Two students who were enrolled in the Government Information (IS 594) course this past spring are now published authors. Their papers began as their final project for the course, which acquaints students with government publications. With the students' permission, course instructor and Adjunct Lecturer Dominique Hallett submitted the papers to DttP: Documents to the People, and they were published in the journal's most recent edition (Vol. 51, No. 3).
In "Lessons Learned in Born-Digital Preservation," Miguel Beltran (MSLIS '23) discusses the importance of preserving government documents that are created in digital mediums. He gives the example of documents related to the war in Afghanistan and demonstrates how essential it is to preserve them and others of a similar nature. He emphasizes that the only way to ensure that born-digital government documents are available to future generations is to create laws that mandate their preservation—and to determine which agencies should be responsible for overseeing the process.
In her article, "The Relationship Between Government Documents and Black People Through the Coverage of the Black Panther Party," Informatics PhD student Kyra Milan Abrams argues that the coverage of the Black Panther Party in official government documents reflects how government documents cover Black people in general. According to Abrams, the "clear biases" she found in her research are not unique but demonstrate the beliefs in the U.S. about defying the status quo and about Black people.
Hallett serves as the government information and STEM librarian at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. She holds an MLIS from Louisiana State University and an MA in heritage studies and BA in political science from Arkansas State University.