For the next few days, I'll post some of the items - hoping that in these cases, any copyright holders would not mind the links to these few older materials.

The "Humorous articles.." section included a silly, source-unknown cartoon from 1972. There were several versions of a cartoon showing a tree swing as designed through the legislative process. Two similar articles described Republicans and Democrats - from different years and separate papers.  

7/23/2009
Another Summer Task: Tracking Mandated Reports
transmission towers image Summer is the time we read through the session laws and add information about upcoming mandated reports to our acquisitions database. When the reports are due, letters are sent, the reports come in, and we save a digital copy and paper copy. (Learn more on the "Reports Mandated by the Legislature" page.) The Legislature does a generally thorough job of listing the exact items that should be covered in a report. Here's some language that goes even further, from Chapter 110, 2009 - the section not only says what should be in the report, but how they should write it. It ends with, "The report must be in easily understood, nontechnical terms," not a bad idea when discussing electric transmission infrastructure.

Sec. 28. [216C.054] ANNUAL TRANSMISSION ADEQUACY REPORT TO LEGISLATURE. The commissioner of commerce, in consultation with the Public Utilities Commission, shall annually by January 15 submit a written report to the chairs and the ranking minority members of the legislative committees with primary jurisdiction over energy policy that contains a narrative describing what electric transmission infrastructure is needed within the state over the next 15 years and what specific progress is being made to meet that need. To the extent possible, the report must contain a description of specific transmission needs and the current status of proposals to address that need. The report must identify any barriers to meeting transmission infrastructure needs and make recommendations, including any legislation, that are necessary to overcome those barriers. The report must be based on the best available information and must describe what assumptions are made as the basis for the report. If the commissioner determines that there are difficulties in accurately assessing future transmission infrastructure needs, the commissioner shall explain those difficulties as part of the report. The commissioner is not required to conduct original research to support the report. The commissioner may utilize information the commissioner, the commission, and the Office of Energy Security possess and utilize in carrying out their existing statutory duties related to the state's transmission infrastructure. The report must be in easily understood, nontechnical terms.
EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective the day following final enactment.  

7/8/2009
Summer tasks
books for binding Image We sent in a number of our old House and Senate Journals for rebinding this summer. They get steady use throughout the year by legislative history researchers. They are large and unwieldy and prone to cracked spines. We wish they hadn't put so many pages in each volume.

We also sent in an old and very interesting bound compilation of the Biennial Report of the Board of State Capitol Commissioners Appointed to Construct a New Capitol for the State of Minnesota. (See the second photo.) That was beyond hope, the bindery reported. So Lacey Mamak both scanned and made a photocopy of it. We now have a print copy replaced on our shelves and a digital copy available to everyone. The State Capitol Commissioners were quite pleased with the newly-built Capitol, writing in the 1905 report, "We believe that no building of its class has yet been constructed in the United States that is better arranged for its purpose, nor more artistic and educative to the citizens of a state. We know that for the amount of money expended no state has secured more value in its capitol building." The commissioners were arguing for an annual appropriation for maintenance of the building, finishing with, "Some one must take especial care of it that the people may not be divested of their pleasure in its perfections."

Anyone who has time should come to the Capitol soon and take pleasure in the perfections of the summertime Capitol grounds, colorful and glorious.  

*Available to legislators and legislative staff only. Please contact the library if you would like copies of any of these reports, or further research on this or any topic.

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645 State Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Blvd
St. Paul, MN 55155-1050
Reference: (651) 296-8338 Circulation: (651) 296-3398
Hours: 8AM to 4:30PM Mon. - Fri. (Legislative history service ends a half hour before closing.)
Legislative Session Hours: 8AM to 6PM Mon. - Thurs., 8AM - 5:00 PM Fri. or later as needed.

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