[ Back to the Table of Contents ]
GPO Update
Remarks by Francis J. Buckley, Jr.
Superintendent of Documents
Before the Federal Documents Task Force
Government Documents Round Table
American Library Association
June 16, 2001
San Francisco, CA
Good morning! Last week Yogi Berra appeared in Washington, DC at a program sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution. Sandy Schwalb on our staff, whom many of you know as an ardent baseball fan, brought back a few quotes with relevance to the Federal Depository Library Program:
- "When you come to a fork in the road, take it,"
- "You observe a lot by watching," and of course:
- "It ain't over till it's over."
I'll leave it to you to mull over how to apply them!
Library Directors’ "Survey"
Earlier this spring, some members of the LPS staff conducted an informal poll of library administrators in the FDLP. This was designed to give us feedback on our performance and test some commonly heard assumptions about participation in the depository program.
Thirty depository libraries were contacted--according to the proportional makeup of the program--50% academic, 20% public, 12% law, and 18% other (this last category included community colleges, state libraries and courts). We attempted to have a fair geographic distribution as well.
The poll indicated strong support among directors for the FDLP, and for the electronic transition. It supported our assumption that libraries are remaining active in the program because it continues to provide value for libraries that would be difficult and costly to obtain otherwise.
I want to share the reaction to a few of the nine statements we posed to the library directors:
In response to the statement that "Depository designation provides a single channel for acquiring a body of resources, which would otherwise be difficult and/or time consuming for us to acquire," 69% strongly agreed and another 17% agreed.
"Depository designation functions as a channel for us to acquire materials for the collection at low or no cost." The response rate was pretty similar to the previous statement in that 66% strongly agreed and 21% agreed.
"Because so much government information is available online, there is a diminished need for a depository program that discovers, catalogs and assures stable, ongoing access to Government information." To this we had 55% strongly disagree and 21% disagree -- overall 76% dissented.
Some comments we heard from the directors included:
- "Some key materials, i.e., reference, etc. should be in both formats -- electronic and paper."
- "The program needs to continue to assure continued responsibility of the government for information."
- One director said he liked "electronics" and that it "adds a whole level of complexity." He was "very pleased with online access."
We are very grateful for the cooperative and very positive response we received for this poll. A report on the poll and its outcomes will appear in an upcoming issue of Administrative Notes. We will be able to use the information from this small poll immediately, and we clearly see the need for a larger and more rigorously conducted study to examine these issues.
Electronic Transition
Gil Baldwin will be discussing in detail the FDLP electronic transition tomorrow at the Fed Docs Work Group session. But I did want to say that the electronic content in the FDLP is steadily rising. For the first six months of this fiscal year, 62% of the new titles were electronic, compared to FY 2000 when 53% of the new FDLP titles made available were disseminated electronically.
In this Internet environment we are adding value to a wide range of electronic government publications. We do this through updated versions of our traditional functions; that is, we identify, evaluate, select, organize and catalog electronic government information products. Further, we assure that they remain permanently accessible to the public on our servers, through agreements with the issuing agencies, or partnership agreements with depository libraries.
OCLC Web Document Digital Archive
There are many roads to explore to ensure permanent public access to government information. We have been convening meetings of representatives of the national libraries, the National Archives, and other Federal agencies and organizations to discuss various approaches and developments in this area.
We will be heading down one path next month when LPS will begin the first phase of a pilot project called OCLC Web Document Digital Archive, a proposed integrated toolkit for libraries and archives to identify, select, bibliographically identify, preserve and maintain access to digital content.
GPO and OCLC have been working together on the complex question of persistent access to digital publications for nearly five years, beginning with a pilot project that involved the National Library of Education, OCLC, and approximately 600 libraries in the FDLP. Based on the information gathered in that project, GPO staff recommended to OCLC, "Build an archive and the tools to use it."
From GPO’s perspective, the provision of permanent public access to the information produced by the Federal Government, regardless of form or format, is a responsibility conferred on GPO and the FDLP by Congress in Title 44 of the United States Code. Since the introduction of floppy discs and the CD/ROM in the late 80s, to the present, GPO has been seeking solutions for providing distributed, stable access to Government information in digital formats that emulate the stability of access provided by print publications in depository libraries.
We have been moving forward in the transition to a more electronic FDLP since 1996. Currently half a dozen or more legacy systems, ranging from mainframe based databases to very inexpensive shareware, form the technological landscape in which librarians and paraprofessionals at GPO work. With those systems we acquire hardcopy and electronic publications; classify and catalog them for access; archive electronic publications for permanence; track, control, and ship tangible items; and manage the resources of the FDLP Electronic Collection for use by depository libraries and their users nationwide.
For GPO, the Web Document Digital Archive being developed by OCLC will potentially accomplish several goals:
- Development of a toolkit that will integrate and enhance existing processes for identification, harvest, bibliographic description, and preservation of digital publications
- Creation of new and improved tools to supplement, expand, or replace existing processes
- Build an offsite digital archival facility, organized on the principles of the Open Archival Information System model, and which will work in tandem with other archive solutions.
In the first phase, the CORC interface will be augmented to manage processing and archiving workflow and allow not only creation of a bibliographic record, but a related preservation metadata record as well. In later phases, functionality will be added to identify and harvest digital resources, as well as for storage in OCLC archival servers.
In just over a year, GPO’s fledgling internal digital archiving activities have already preserved about 1300 electronic publications. The OCLC/GPO pilot project will make significant progress toward scaling up GPO’s capacity to preserve digital publications, to help meet the growing demands of the American public for electronic Government information.
FirstGov
In recent months, there have been discussions between staffs of GPO and FirstGov, the new General Services Administration (GSA) portal being developed as a one-stop index to government information and services (Federal, state, and local). Our goal has been to work cooperatively with the developers of FirstGov to ensure that their coverage of the resources of GPO Access is maximized.
We have provided feedback on the organization of their site and search results. We are working on taxonomy and content committees, a Cross Agency Portal Working Group and a Cross Agency Feedback Working Group. We are currently exploring a partnership with FirstGov that would:
- enable us to utilize the FirstGov search engine as a replacement for the Pathway Indexer in our suite of finding aids on GPO Access and
- result in FirstGov adjusting several of the pages on their site to inform users about depository libraries and provide a linkage to the locate libraries page on GPO Access.
Electronic Documents Working Group
Tomorrow Gil will also be talking in greater detail about efforts in the depository community to help GPO bring online documents into the FDLP Electronic Collection (FDLP/EC).
Following up on a recommendation from the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer at its fall 2000 meeting, a group of approximately 30 volunteers will work with LPS to increase the number of electronic resources included in the FDLP/EC. Diane Eidelman, a former member of Council, will lead the working group. Information about this group and its activities will be linked from the FDLP Desktop.
There is an effort underway in the law library community to check agency Web sites each week for legal and regulatory documents that are not in the FDLP/EC. Then those "missing" documents are reported to us via askLPS. The Fugitive and Electronic-Only Documents Committee is part of the Government Documents Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries.
We certainly appreciate these efforts to help us locate electronic government information products that should be, but are not currently, part of our collection.
Status of Needs and Offers
Speaking of partnerships and voluntary efforts to help the FDLP, I want to take this opportunity to thank Kevin Reynolds, who has stepped down as editor of the Needs and Offers list after almost five years. Kevin began working on this project when the list migrated from print to electronic format. We appreciate his excellent service and wish him well in his new position at Smyrna Public Library.
LPS staff have temporarily assumed responsibility for the list, and we are actively seeking a new editor. We have had conversations with a couple of librarians, but if you are interested, please contact either Robin Haun-Mohamed or George Barnum who are here at the conference.
Conclusion
I always appreciate the opportunity to talk with you -- to let you know what is happening in the red brick building back in Washington and to hear your ideas, questions, and suggestions. I'm looking forward to our dialog over the next few days.
To end with a quote, Rudyard Kipling said in his "American Notes" in 1891, that "San Francisco has only one drawback, ‘tis hard to leave."
Fortunately, many of us have just gotten here, so we don't have to think about leaving quite yet.
Thank you.
![[ Click Here For Information About the FDLP Desktop ]](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090103073014im_/http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/images/fdlpdskz.jpg)
