This Week's Facts:
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Online Resources Help You
Keep New Year's Resolutions
-
Help Raise Cervical Cancer
Awareness in January
-
National Archives Hosting
Reality Photo Contest
-
Feds Offer Money Saving Tips
for Consumers
Census
Hosting New American Factfinder Demo
The
U.S. Census Bureau
will host a webinar/live demo Tuesday, January 18, at 2pm for
its new version of
American Factfinder,
the online portal to data the Census Bureau releases throughout
the year – from the Decennial Census, American Community Survey,
Annual Population Estimates, the Economic Census, and more. Any
member of the public can attend. For full participation in the
web conference, you will need a phone and a computer with
internet access. Please use the access codes from this week’s
press release.
You can also take a virtual tour and download brochures at any
time
here.
New Law
Aims to Curtail Electronic Waste
Before you throw
away your old TV or computer, think before you act. You may be
about to break a law! The Indiana Legislature enacted the
Indiana Electronic Waste Program (IC
13-20-5).
This program seeks to reduce the amount of electronic waste sent
to Indiana landfills and to ensure that hazardous substances
found in electronic waste are disposed of in an environmentally
friendly manner. This
fact sheet
from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management contains
a list of electronic items and details about the program. There
are specific requirements for
Manufacturers,
Collectors,
Recyclers,
and
Retailers.
For more information about recycling or other ways to help
preserve the environment, visit the
IDEM
website.
-------------------------------
Friday Facts Editorial Team:
Katharine Springer
State Data
Center Coordinator
Elisabeth
O’Donnell
Federal Documents Librarian
&
Kim Brown-Harden
State
Documents Coordinator
 
-------------------------------------
Join the
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Online
Resources Help You Keep New Year's Resolutions
 It’s
not too late to make a new year’s resolution to be healthier in
2011. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a list
of healthy tips for you, your patrons, your family, home,
community, and workplace:
A New Year of Healthy Possibilities.
The
USA.gov
website points to federal resources for several
Popular New Year’s Resolutions
like getting fit, managing stress, and quitting smoking. For
more resources on quitting smoking, you can visit the CDC’s
2011: Your Year to Quit Smoking
website. The National Institutes of Health can help you keep
your resolutions with
Making your resolutions stick: How to
create healthy habits,
which quotes Dr. Linda Nebeling, an NIH doctor, “Change is
always possible. You’re never too out-of-shape, too overweight
or too old to make healthy changes.”
Help Raise Cervical Cancer Awareness in
January
 January
is
Cervical Cancer Awareness Month.
Although it is most common in women over the age of thirty,
females of all age have the possibility of contracting cervical
cancer. It is caused by a type of virus called human
papillomavirus (HPV) and is spread through sexual contact.
Medline Plus
states that it is a slow-moving virus and it may takes years for
normal cells to turn cancerous. Although most women’s bodies are
able to fight HPV, the virus can lead to cancer. According to
the
National Cancer Institute,
there were 12,200 new cases and 4,210 in the United States in
2010. The best thing you can do to prevent it is to get the HVP
vaccine and see your doctor regularly for Pap tests. For more
information, check out this
flier
from the CDC.
National Archives
Hosting Reality Photo Contest
 Any
patron or librarian who’s handy with a camera will be interested
in this contest from the National Archives. This augmented
reality photo contest allows citizens to combine pictures from
the Archives’ collection with modern-day scenes. To enter, you
first go to NARA’s
Archival Research Catalog,
select a photo and print it out. You then take a picture of that
photo in front of its current-day environment, thus combining
the new and the old. Finally, you upload that picture onto the
contest
Flickr page.
For a complete explanation and entry rules, be sure to check out
the
contest site.
There are already several entries, so be sure to check them out
and see what others are doing! One winner and nineteen finalists
will be featured in History happens here, a postcard book
that will be available at the NARA gift shop and online.
Feds Offer Money
Saving Tips for Consumers
 Nothing
gets people thinking about saving money more than watching all
those holiday credit card statements start rolling in. The
beginning of the year is the perfect time to take a look at your
finances to see where your money is going and how you can
prevent it from disappearing. The Federal Citizen Information
Center is armed with an arsenal of publications to help you cut
costs and become a smarter consumer:
-
Shop around for
the best deal on homeowners insurance.
12 Ways to Lower your Home Insurance
Costs
shows you how to get what you need, and not overpay for
unnecessary coverage. Use
Your Home Inventory
to assess what you have in your home, and how much you
should be spending on insurance to cover it.
-
While the things
inside your home cost money, so does what's parked just
outside of it.
9 Ways to Lower your Auto Insurance
Costs
will show you the best way to shop around, compare plans,
and reduce the expense of auto insurance.
-
Having one or
two ways to save money is great, so how about 66? From
utilities to prescription drugs,
66 Ways to Save Money
will show you how to keep your pennies, and get you
brainstorming your own outside-the-box saving techniques.
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From conserving
money to getting the biggest bang for your buck, the
Consumer Action Handbook
is your free annual guide to safely navigating the
marketplace. Use it to spot scams and frauds or resolve
complaints you might have with a company. You can also use
the
Guía del
Consumidor,
the Handbook's counterpart for consumer information in
Spanish.
For more ways to
save and manage your hard-earned cash, check out the "money"
section of the
Federal Citizen Information Center‘s
website, and follow the bloggers on
GovGab,
a government blog offering tips and tricks on making your daily
life easier.
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