Depository Library Council
Summary, 1999 Fall Meeting
October 18 - 21, 1999
Kansas City, Missouri

Council members present:
Duncan M. Aldrich, Chair, Mary Alice Baish, Maggie Farrell, Linda Fredericks, Diane L. Garner, Robert A. Hinton, Paula Kaczmarek, Donna P. Koepp, Gregory W. Lawrence, Mary Redmond, Andrea Sevetson, Julia F. Wallace, Fred B. Wood

Sheila McGarr, Chief of the Library Division at the Library Program Service and Program Coordinator welcomed all to Kansas City on behalf of the Government Printing Office. Ms. McGarr noted that we have a good turn out for this meeting. There were more people pre-registered for this meeting than for the previous two meetings that were held in Clearwater Beach, FL and San Diego, CA. She extended special thanks to Janet McKinney of the University of Missouri, Kansas City Bloch Law Library; Lola Warren of the Johnson County Public Library in Kansas, and Debbie Madsen of the Kansas State University Library for their work on local arrangements, including this evening's reception at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.

Chair, Duncan Aldrich, welcomed everyone to the fall 1999 Depository Library Council meeting. Members of Council introduced themselves. Chair Aldrich provided some background about Council. He continued by surveying the audience on a variety of topics and then asked the staff of the Government Printing Office (GPO) to introduce themselves.

Chair Aldrich noted that about 12 years ago, when he was getting started in government documents, we began getting electronic products. We have been gliding into the electronic transition ever since. At this Council meeting one large issue of discussion will be the demise of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). The Secretary of Commerce, in making his recommendation to eliminate NTIS, noted that the primary reason was access to web based government information and the use of the Internet for information dissemination. These are times of opportunity and change. Chair Aldrich then introduced the first speaker, Public Printer Michael DiMario.

Mr. DiMario welcomed Council and others who are not members of Council, noting that it is part of the GPO program to inform those who are interested in government information who are not part of Council as well as to meet with Council. He welcomes broad participation from those in attendance.

Again this year there is flat funding to report. In proportion to GPO income, our budget is shrinking. This means that GPO partners, that is, the libraries that participate in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), carry a proportionally larger share of the financial burden. An increase of $1M was requested last year for the FDLP. This would have been for the funding of the Electronic Collection plan. It was not funded. That plan was very important to GPO. GPO was told to find the money somewhere else within the existing budget. The level funding would need to be managed in a more efficient way. This means that some services in the program will need to be changed, cut, or made more efficient.

Overall, there is concern about the workforce at GPO. There has been a longstanding hiring freeze and GPO is now losing talent. The workforce is aging. As people retire, GPO loses experience and talent. There are 3200 employees now, which is the smallest GPO has been since WWII. Congress was asked not to cut the level of personnel again, but they did anyway. There is a provision, however, that if GPO gets really desperate they can go back and maybe hire a few more, but that is a big if.

GPO has made an effective transition into the electronic world. This is reflected in the number of documents that are being download from the web, which is now in the range of 20 million a month. The number of paper products that are necessary to the program will continue to diminish, although they will probably never totally disappear. It is very clear that they still have great utility. There are still problems in the use of electronic products such as getting online and the need for multiple terminals in libraries when there are multiple users. GPO will continue to produce products as agencies request them. To a large degree, the transition is theirs.

In the case of the Census Bureau, there have been a number of well-known problems in deciding how data will be collected and reported. This has complicated the production of publications necessary for carrying out their mission.

Mr. DiMario complimented Fran Buckley and staff who have done a wonderful job of outreach to agencies, to get as many publications into the program as possible.

The Sales program is in great difficulty. It is losing about $1million a month. Mr. DiMario has asked the staff to look at the situation, but in the meantime, since this is a self sustaining program and it cannot continue to tolerate these losses, he has imposed a 15% increase in the cost of publications. At the same time, Sales is studying ways to cut costs. They are moving from a paper warehouse in northern Virginia to Laurel, MD to cut the cost of storage. The current lease would have increased rent by 50%. This means moving personnel, which becomes a hardship on some, especially those living many miles south of the current Virginia location. They are trying to relocate some of these to the central office, and are looking for volunteers within the central office to go to Laurel.

Losses have been minimal in other parts of the printing program. Due to fluctuations in the cost of paper, insufficient revenues were coming into GPO for printing. GPO has increased the surcharge to the agencies to cover more of the printing cost. Overall, between printing and sales GPO is close to a break-even point.

The political climate on the Hill is sometimes difficult to follow. There is a lot of partisanship. Within the political climate GPO has been called upon to provide a full range of products. The impeachment products put enormous demands on GPO’s operation, while at the same time there were demands from the Office of the President to get the budget out on time. The China report, for example, for which there has been great demand, has also become a politically sensitive document, and this puts additional demands on GPO. There is a lot of secrecy, and there is need to insure there are no leaks in advance of publication. He wishes to thank the staff for their good work, producing and insuring delivery at the same time they are having to deal with cuts.

At the time that Secretary Daley was about to announce the closing of NTIS, GPO decided to try to bring the documents that were about to be lost into the FDLP, which had been a long-standing goal, in any case.

Congressman Davis of northern Virginia has a constituency who would be very adversely affected by the plan to close NTIS. GPO called and asked to meet with his staff. Fran Buckley and others talked to them about the Depository Program's interest in the NTIS publications, the need to preserve the documents, and that the proposal for the documents to go to the Library of Congress was perhaps not the wisest route to follow, pointing out the better match with the FDLP. Their points were well understood by Congressman Davis' staff. Congressman Davis recruited support from other Washington area representatives who also have government employees in their district, and a letter went out to Secretary Daley condemning his arbitrary (or not well thought out) action to close NTIS.

One of the representatives contacted was Connie Morella, Montgomery Co., MD, Chair, Science Committee, Subcommittee on Technology, with jurisdiction for the NTIS program. She convened a hearing with Congressman Moran of Virginia, and others. It was a bipartisan hearing. The library community, Mr. DiMario, and others gave testimony. Mr. DiMario's testimony was specifically in support of the depository program, that the NTIS documents were so important that they should not be lost, and at a minimum these publications should be made available through the depository program. He made it clear that bringing personnel into the GPO structure would be welcome. Mr. DiMario also pointed out that the NTIS sales had been raiding the GPO sales program as well as the GPO sales program hurting NTIS sales. This duplication in programs was hurting both. (see Mr. DiMario’s testimony in Administrative Notes, v. 20, # 15, 10/15/99)

There is now scheduled another hearing, on the Senate side, on Thursday, October 21. Senator Frist of Tennessee has convened this hearing. Mr. DiMario's testimony will be similar to his previous remarks.

Duncan Aldrich supplied Mr. DiMario with a statement from Council and this was submitted to the House Committee to become part of their record.

If partisanship does not get in the way, and if the testimony is heard, NTIS or the NTIS publications will be saved in some way for the American public. The question is in what form it will be retained and maintained.

Fran Buckley

Gil Baldwin

TC Evans

Tad Downing

Robin Haun-Mohamed

Maggie Farrell asked a question concerning the Access America clearinghouse project.

Fran Buckley responded that GSA has been working for several years to develop a web.gov site. The Access America project is an expansion of that effort. Their aim is to develop some models with consistency among web sites within government. Then the indexing across all these sites came up. There are ongoing questions of sustainability, legal mandates, and resources to be resolved in order for this to become an effective project.

TC Evans further responded about Pathway Indexer as it relates to Access America. Some of the things that we've been looking at in the context of Pathway Indexer are the same tools as they are trying to use to create the metadata necessary for this Access America project. That would help to fill in any gaps that exist, to use the existing platform of GPO Access for the basis for that.

Julie Wallace stated that we need to learn more about and pay more attention to metadata. The Operations Committee will be working on this. Individuals who have some skill in this area might help the Committee ask the right questions.

Andrea Sevetson asked TC about a comment in his presentation concerning areas in the country having problems with Internet access.

Mr. Evans responded that they have received information about certain areas, and would like to hear about any others to increase their awareness of where there are problems.

Ms. Sevetson further noted that this relates to something that Robin Haun-Mohamed was talking about concerning the NTDB transition to web access only. If places are having trouble with web access, they won't be able to get STAT-USA either.

Ms. Haun-Mohamed responded that we have NTDB for another year, and that staff are working on the transition in the meantime.

Ms. Sevetson asked a question in relation to recommendation No. 3, on the acquisition of an integrated library system at LPS. It appears that although the last line of the response indicates that GPO resources cannot be allocated to assist with the analysis, procurement, and implementation of an ILS in LPS at this time, that certain plans and background checking are taking place. How much time will be required before GPO would be prepared to go forward with this?

Gil Baldwin responded that they are doing the background investigation now, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done. They are not ready to issue a Request For Proposals at this point.

Paula Kaczmarek asked for a clarification of the self-study schedule of letters going out.

Sheila McGarr responded that there have been three stages worked out to avoid any future backlog and to get rid of the current backlog. She is hopeful that she will soon have a full staff of inspectors, having made a job offer to an applicant just last week.

Fred Wood commended GPO on the discernable progress on the electronic front since the last meeting. He appreciates the additional and deeper level of analysis and efforts to understand what is happening in the competitive environment. The only way to succeed is to try a lot of things and be aggressive, and he stresses his support of GPO and SuDocs for moving in those directions. He also asked a question on the outreach front. What is the overall strategy for reaching out to the Federal agencies, perhaps in new ways? Especially since many of the people in the agencies involved with electronic information are not the same people who are involved with traditional printing.

George Barnum responded that they are reaching out in different ways, some to already established contacts, but pointed out that print publications are still informing them of electronic sources. They are making friends with web masters and they are doing presentations to groups. web masters tend to form groups, meet and talk to one another and GPO is participating in this. They are finding the audience very receptive. Most are not familiar with the FDLP. They are interested in the permanent access concept.

Mr. Evans added that in addition to George's efforts GPO still reaches out in traditional ways, and maintains an awareness of what the agencies are doing.

Mr. Aldrich made the observation that GPO is still primarily dependent on the print job for identifying products for the FDLP. Since NTIS has had to rely on other means of identifying publications, it would be nice to grab NTIS folks who do this work and bring their expertise into GPO.

Mary Alice Baish asked for a clarification about bringing NTIS publications into the sales program.

Mr. Buckley responded that some of these items were already in the FDLP but that cooperative publications would require a waiver in order to add them into the sales program. This is being done in some cases.

Mr. Aldrich called the afternoon session to order and made a few announcements. Questions and answers continued from Council and the audience.

Diane Garner noted that GPO is not doing availability records anymore and asked how GPO is keeping track of serials being distributed.

Mr. Downing responded that they are using CATME. All issues are checked in, and good serial records are being kept.

Ms. Sevetson noted that the online catalog of government publications gives no explanation when a record has many URLs. How does one call up volume information?

Mr. Downing responded that the web site will indicate what is on the record all the way back to '94 when all of this was evolving. Any OCLC changes do not roll over to the web site. These are two different operations. It is very cumbersome now, but GPO hopes to have, in the future, just one database. GPO is open to suggestions on how the display could be improved, but they need to keep other work such as Y2K and other projects and the backlog in mind.

Ms. Sevetson asked Robin how you could tell when we use our password for fee-for-services database.

Ms. Haun-Mohamed responded by briefly going over the current fee-based services: EHIS (environmental health perspectives), NOAA, and STAT-USA. She reminded everyone of the update that she did for ALA (see Administrative Notes, v. 20, # 11, 7/15/99, pp. 15-16).

Ms. Sevetson asked what the GPO role at the meeting of the American Association of School Librarians had been?

Mr. Evans responded that they were developing a series of kid's pages (Ben's Guide to the US Government) as well as resources for teachers and parents (K-5, 6-9, 9-12). GPO would appreciate comments on this new site.

JoAnne Beesley, Pittsburg State University asked:

1. Is there something that can be done about shipping dates? By the time we get shipping lists, the claim date is sometimes past.

Ms. Haun-Mohamed responded that if the lists arrive as late as 60 days past the printed date, we need to let her or Michelle Harris know. For separates received more than three weeks late, or microfiche, let Robin know. For contract shipments, let Vicki Barber know.

Ms. Barber responded that this should not be happening. Ms. Haun-Mohamed said that they would check into this and correct the problem.

Ms. McGarr responded that the law says that you must keep it. But, one may try to find a new home for it.

Ridley Kessler, University of North Carolina, added that when selectives get material like that, they should call their regional and what they decide between the two of them should remain known only to them.

Kathy Brazee, University of San Francisco, asked for an update on the ERIC partnership project.

Mr. Barnum responded that this is a 3-party project with the National Library of Education and OCLC. They still hope to make a subset available to depositories, but as originally configured the project will not go forward. What goes to depository libraries will be a 10% subset; the other 90% is contractor reports with which there are copyright concerns. The 10% subset is what we are now getting in fiche currently.

Linda Fredericks from Council asked what the long term LPS goals were concerning microfiche. She is concerned over the great numbers and now the addition of DVDs.

Mr. Barnum responded that they are looking at long term ramifications. The staff at LPS, as well as Greg Lawrence's Committee on Preservation, will be working on this. One agency has produced a CD-ROM that is an exact duplicate of its web site. GPO decided not to order copies for depositories. What do we do about an interim technology on which the sun is beginning to set?

Ms. Sevetson asked about snapshots in time of certain databases that are continually changing. How do libraries get copies later?

Mr. Barnum responded that they are working on this.

Karen Nordgren, Emporia State University, Kansas, asked about binding the Serial Set. When will we receive the table of contents and title pages so that they can bind?

Ms. Haun-Mohamed responded that she has talked to Virginia Saunders about this. She completed the final title pages three weeks ago and will reproduce and send them out soon, before the end of the year.

Chauncey E. Epps, Kansas City Bookstore, formerly in Texas and San Francisco, said he has visited many libraries. He encourages all of us to purchase extra or replacement copies through the bookstores. They offer a 25% discount to the libraries. The KC store is in a mall so they work 7 days a week.

Mr. Wood, Council, asked if the main location of the bookstore was in the mall, or was it a branch.

Mr. Epps responded that their main location is the mall and that they service a 5-state area. Although they are currently in a mall, they will be moving to a business area soon. They are leaving the mall because the nature of the clientele at the mall has changed to all teenagers and no one is shopping for books.

Mr. Aldrich asked what kinds of stock they carry.

Mr. Epps responded that their stock was about the same as any of the government bookstores, but somewhat tailored to the area.

Ms. Wallace, Council, asked if given the status of the sales program, can we assume that there won't be many more?

Mr. Buckley responded by saying that there are no plans to close any, but since they are losing money they are not anticipating expanding any time soon.

Ms. Fredericks, Council, noted that her library buys regularly from the Seattle bookstore, and that they are very friendly and efficient.

Maggie Farrell, Electronic Transition Committee, announced that the committee will be meeting tomorrow afternoon. They will be looking at the Progress Report on the Transition to a More Electronic FDLP and Completing the Transition to a More Electronic FDLP. They will look at the assumptions and draft recommendations. Probably most of the recommendations will be made at the April 2000 meeting.

Julie Wallace, Operations Committee, reported that many of the issues have already been addressed by GPO this morning. She asked folks to write down the issues that they want the committee to consider, or come to the meetings. On their agenda are the following:

1. Boxes and deliveries
2. Self study process and concern about communications
3. Microfiche shipping lists
4. Congressional Record rebind
5. NRC process, some loose ends and remaining questions
6. Superseded list as it affects CD-ROMs
7. Depository library communication with GPO. Suggestions are welcome for improving askLPS, WEBTech Notes, etc. and the organization of the administrative part of the web.
8. Changes in the direct mailing process
9. Working with the Electronic transition group on locators, Monthly Catalog, browsable tools, and how the projects are being done in cataloging to make things more functional for the users.
10. Mary Redmond is chairing a sub group to establish the value of our depository collections. Also to develop a response to various critical needs for bits of information about our collections, for example, how to a respond to a flood, how many documents per linear feet, etc. If anyone has thoughts, talk to Mary.

Greg Lawrence, Preservation Committee, reported that he had been immersing himself in the technology to learn more and be able to give direction to the Committee and suggest things that should be done. The Committee will set up the activities that will take place over the next 6 months and they will then have a plan of action in place.

Mary Alice Baish is working with NCLIS on what next steps there might be on the development of standards. Judy Russell, now with NCLIS, will join the Committee meetings tomorrow afternoon.

Council met in working session at 3:45 p.m. Monday. The first part of the meeting was devoted to organizational matters and to developing a rough outline and timeline for the business that needs to be accomplished in the next three days.

Council reviewed the agenda for the programs being presented and discussed which ones Council representatives should attend. Fred Wood will attend George Barnum's "Update on the FDLP Electronic Collection" and Paula Kaczmarek will attend the Regional Librarians' meetings, parts 1 and 2. They will each report back to Council on their respective meetings.

On Tuesday afternoon, Council will first meet as a Committee of the whole, followed by Greg Lawrence who would like 30 minutes with Council to follow up on his morning session on "Basic Issues Concerning Digital Preservation." Judith Russell, NCLIS, will address the Council at 3:30 for 15-20 minutes. There will be two Committee work group meetings.

New members should consider what Committees they wish to work on.

The Wednesday working session will be devoted primarily to writing recommendations. In addition T.C. Evans will give Council a quick overview of the GPO Access site search and the kids' page that is in development.

Committees and their membership were reviewed. Current membership is as follows:

Preservation and Archival Issues Committee
Greg Lawrence, Chair
Duncan Aldrich
Donna Koepp
Andrea Sevetson
T.C. Evans & Gil Baldwin, GPO liaisons

Partnership Working Group
Donna Koepp, Chair
Duncan Aldrich
Mary Alice Baish
Diane Garner
Sharon Hogan
GladysAnn Wells

Cataloging/Locator Workgroup (with Operations)
Julie Wallace, Chair
Diane Eidelman
Maggie Farrell
Kathy Hartman
Paula Kaczmarek
Andrea Sevetson
Kathy Tezla

Operations
Julie Wallace, Chair
Carol Bednar
Tim Byrne
Paula Kaczmarek
Nan Myers
Mary Redmond
Arlene Weibel

Communications Committee
Mary Alice Baish, Chair
Duncan Aldrich
Paula Kaczmarek

Historical Publications in Sales
Paula Kaczmarek, Chair
Ridley Kessler
Maggie Powell
Ramona Reno
Bill Sleeman
George Barnum, GPO liaison

Potential action items, recommendations, and commendations were briefly listed to get a sense of what direction Council will take over the next couple of days.

ACTION ITEMS

1. Include names of Committee members in the DLC handbooks
2. Further discussion of migration criteria
3. Decide what to do with the report: Comparison of Legislative Resources on GPO Access and Selected Government and Non-Government Web Sites.

POSSIBLE COMMENDATIONS

1. GPO Access improvements
2. F. Buckley/M. DiMario: Meeting with library stakeholders re: Permanent public access. Would we like to see this group more formalized?
3. R. Haun-Mohamed: Getting access for all depositories to Northern Lights free public library version
4. Site search on GPO Access
5. W. Thompson for his travel logs that entice people to attend meetings
6. Supreme Court web @GPO. Is it far enough along yet?
7. PubScience as new bibliographic tool for finding information in the sciences
8. GPO/SuDoc staff for collective ET efforts: more aggressive, proactive, strategy
9. GPO Access: congratulate on recognition of excellence by the AALL award and other awards

POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Process to be established to identify titles for e-conversion or to remain in paper or microfiche
2. Outreach, Congressional committees
3. PPA-Archive process - move forward to next steps

The remainder of Monday's working session was devoted to a review and discussion of the Spring 1999 recommendations and GPO written responses to insure that all items had been addressed. Members of GPO staff were available to comment and clarify.

Greg Lawrence, Cornell University, and Council member, organized today's session to share with Council and attendees what he has learned recently in the area of preservation, and to raise issues and generate ideas that may be beneficial for us as we deal with preservation of our government documents collections. He has invited Alan Perry to co-present today. Mr. Perry is Archivist and Regional Preservation Officer at the National Archives and Records Administration, Kansas City.

Mr. Perry spoke to us from the perspective of someone who is not in a library, but someone with many of the same concerns. He pointed out that he is not an electronic records or computer person. He has named his part of this morning's presentation "From Moses to May Flies." He can be reached at alan.perry@kansascity.nara.gov if we wish to communicate with him or request copies of anything he refers to in his talk.

Mr. Perry began with an introduction to the history of preservation, which becomes a sorry tale of degeneration and woe as we go through history. We began with Moses and the stone tablets which, although very stable, were not very portable. Through the years we have a democratization of information that began with the development of parchment and vellum and was enhanced by Gutenberg, but these changes led to problems of a less durable medium. Archivists and librarians tend to worry about two parallel concerns. Preservation or stability and access to information. Sometimes these two concerns are at odds with one another. At the same time our administrative and political masters are far more concerned with the short term and less about the long run.

Archivists throughout the world are very networked and have much in common, maybe more than librarians. There is tremendous communication among them concerning preservation and archival records management, but there is always this tension between preservation and access.

The mass production of paper from wood pulp and chemicals caused the greatest revolution and had the largest effect on widespread access to information. It also had a devastating effect on stability of the medium and preservation. In 1830-1860 we went from rag-based paper to the really crummy stuff that crumbles within a few generations.

In a similar way, photography, sound recordings, color photography, video tapes, etc. have all been in a downward spiral, preservation-wise since the beginning. Access became better with these developments but the medium is less stable. After all of this time, the most stable is still old fashioned paper.

This brings us to the Mayflies, which Mr. Perry illustrated with an article from The Economist (September 18, 1993). Generations of technological change now are moving past us as quickly as the lifetime of the mayflies. Therein lies the problem. Access is wonderful, but the stability problem is awful.

Archivists can be gullible and easily led astray. A number of years ago, Mr. Perry learned that microfilm was on its way out and everything would go to optical disc. Many archivists were cautious. But then, along came ODISS, Optical Digital Image Storage System, a device-dependent system of the late 1980’s, which was adopted by NARA.

NARA got some money together and decided to put some Civil War records on disc. These records had been microfilmed back in the 1960’s. Now with the move to ODISS, these NARA records were digitized and put on optical disc. We heard about ODISS a lot in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. About four years ago, we moved to a successor to ODISS. This is the NARA Electronic Access Project (EAP), Historical Records Digitizing Project. Digital images of these records are being linked to the NARA web site. The EAPs are on the NARA web site to show you what has been digitized.

Not too long ago, Mr. Perry was touring NARA in Washington and was taken to the ODISS graveyard in the basement of the Archives building. There were lots of optical discs, which were really pretty to look at, but that's all they are good for now. The software and hardware upon which they are dependent have changed. They are no longer usable. They have gone back to the microfilm to access these records.

Electronic records are important, but we must learn some lessons from ODISS. And these lessons may be applicable for government documents librarians as well.

1. Don't be dazzled by new technology but look very carefully at technology and learn from the past.
2. You cannot trust vendors. They promise the world but sometimes don't come through on their promises.
3. Be cautious with computer programs. Y2K is illustrative of how far ahead computer people look.
4. It is the business of archivists and librarians to look ahead. We tend to be futurists. We need to make sure that what we are providing access to today will be available in the future.
5. There is no technical problem with preservation. It can be done. It is not a technical problem. It is a financial and an administrative problem, which are even worse problems to deal with.
6. Maintaining electronic data is very much like doing a disaster plan. It is easy to postpone the data migration strategy that would have guaranteed continued use of the optical ODISS discs.

It is very important to remember and understand is that eternal vigilance is the price of maintaining electronic records. The technology is changing with the rapidity of the generations of mayflies. Someone needs to be responsible for this task. Refresh before it needs to be refreshed. Migrate before it needs to be migrated. CD-ROMs should be refreshed every 3 years, even though the industry standard is 5 years.

Greg Lawrence continued the session by sharing his thoughts on digital preservation as it concerns individual Federal depository libraries. All of his remarks are addressed with preservation for access in mind rather than long term preservation.

In our libraries digital preservation will mean that we will need to preserve and sustain digital information products that we receive in tangible format. We will not be considering in this talk today the online electronic government information that is included in the Federal Depository Library Program. Digital preservation of the tangible electronic products that we receive in our libraries is not a trivial matter, since most depository libraries are not equipped, trained, or funded for digital preservation.

To illustrate one of the preservation exercises he has conducted, he described his experience with Extract 1.3. The decision to preserve Extract involved the following: First he needed to consider the purpose of the program and how it fits in with the information life cycle of the 1990 Census products. In making this decision, he questioned if he should focus his preservation energies on Extract, or should he examine the possibility of moving to a commercial dBase-compatible software application that might be more user friendly. Second, how would a preserved Extract fit into the lifecycle of year 2000 Census products? He wondered if a public domain or commercial off-the-shelf product would be developed which would be able to extract data from both 1990 and 2000 Censuses. His concerns notwithstanding, he saw Extract as a document that had both historic and functional value and therefore chose to preserve the information that had been written to the disc. Preservation strategy involved moving the data from a 5.25 inch diskette to a 3.5 inch diskette. He wondered if this was enough. Would it need to be migrated or altered from DOS to work on a Windows 95 or 98 or NT platform. He was successful in doing this, but he still needed to obtain the auxiliary files, which he didn't have, and to verify that the program would work with the different products. Left unanswered was whether or not Extract is Y2K compliant. This needs further examination.

Further in this exercise was the concern about updating the MARC record to indicate that the item had been moved from a 5.25 to a 3.5 inch disc, and the fact that now it was a copy. Also the matter of marking the disc itself with information indicating that it was a copy, and when that copy was made was considered. In the final analysis, the question arose as to whether the status of this item as a government document had been altered by the changes that had been made. A key issue is authenticity. A diskette from the Census Bureau has a degree of authentication in its markings and its internal documentation. These characteristics help to make the diskette a self-declaring item. There remained a question of whether making a copy of a government document alters its ability to be self-declaring.

Illuminating the following issues:

1. Context of making a preservation decision. Concept of the Information lifecycle. (Creation, use and destruction of information). Gaining momentum as a policy device for managing government information.
2. In evaluating the lifecycle decisions keep in mind that the value that we place on information determines the investment that we make to preserve it.

Throughout time the computer has had different roles. In the 1960’s one can view it as a super calculator. The computer itself was part of the act of creation, and most frequently the computer was used to create a paper report that was then distributed to our libraries. The digital information was not maintained. In the 1980’s we witnessed the emergence of digital reformatting. In this case, the computer became a container, or a replacement for brittle books. Information was captured in the form of an image file and that file goes through its own information lifecycle. In the 1990’s we have even more widespread use of the computer and computers and the information they generate have both become commodities. The technology encourages the authors to also be the creators, and printers are being eliminated.

Preservation decisions are not isolated events. They occur in the context of needs and the technology of the period. We should strive to make sound preservation decisions that put us in the position to sustain our collections and meet the future needs of our users.

In summary, Mr. Lawrence charged his Preservation Committee members to help him consider the following:

1. How shall we survey local depository digital collections?
2. How shall we prepare local digital product preservation plans?
3. What might be a sensible division of responsibility among depository partners?
4. What preservation training is required and how do we provide it?
5. What are the organizational considerations of preservation funding?

The hope is that the Preservation Committee will develop a list of issues and solutions that can be reported at the spring 2000 meeting for depository librarians to begin to discuss.

Future sessions concerned with digital preservation should also be planned to keep the issue visible and to measure our progress toward useful policies and practices and to sharpen our goals. Mr. Lawrence recommends that the topic of refreshing be examined at the next Council meeting. This may set the stage for a more technical session for the fall 2000 Council meeting.

Lou Malcomb, Indiana University, asked who is on the Preservation Committee.

Debora Cheney, Pennsylvania State University asked if there should be initiatives taken on the preservation of microfiche collections that are now about 25 years old.

Mr. Lawrence: It’s going to run in tandem with preserving our digital collections. We will need an inventory of what we own that needs immediate attention.

Mr. Perry: Somewhere there is a silver halide preservation master that can be duplicated. That should be located and new copies can be made.

Ann Miller, Duke University: Reminded us that one partner that we might look to is the Rare and Endangered Government Document Committee which has representatives from GODORT and MAGERT and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, and they may be able to offer help on these various issues and formats.

Fred Wood, Council, asked if Mr. Perry could give us a brief overview of what is happening from a NARA national perspective on these preservation issues in an electronic age, and where NARA stands in terms of cooperative efforts with GPO and other agencies in trying to make sure the sum is greater than the parts and what is happening with funding from Congress.

Mr. Perry: NARA is looking at a tie-in with the super computer. Agencies are told that electronic records have to be retired in a very specified format. NARA then stores these records on disc in DC. They have lost some of these. There is a contract pending with one of the national laboratories in California to move all the NARA electronic records onto the super computer. He is not able to give technical details beyond this. NARA has representatives on ANSI for writing of standards. Beyond that, there is not much cooperation, even unfortunately within the archives community. Even the MARC Archives & Manuscripts format was written without NARA participation. There is a good deal more that should and could be done. There has been a fair bit of interagency jealousy with NARA hoping that it could do things on its own. The good news is that there should be more money soon for this type of thing. They are now charging the Federal agencies for the actual cost of preservation of their short-term records in Federal Record Centers. This should provide adequate money for both conventional and digital preservation and for upgrading the staffs to do that work.

Diane Garner, Harvard University, Council member, thanked the presenters for the reminder that these are political and administrative and financial decisions. She thanked Debora for bringing up microforms, and wants to add paper too. We keep saying we want everything and want to preserve everything digital, but we will ultimately have to make some tough decisions about what to preserve.

Mr. Perry pointed out that the School for Scanning, Berkeley, has done a great job. The rule of thumb he learned there is that refreshing and migrating digital data over a ten-year period costs 2 and half times more than cost of the original scanning over the first 10 years of the life of that project. So if we come up with a million dollars for a scanning project, we are going to have to come up with about $2.5 million over the next ten years in order to take a refreshing and migrating strategy.

Michele McNelly, University of Wisconsin River Falls, asked about old equipment preservation technology. She feels she must keep some old equipment that runs slowly enough for the older databases she has in the depository collection. Are all depositories keeping the old equipment? How do we access the old stuff if we don't?

Mr. Lawrence: This needs to be addressed pretty quickly. We do have products that have to be run in a slower environment. If we were to do an assessment of our holdings, part of this would be to identify those materials that cannot run at the higher technological level we are using today. This is a good point. It is the same with Windows 3.1. The issues are not only preserving the bits, but the software needs the right environment.

Ridley Kessler, University of North Carolina: Barbara Levergood, technical assistant at UNC, just discovered 8 months ago that they were about to lose the last of the machines that took both 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch discs. They quickly decided to retain a couple of them for migrating and refreshing, but even so, some of the software needed was already gone. Also, they have found that the new techies being hired no longer know DOS, nor is it being taught in classes. Anyone needing to know DOS has to buy a book and learn it on their own.

Mr. Lawrence: We are holding on to old equipment, but even if we hold on to it physically, as they break down and wear out there will be challenges and that requires emulation strategy.

Bernadine Abbot Hoduski, JCP staff, retired, noted that the DLC in about 1980 agreed to stop taking silver halide microfiche for the Regionals, and GPO at that time committed to keeping and making available as a backup a silver master. Silver goes to NARA and LC. This policy the DLC agreed to. This can always be reversed. Silver could begin going out to Regionals again. This is the reason she fought so hard for the Serial Set in paper, because that is the only real archival medium. But it is only permanent if it is on acid free paper. She cautioned Council to look at digital media today the same way Council looked at microfiche in the 1980’s and make sure we are making the right decision.

Mr. Perry: NARA has done a good job with micrographics. If silver is at NARA it is tucked away appropriately and we could get copies from them.

Ms. Hoduski: Yes, NARA has done an excellent job. They would also do good job with the NTIS silver. The problem is the ongoing access and NARA is not equipped or funded for that.

Mr. Perry: Re-organization is taking place and this is allowing for things like access to be more easily handled. There should be a distinction between durability and stability. The disc that Greg submerged is durable. But stability is what we have with acid-free paper and silver halide microfiche.

Shirley Hyatt, Manager of the Product Marketing Department at OCLC, with a special emphasis on the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC) project.

Ms. Hyatt provided an overview of CORC with the goal in mind to make us as excited about CORC as she is and for us to go home and check it out and perhaps be a participant. WWW has been practically ubiquitous for the last 5 years and has really transformed the information landscape. We have moved from an information scarce environment to an information rich environment. This has moved us to a situation of considering how to manage the plethora of information that is available to us. There has been a shift from personal service to relying on automation to serve.

Librarians are having to deal with an incredible number of web sites, and at the same time print is continuing to grow. Just ten years ago, Books in Print listed 781,000 titles. In 1998 there were 1.7 million titles listed. The rate of change is increasing at an amazing rate. It took the Internet just four years to reach 50 million people and today this figure at 100 million people. With this the expectations of our patrons are changing. They can do so much on the Internet, and they are expecting libraries to also perform at a comparable level. But there are some failures as well. The most sophisticated search engines are reaching only a fraction of the sites. But it is a real catalyst for change. The unit cost of storage, replication and distribution is lower.

Libraries today are looking to consortia to help manage the information. Some libraries are loading individual records describing web sites into their OPACs, and also building bibliographies by subject that are web based. Some are calling these webographies or pathfinders. These are very time intensive to maintain. There is a huge duplication of effort being made on these. It would be nice if we could somehow eliminate this with cooperation among libraries. Integrating these resources with all the other information would also be a nice improvement over the current situation.

The Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC) is an effort to bring about this cooperation and to expand access, provide faster access and lower the cost. The model is similar to what OCLC instituted 25 years ago with cooperative cataloging.

CORC started about a year ago as a research project. They opened the doors to libraries in January 1999. Effective July of this year it became a development track project. They expect to offer this as a regular service to all libraries by July 2000. There are about 150 libraries involved as participants today with more signing on all the time.

CORC is a tool for creating bibliographic descriptions of online resources. Pointers to web pages are created and the CORC system goes out and scans those web pages and extracts data that it plugs into a rudimentary catalog record. This is known as automated harvesting. It provides assistance in assigning LC subject headings and in assigning a Dewey classification number. It does this not just in MARC but also Dublin Core. It provides 'linked' authority control, and OCLC is looking at ways in which to keep all of the linked URLs current. Records can be imported into the local system in three different formats. There is automation support for creating pathfinders. They integrate metadata records with the other records in WorldCat today.

The librarian's role is to select, identify the web sites that are of value for our patrons, create a metadata description, harvest, review and edit, select records to create pathfinders for our own constituency.

By using the CORC web site, <http://purl.oclc.org/CORC>, we can view records. CORC-MARC view is a web site with hotlinks. CORC Dublin Core View also has hotlinks. There are pathfinders and finding aids with hotlinks.

OCLC’s goal has been to create an access system based on a web resources selection model rather than a de-selection system. In the CORC model it allows librarians to select what is needed based on their expertise.

OCLC’s new vision is that librarians should be at the center of their patrons’ needs. The Libraries web site will be the portal of first choice. The Library is the right location for this portal. They have the most resources, tangible and electronic. And many libraries have the potential of becoming the publisher of choice for their users, faculty, etc. Libraries have the localized knowledge for their area. They are experts at selection and description experts. They are well funded, relatively. We need to promote ourselves and our services.

Kathy Tezla, Carlton College: How many participants are there and how are they geographically distributed?

Ms. Hyatt: 150. Majority is U.S. libraries. 10 outside US, one from every continent, 6 in Asia Pacific, quite a few from Germany and the UK. There are 12 government participants, including state and federal agencies. They are looking for public, special and smaller libraries because they are underrepresented. Currently they have 6 public libraries.

Jim Veatch, Nashville State Tech, asked if all of the folks on the various OCLC projects are working together.

Ms. Hyatt: Each project came out at a different era. There has been some interrelation among them. They expect CORC to be the platform they will build off of. It will be the primary information manager of the future.

Cassandra Hartnett, U.S. Documents Librarian, University of Washington, presented a paper written by Kathleen Forsythe, a cataloger and CORC contact at the University of Washington.

This paper describes the University of Washington's CORC participation. They became a participant in May 1999. Ms. Forsythe and one other cataloger are using CORC mostly to create e-resource records for the University of Washington catalog. Ms. Hartnett and another cataloger have used the pathfinder feature to prepare for a presentation.

Web based record creation was one of the main reasons that they wanted to get involved with CORC. The benefits of using this are that they get a split screen. They can retrieve the web site at the same time they are working on the screen on the cataloging record. Help screens are available about each tag. Each MARC tag is hotlinked and there are other automated tools. The drawback is slower response times as you wait for the screen to redisplay every time you add something. A harvester retrieves descriptive information, as Ms. Hyatt described. This feature works more or less well depending upon the site you are working with and how well their metadata is recorded. There still needs to be cataloger review. They use full MARC cataloging. They have created 200 records using CORC so far. They have exported 100 of them from the web site and these are FTP'd to their OCAT. They have lost a few of these records, which is a reminder that this is still an experimental project.

The cooperative model is excellent. It is hoped that it will be affordable to all sizes of libraries. The University of Washington URL: <www.lib.washington.edu/msd/corc/corc.htm>.

Carolyn Kohler, Head, Government Publications, University of Iowa

There are many kinds of metadata. Metadata is commonly defined as data about data, but it is helpful to think about it as structured information about information. It usually refers to electronic information, but that is not always stated nor is it always true. It was designed to be created by the creators of the information resource rather than by librarians, for the purpose of enhancing indexing and retrieval by web search engines. It is now, however, also appearing in conventional online catalogs. While all cataloging is metadata, not all metadata is cataloging. There are many metadata schemes in development to handle varying aspects of data. Various administrative metadata schemes handle electronic information security, preservation, provenance, data integrity, archiving, licensing, rights management, etc.

Ms. Kohler first began working with metadata in attempting to explain what librarians could do for faculty in managing faculty databases. Not only their published works, but also all of the data and research that went into compiling the published piece. This involved migrating and refreshing the data, and developing a way that this information could be accessible to others, on a rights basis as necessary. From this project she moved into descriptive metadata which is the topic under discussion today.

Descriptive metadata is information necessary to identify, locate and access an electronic resource. And there are many schemes of descriptive metadata, such as that developed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee, for digital geospatial data, which is based on GILS. There are 275 data elements in this compared to Dublin Core's 15 elements. For other schemes, see the green handout resource bibliography, also at <www.lib.uiowa.edu/govpubs/metadata.html>.

With the burgeoning development of web-based information, it is critical that we organize the Internet for retrieval. The point of metadata is to code online resources in such a way as to enhance that retrieval, so that we as librarians can help our users find the information that they need.

The theory is that those best able to develop the metadata are those who have created the data initially. Michael Gorman suggests full MARC cataloging for the top use web sites that are of the most value and Dublin Core metadata for the others. But he also assumes that web search engines will continue to improve.

At Iowa, Ms. Kohler serves on a metadata working group charged to identify and address issues related to the implementation of one or more metadata schemes keeping in mind the staffing levels available for implementation. This working group recommended primary use of Dublin Core, with the addition of other schemes as deemed necessary.

They determined the unit responsible for the web page would review and enhance metadata as necessary, meaning bibliographers and collection managers, not catalogers. It was also determined that for certain significant databases they would use cross-walking to convert these Dublin Core records to MARC for their public catalog.

They were just about to do a partnership with GPO when CORC appeared, which will do much of what they had wanted to do. CORC offered the opportunity for the cooperative creation and sharing of web resource descriptions, and shared maintenance of URLs and automated link maintenance, as well as help with developing standards which Iowa was interested in doing.

Since CORC offered to do collectively what they had determined to do independently they joined the project, not so much as an institution, but as part of a consortium, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).

Ms. Wallace, Council, agrees that this is a wonderful way to integrate public service staff and cataloging. The CORC project was originally seeded with a large number of electronic records from the OCLC database, an enormous number of which were GPO cataloging records for web resources that are in the depository program. Are GPO and OCLC continuing to work on this to see that all the right records, and the right information is embedded in the records so that we will continue to have these resources in CORC?

Ms. Hyatt: OCLC is eager to continue this cooperation, and will take this as a suggestion to reinforce this effort.

Chairman Aldrich opened the working session with a few announcements.

Mr. Lawrence led a wrap up discussion on this morning's Preservation program that he and Mr. Perry presented.

He asked that we consider how we might begin an assessment of digital products that may be most at risk and to consider what might be the important preservation components for this material.

Ms. Sevetson suggested that we think about how smaller depository libraries can be involved. Ann Miller followed up by saying that this would give us a better idea of what the impact on the depository community will be. Ms. Garner asked that we keep in mind a distinction between local choices and program mandated things. There is a core list, but there will be local things as well upon which individual institutions will wish to place emphasis. We also need to look at what needs to be preserved in multiple formats. Mr. Aldrich suggested that the 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppies are probably most at risk at the moment. Perhaps we should find people to move this material onto other formats initially. Ms. Wallace said that this is currently being done and is almost finished. They will be on an FTP site. This may or may not be a GPO partner. If it becomes an official partnership, this could replace our floppies in our collections. If it doesn't, then it remains a question.

Mr. Lawrence asked for some input on doing an assessment. He believes that this may help us gather enough information to make some further decisions. We need to decide how we want to deliver the assessment, retrieve the assessment when it is done, and how we would analyze and disseminate the information gathered. Mr. Lawrence and Ms. Koepp will work on coordinating what needs to go into an assessment. GPO will be consulted to see if they can mandate a response to the survey. Mr. Evans and Mr. Baldwin are the GPO liaisons to this Committee and they will be consulted for the process.

Ms. Garner asked for clarification on whether this was to be a survey of products or projects. Mr. Lawrence responded that this was to be a survey of products and their components, specific parts of software, auxiliary files, and any other elements at risk.

Ms. Sevetson expressed concern about the burden of this on the Regionals and bigger libraries, but had no ideas about how to spread the burden among the libraries. Regionals are not necessarily in the best position to respond to this. They may not have the time, money or inclination that smaller libraries may have.

Ms. Fredericks expressed concern about archiving. She likes the idea of cooperative initiatives within our states or regions, such as for GIS. She doesn't worry about the size of the institution. The bigger ones with the large collections need to be the ones involved.

Mr. Lawrence asked if Ms. Fredericks and Ms. Sevetson would work together on this issue?

Ms. Wallace asked for clarification on what we are taking responsibility for, adding that we need to make sure that everyone has access but not everyone has to have the data.

Mr. Lawrence asked the group for input on training and funding for this project. He wonders about the knowledge base for this activity. If we adopt the strategies of refreshing and migration, we may need training sessions at conferences, or a workbook that would provide instruction. If we go in this direction, what will we need to do first?

Ms. Wallace asked if this would be similar to the preservation product that GODORT's Rare and Endangered Government Documents Committee has produced.

Ms. Koepp suggested that we need to do the assessment first before we can plan for training or funding.

Mr. Lawrence said that he would attempt to write something that would begin to define areas of knowledge one would need to master or become familiar with before one could jump into the arena of preservation.

Mr. Aldrich volunteered to work with Mr. Lawrence on this. He believes that trying to get a handle on this is an appropriate issue for Council. He asked for confirmation of this from Mr. Barnum and Mr. Evans.

Mr. Barnum and Mr. Evans both agreed that this assessment would be useful on both the partnership and the ET side.

Mr. Buckley confirmed that assessment is the important part, and then we can go on to exploring options for training and strategy development. Philosophy can be discussed, but practical stuff will need to come later, and this is what needs to go out to most of the libraries.

Mr. Aldrich suggested that there might be partnership opportunities with some existing consortia, such as CIC.

Ms. Wallace said that this brings back the idea of the 'super' regional, since not every selective will be keeping this material.

Maggie Farrell, in a report on the Electronic Transition Committee, passed out an agenda and called our attention to the two reports that Gil Baldwin had passed out earlier: Progress Report on the Transition to a More Electronic FDLP, 1996-1999, and Completing the Transition to a More Electronic FDLP. The charge of the Electronic Transition Committee is to look at these two documents in particular. Ms. Farrell believes that they should not limit themselves to these two documents. There is also a need to analyze GPO and where they are in the Transition. Are they in the right spot and what needs to happen for them to move forward? We need to determine if the assumptions in the Completing the Transition document are correct. In this way we can assist GPO in maintaining the right direction.

Ms. Farrell reported that there is a subcommittee on access issues. Serving on this subcommittee are Mr. Wood, Ms. Tezla, and Ms. Farrell. Mr. Lawrence and Ms. Garner are on the subcommittee representing preservation and archival issues; and Diane Eidelman, Paula Kaczmarek, Kathy Tezla and Julie Wallace represent cataloging and locator issues. Ms. Farrell asked if any of the new members would be interested in becoming involved?

Mr. Aldrich said he would like to work on cataloging and locator issues.

Ms. Wallace pointed out that in terms of the two reports we are dealing with, the Progress Report from last spring tells us what has been done, and we may want to review it to see if this has all really been done. But then we need to look at the moving forward part. This needs some fleshing out, and it is a little harder to discern how to divide it up. How should time to be divided on that? There are many items in the Progress Report where we have a check mark indicating that the work has been done. We somehow have to translate that over into the Completing the Transition document and decide how to deal with it.

Ms. Farrell, speaking about the Progress Report, explained that the subcommittee may say that something was done, but that it wasn't done enough, and that it needs to be reviewed in some way.

Bob Hinton and Ms. Fredericks volunteered to join the subcommittee on Access Issues.

Ms. Farrell reminded the group that Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Evans are GPO liaisons to the Committee.

Ms. Farrell asked that the Council members in subgroups break up into groups for about 20 minutes to discuss their part of the issues and then report back.

After the subgroup meetings Ms. Farrell reconvened the Council session. She had developed a timeframe for their work, as follows:

Mr. Wood, Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Aldrich reported on the discussions of their respective subgroups.

Ms. Farrell summarized the reports and said that she expected good discussion to continue on e-mail.

Judy Russell, NCLIS, joined the Council session at 3:40. She began by saying that she was happy to be back with us. She informed us that Bob Willard will testify Thursday at the NTIS hearing.

Referring to the Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products: Final Report, she said that they were trying to decide the appropriate next steps for the Commission to take, and would like to have Council's input on this topic. NCLIS staff have met with various groups, among them, GODORT, ARL, etc., to get feedback on the next steps.

There has been a lot of interest in the report, but not much substantive direction about next steps. This summer Woody Horton put together some concepts on what might be done, thinking that some strawman may be easier to respond to.

She would like to revisit some of those concepts here and to see what role, if any, we think Council might play. She realizes that we are advisory to the Public Printer and that we are not in a position to advise others. But at the same time we are knowledgeable of the issues and in a general way represent the depository community.

The report has fulfilled at least one goal by giving us a fact base. It is not a scientific sample, but there is a large group of facts. They are not just opinion or anecdotal. But the report is aging, the report came out in March with the data collection completed last January, so we need to act sooner than later.

Is this survey something that needs to be repeated at some regular intervals? If they were to do this would they go back to the same agencies so we can compare, or do we want a different slice of the pie.

Woody's concepts:

1. Work with CIO Council and other comparable groups in the legislative and judicial branches to try to do some education and training to try to reach several different groups at the agencies. One of these would be the policy making people, mid-level program managers, and the product managers. There is a lack of awareness of the depository program, and the need to deposit publications or to have them printed through GPO. To inform just once doesn't work, because personnel keeps changing and so it has to be a continual effort.
2. Prepare a set of white papers. Some work has been done, but in fragments. These would be to explain permanent public access and how it is different from preservation. Beyond this there is the issue of authentication.
3. Develop best practices which are not quite standards. These would call more attention to what good practices are, like permanent public access.
4. Discussion of next steps for policy initiatives or legislation. Look at policy guidance to the agencies.
5. End users. NCLIS is concerned with service to the people. Some agencies have done user surveys. They are suggesting that they do a survey of surveys. How does all of this impact users? How do they deal with software and file formats?

Some of these things have relatively little cost. Training may require some initial cost and some ongoing investment. NCLIS would not do this, but could assist. NCLIS would like to reach out one more time. DLC and GPO are important for giving input on what needs to happen next.

Mr. Aldrich thanked Ms. Russell for her report and said that we had 8 minutes for comments.

Mr. Wood asked if there was something more specific that potentially involves GPO or the FDLP in what NCLIS has considered?

Ms. Wallace noted that one of the things we have been talking about is the long term preservation strategies of tangible format. What we need is data about what products have been distributed to depositories. We need to know a lot about them, and not just what they are.

Ms. Farrell asked if the contract between NCLIS and GPO is finished now?

Ms. Russell explained that it was sort of finished at the end of the report, but that they had always talked about a part 3 or some other aspect.

Mr. DiMario noted that GPO was only interested through part 2. Unless there is some issue that GPO is convinced needs to be examined, they aren't interested in anything further from NCLIS. But they have an open mind.

Ms. Russell said that if NCLIS is going to do something, they want to do it in harmony with GPO.

Ms. Sevetson said that the Interagency Working Group has already done some things on permanent public access, but at Berkeley they are interested in doing something with authentication. Maybe LITA or CIO Council might be a better body to talk to.

Ms. Russell said that there are a number of issues that white papers could be done on. For example, what is a government document? Something to explain the issue with contractor reports, and the interpretation of the Code.

Mr. Wood asked what the NCLIS position on NTIS is.

Ms. Russell responded that they are thinking broadly on the issue.

Mr. Aldrich summarized by saying that all of these are really good ideas, but they would resonate better if they came from the broader community than from DLC. He commends the report and noted that the work was excellent, but Council needs to talk about it more among themselves and decide how we can best advise Mr. DiMario, and he can get back with NCLIS.

Ms. Wallace reported on the Operations Committee, which incorporates Cataloging/Locator tools, etc.

There are a number of things that have been on the plate of the Committee from the last meeting and others have been added more recently. On the issue of boxes and delivery, it is clear that GPO knows what the problems are and that they are dealing with them. And they are communicating better with the community about this.

Problems with microfiche contractors are also being dealt with at GPO.

On the issue of a mechanism to communicate concerns, the Committee would like to get information from GPO, but this may not warrant a recommendation.

It's been a long time since we have heard anything about Superceded List, and the Committee would like some communication about that. Ms. Haun-Mohamed and her group are working on it with Dan Barkley. Ms. Haun-Mohamed noted that it would be put on the web.

The monetary value of depository collections and putting this information on the web will be an action item for the Committee.

Changes made in the self study process have gotten good reviews, but we need a possible recommendation about further concerns.

The Cataloging Committee has been asked by GPO for input on a couple of things. It is not clear what kind of input they need. In question is the issue of using item numbers and SuDocs classification numbers in the records for online-only resources.

Mr. Downing said that this is a question that is more in Robin's area. They perhaps would like to consider eliminating the SuDocs number from the record.

Mr. Baldwin suggested we start from a clean slate by asking what elements do we need in the record.

Ms. Wallace said that we would need to look at how vendors are using these elements. She asked what the timeframe is for what GPO needs from us. If they need the information by January, then they need to do this differently. We need to know by tomorrow if we need to move faster on this.

Mr. Downing pointed out that there is some pressure. Vendors are wondering what the outcome will be.

Ms. Wallace questioned what kind of savings could be realized, and said that what would be recommended might depend to a certain extent upon this.

Mr. Baldwin suggested that the Committee should assess how these elements are being used. This would be very useful to GPO.

Ms. Wallace said that as an operational issue we need to talk about the LPS web pages and the askLPS and WEBTech Notes and how these support our operations.

Mr. Baldwin reported that this is in progress. Work is under way to correct the problems overall.

Ms. Wallace discussed how the administrative pages are organized and how difficult it is to find things. We know they are there but the way they are structured makes them very difficult to find. They are still structured the way they are in paper.

Mr. Evans pointed out that they are aware of the problems and are correcting them now.

Ms. Sevetson pointed out that on her page she has organized things differently, and she does this by thinking about it the way we need them.

Ms. Fredericks reiterated that she has looked at the site, tried to use it, and spent way too much time trying to find what she needed.

Ms. Haun-Mohamed commented that this is the first she has heard about this.

Mr. Baldwin made the suggestion that before we reorganize that we let the site search become active and see what effect that has.

Ms. Sevetson said that we may have to go back to an activity based organization for these pages. We may have to stop and step back and take a look at it. And we haven't talked to Joe Paskoski about this.

Mr. Evans pointed out that they need to get back and refine some site search stuff, but only some minor rearrangements are needed.

Mr. Baldwin suggested that before we get to the stage of a recommendation we need to have a Council group work with GPO on this to pinpoint what the problems are as we see them.

Ms. Wallace asked how best to communicate with GPO.

Mr. Aldrich pointed out that we could do an action item, recommendation, or ongoing communication with GPO, but suggested it be a possible recommendation: GPO locator tools - future/analysis.

Ms. Wallace said that the Committee would consider asking for an online way to search all of the shipping lists.

Mr. Evans said that they would need to be in a different format than they are in now, but that this would be possible.

Ms. Haun-Mohamed said that it may be possible in the future, but not immediately.

Ms. Sevetson, in commenting about the issue of the serials accounting at GPO, wondered if since every library is checking them in, if there was a way of distinguishing what comes in on deposit and what comes in some other way.

Ms. Haun-Mohamed said that at GPO it can be checked now to see if something has been received, but it is the acquisition system that is checked. It is not automatic, it is one by one. That's how they answer the askLPS inquiries.

The working session was adjourned at 4:45 p.m.

Council worked throughout the day on drafting action items, recommendations, and commendations. The organization of committees was discussed and changes made.

Mr. Evans gave a presentation to Council on the new GPO Access Site Search and on the development of the kid's pages being developed.

After some discussion it was decided that the Committee structure would be improved by dividing the Operations Committee from the Cataloging and Locator Committee. Following is the composition of these two committees:

Thursday, October 21, 1999

Duncan Aldrich opened this session by thanking all of the GPO staff who helped to make this meeting a success. He also reminded everyone about the Spring 2000 Council meeting to be held in Newport, Rhode Island, April 10 - 12.

The major order of business today is to go over the action items, recommendations and commendation with the audience.

Respectfully submitted,

Donna Koepp
Secretary, Depository Library Council