Government documents staff in Minnesota chose their favorite documents, grabbed a camera, and let loose their creativity. The results are the photos below, READ (Docs!). It's a new take on the American Library Association's (ALA) celebrity READ campaign using real people and real documents! The web pages were printed as posters for display at the 2003 Minnesota Library Association (MLA) Annual Conference.

Documents pictured will be found in Federal Depository Libraries across the nation. To find the nearest one go to http://www.gpoaccess.gov/libraries.html.

More information

Person	Title(s)
Anderson, Mary	Performing Arts at the Library of Congress
Beck, Lynne	Measuring America
Burke, Helen	Traffic Safety Facts 2001
Clark, Kirsten	Roswell Report Case Closed
Clarke, Kim	The Face of Venus
Conner, Matt	Battle of the barricades U.S. Marines in the recapture of Seoul
Cook, Daniel	Hawaii volcanoes Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii
Dean, LeAnn	The History of the United States Capitol
	Religion and the Founding of the American Republic
Dent, Christine	American Women
	Crime in the United States 2001
	Forest and rangeland birds of the United States
	Sprocket Man (CPSC Comics)
Fox, Paula	Air House, A History by Perry D.Jamieson
	U.S. Virgin Islands
Future Farmers of America	Assorted Publications
Gunville-Bach, Virginia	U.S. Industry & Trade Outlook
Haji, Shaheen	Down home healthy cookin' Recipes and healthy cooking tips
Hickman, Mickey	Railroad Maps of North America
Hobbs, Anna	This is Ann [anopheles mosquito]...she drinks blood! (1943)
Iverson, Becky	Crime in the United States 2001
	Performing Arts Motion Pictures
	Perspectives on John Philip Sousa
Jenkins, Ann	Reports of explorations and surveys...
	United States Coast Pilot 6, Great Lakes and Their Connecting Waterways 2003
Johnson, Eunice	Historic Preservation
Kane, Kay	Elizabeth Nourse, 1859-1938 a salon career
Kendig, Phyllis	American Women
Kill, Sandy	Craft multiples
Kowal, Kimberly	A Guide to State and Local Census Geography
	The Adventure of Echo the Bat
Larson, Ardath	MMWR Morbidity and mortality weekly report
Miller, Shirley	FDA consumer
Minnesota State University, Mankato Staff	He's Bac!; a Children's Guide to Keeping Food Safe
Monchamp, Sharon	Navigation Rules, International-Inland
Nere, Mary	First Flight
Ostman, Clarice	EOSDIS Global Portrait
Panton, Miriam	Brazil a country study
	How our laws are made
	Portuguese Programmatic course Volume 1 (revised)
Radford, Jeff	Index of Patents, 1998
Sloss, Maggie	NOAA Diving Manual
Smith, Jessica	United States Army Weapon Systems 2003
Smolnikar, Randy	Annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 1913-1914
Superheros of Sun Protection	SunWise a school program that radiates good ideas
Wallace, Julie	A Guide to State and Local Census Geography
	Regulators Handbook
West, Amy	Outstanding Gasoline Service Stations
Wuolu, David	Presenting nature The historic landscape design of the National Park Service 1916 to 1942

How did READ (Docs!) come to be?

Glad you asked! READ (Docs!) came into existence haphazardly at a meeting of Minnesota government documents librarians in March 2003. Our fearless leader and magnificent regional librarian, Julia Wallace, was featured as one of the Movers and Shakers in Library Journal. The March issue came out just days before we met, so of course we had lots of questions for Julie, and wanted all the juicy details of what it was like to be photographed and written about!

Julie's pose in her photo came under intense discussion. Why that pose? Why holding a pen? Why not holding a government document? Why not holding a government document? We asked again. "We should take pictures of Julie holding a document." "Yeah, and we could blow them up and hang them in all our libraries!"

Rejoicing in the recognition of our friend pulled exuberance into the room. Spirits were high, laughter came. You know how it is when people get together…someone tosses out a thought and it gets built upon, it grows, it takes on a life of its own. "No, I know," someone said, "we should take pictures of all of us and hang them in our libraries! Just think, our patrons could say - Hey! I know who that is! That's my librarian - and what's that document in their hand…I'd better check it out, looks cool!" And so it went…

When suddenly, someone said, "why don't we do this? You could coordinate it, someone could post them on the web, it would be fun! It would be different and new! It's got all sorts of possibilities!"

And so we did.

-- Christine Dent

For more information, contact:
Christine Dent
Reference Librarian
Ramsey County Libraries - Roseville
2180 North Hamline
Roseville MN 55113
651-628-6803