Federal:
Congressional Research Service reports, prepared for members and committees of Congress, will soon be available on a free public website within 90 days of creation. Prior to the FY18 omnibus appropriations bill that was signed into law on March 23, 2018, the CRS was not mandated to make this publicly-funded research openly available, although groups like the Federation of American Scientists and Demand Progress maintain online repositories for these reports. ALA has been advocating for making the CRS reports publicly available for the past 20 years. Medical librarians might be especially interested in the CRS Health Policy reports.
From the ALA/ACRL:
“[We] ask academic librarians to advocate to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to vote approval for the U.S. to sign the Marrakesh Treaty.
The Marrakesh Treaty is the international copyright treaty that was adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It provides a copyright exception — the first ever in an international treaty — for libraries as authorized entities to make accessible copies of articles and books for people with print disabilities and distribute those copies across borders.
With the push for funding for public and school libraries it was felt that it would be best to ask the academic librarians to start the effort on the Marrakesh Treaty. We’ll be getting back to Chapters as a whole when it is time to ask for a larger effort on it.”
Illinois:
Here are several recent articles from The State Journal-Register that may be of interest.
Bills requiring more disease outbreak reporting clear House committee
Illinois Senate approves Equal Rights Amendment
Teens encouraged to sign up for organ donation registry
Illinois House panel OKs net neutrality proposal
Statehouse bill would gut law protecting biometric data, opponents say