Uncle Sam's Crystal Ball - On Target!

While preparing for a talk on Alaska Statehood Resources, I came across the item:

Rogers, G. W., & Cooley, R. A. (1963). Alaska's population and economy; Regional growth, development, and future outlook. College: University of Alaska.

On page 203, the authors present a chart of population projections done by various forecasters. According to the chart, the US Census Bureau predicted in 1960 that in the year 2000, Alaska would have a population between 600,000 and 700,000.

The actual 2000 population, as reported by the US Census via American Factfinder? 626,932 people. That's more than good enough for government work. It's an especially interesting figure to me since it did not take Alaska's oil boom of the 1960s and 1970s into account.

Canneries, Cabins, and Caches of Bristol Bay, Alaska

The Alaska State Library recently received a copy of the National Park Service publication The Canneries, Cabins, and Caches of Bristol Bay, Alaska. Any library with an interest either in the history of Alaska or salmon fishing owe it to themselves to get a copy of this richly illustrated book. According to the letter that came with this item:

The book documents long abandoned canneries, and those still in use, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Canneries, Cabins and Caches of Bristol Bay, Alaska also provides a view of life upriver, during the winter, along the length and breadth of the three great salmon rivers in the Bay, the Nushagak, Kvichak, and Naknek Rivers. These wild bountiful rivers all head partially or completely in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve and Katmai National Park and Preserve."

Check it out. If you've read it already, let us know what you think.

New(ish) Roundtable Blog - Information Homestead

If you're wanting to keep up with government information with an Alaskan perspective, please check out Information Homestead, the blog of the AkLA Government Documents Roundtable. The blog may be found at http://informationhomestead.wordpress.com/ and has been added to our Alaska library blogroll on the left side of this page.

If you are a member of an AkLA chapter, Roundtable or Committee that has a blog that you think the rest of the association should know about, please let Daniel or Freya know (or respond in comments) and we'll get your unit's blog added to our list. Same goes for any library in Alaska that doesn't see their blog featured in our blogs list.

Relief for Gas Prices (Information)

With gasoline at or above $4.00/gal in many Alaskan communities, there is growing interest in the forces and news behind rising gas patrons. While a library can't cut the price of unleaded, the University of Michigan has posted a new resource on gas prices at http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/dn08/dn08gas.html. It can answer questions like:

How much does crude oil contribute to the cost of a gallon of gas?
How much taxes are paid on gasoline?
Where does gasoline come from anyway?
What are people across the nation paying for gas?

So stop in and fill 'er up with gas facts.

What sorts of subjects are your patrons asking you about? If you're having trouble finding resources in a given area, let me know and maybe I can find enough to do a post about it.