Government Scientists Earn their Pay [updated]

When there's a crisis involving something technical, scientific, and complicated it's nice to know that your taxes are paying experts to keep on top of things. That's why the current swine 'flu scare is a good lead-in to our new government information display: Government Science.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have put up this informative website that's chock full of details, and links to more details, that go a long way toward explaining this scary—but, at least for now, still manageable—new threat. Scientific information from the government, while being a human-run enterprise and thus capable of containing errors of fact and judgment, is still 'way more reliable than the Center for Stuff That I Heard from Some Guy, recently reported from on the Daily Show.

One thing we've been hearing from both reliable sources and Some Guys, has been how important personal hygiene is to foil this outbreak. Note the sudden appearance of hand sanitizers all over campus, including at our Reference Desk. If there's anything more you want to know about the benefits of hand-washing, or how to do it properly, the CDC provides this factsheet.

As important a role as the CDC plays in keeping informed, it's only one of scores of government agencies working in all areas of science and technology. We pulled some samples from our tangible collection and from the voluminous government scientific web for our current display. Hope you enjoy it!

[Update: curious about our previous experience with swine 'flu? An Ohio librarian has updated a history/bibliography of the 1976 swine 'flu scare.]