This is just too depressing!

OMB prepares for open gov sites to go dark in May
By Jason Miller
Executive Editor
Federal News Radio

Many of the Obama administration's top open government initiatives are set to be turned off by May 31.

Government sources confirm that the Office of Management and Budget is planning to take seven websites dark in two months because of a lack of funding.

One government official, who requested anonymity because they didn't get permission to discuss the topic, said funding will begin to run out on April 20 for public sites IT Dashboard, Data.gov and paymentaccuracy.gov. The source said OMB also is planning on shutting down internal government sites, including Performance.gov, FedSpace and many of the efforts related the FEDRamp cloud computing cybersecurity effort.

The official said two other sites, USASpending.gov and Apps.gov/now, will run through July 30 but go dark soon after.

[HT to John Wonderlich at Sunlight Foundation!]

The 10 most segregated urban areas in America, By Daniel Denvir, Salon (Mar 29, 2011). "Slide show: The new census numbers provide a sobering reminder of how separate white and black America still are."

Decades after the end of Jim Crow, and three years after the election of America's first black president, the United States remains a profoundly segregated country.

That reality has been reinforced by the release of Census Bureau data last week that shows black and white Americans still tend to live in their own neighborhoods, often far apart from each other. Segregation itself, the decennial census report indicates, is only decreasing slowly, although the dividing lines are shifting as middle-income blacks, Latinos and Asians move to once all-white suburbs -- whereupon whites often move away, turning older suburbs into new, if less distressed, ghettos.

Much fun: interactive 3D map of the West Wing.

• Closer Look: Inside Obama's West Wing, The National Journal (March 25, 2011)

An important milestone for digital preservation of government information: CRL has completed its audit of HathiTrust, which contains digital copies of many printed government publications, and certified it as a "trusted repository." The audit uses the Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification checklist (TRAC), which is based on the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS).

• HathiTrust Audit Report 2011, Executive Summary, Center for Research Libraries

  The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) conducted a preservation audit of HathiTrust (www.HathiTrust.org) between November 2009 and December 2010, and on the basis of that audit certifies HathiTrust as a trustworthy digital repository. The CRL Certification Advisory Panel has concluded that the practices and services described in HathiTrust public communications and published documentation are generally sound and appropriate to the content being archived and the general needs of the CRL community. Moreover the Panel expects that in the future, HathiTrust will continue to be able to deliver content that is understandable and usable by its community.

• PDF of Full Report on HathiTrust Audit 2011.

(Full disclosure: I participated in the audit by providing technical support for the site visit and the assessment of HathiTrust repository systems and architecture.)

SPARC launches new e-forum for subject repository development and success, Association of Research Libraries. Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (March 30, 2011).

Washington, DC – SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has announced it will host a new discussion forum dedicated to the unique needs of the subject-based digital repository community. As repositories continue to grow as an engine for driving Open Access worldwide, new challenges and opportunities emerge and the demand for more focused conversations grows.

The SPARC Subject Repositories Forum ("SPARC-SR") will enable subject repository managers, both inside and outside libraries, to share procedures and best practices, discuss possible joint projects, and support each other in providing access to an important realm of scholarly literature.

For details on how to join, visit http://www.arl.org/sparc/about/emailsignup.shtml .

Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry), is on C-SPAN's Book TV This weekend. Siva is a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs and The Anarchist in the Library. For more, visit: googlizationofeverything.com.

2011 Virginia Festival of the Book Interview: Siva Vaidhyanathan, "The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)"

* Sunday, March 27th at 5:12pm (ET)
* Sunday, March 27th at 11:15pm (ET)
* Monday, March 28th at 5:12am (ET)

update: Interview now available online at the C-SPAN video library. (Thanks to Gary!)

Although many media stories about the Google Book Settlement continue to refer to Google's project as a "library," the smart media and knowledgeable people, including Judge Chin, understand that Google's project is not and never was a library: "It is instead a complex and large-scale commercial enterprise in which Google -- and Google alone -- will obtain a license to sell millions of books for decades to come."

In the wake of the court decision, we are seeing calls and planning for establishing an actual public, digital library as an alternative to relying on Google.

Here are some key articles:

• Concept Note, Digital Library of America Project (as of March, 2011).

  The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will make the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity available, free of charge, to all.

  ...At the outset, its material is likely to remain hosted, as a primary matter, in a federated series of the existing digital repositories. The system would allow for broad and easy access to enormous existing collections, such as the Internet Archive, along with those in research libraries and other repositories and those to be created by future scanning.... [working] with the leading preservation technologies -- HathiTrust, DuraSpace, and LOCKSS, and potentially others -- to build out the nation's existing preservation architecture. [The project should] begin with works in the public domain that have already been digitized and are accessible through the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, [and] a broad range of government material...

• Thank You, Judge Chin, By Siva Vaidhyanathan, Chronicle of Higher Education (March 24, 2011).

  As opposed to how some university libraries celebrated Google's announcement of its Book Search Project in 2004 because now they would not have to spend money to get digital files of their books, scientists who work on the Genome stood up and organized.

  ...We lack only one thing: the political will to fight for a great and noble information system -- a global digital library. I'm not talking about the haphazard rush we've seen to date to digitize the stacks of major research libraries. Nor a commercial venture like Google's. I'm proposing what I call the "Human Knowledge Project".... What I mean is a truly global digital library. To generate support for that, we need to identify the political and legal constraints, as well as articulate the payoffs.

• Creating a digital public library without Google's money, By Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times (March 25, 2011).

  The Google books case now looks like a salvage operation for the dream of a digital library.

  ...Judge Chin's decision forces us -- or allows us-- to ponder the dream of a digital library without ceding our future to Google.

Carl Malamud was instrumental in getting more videos recorded by the Congressional committees themselves released to C-SPAN.

• Government-recorded Hearings Now Being Added to the Video Library C-SPAN Video Library Blog (March 18, 2011).

  "The C-SPAN Video Library now contains committee hearings produced by House and Senate committees. C-SPAN can only record a limited number of committees every day. However, a number of House and Senate committees have installed their own equipment to webcast their committee proceedings. These webcasts are now scattered across House and Senate committee websites or not available at all. In order to enhance the offerings of the C-SPAN Video Library and to consolidate these hearings in one place, we are importing government produced committee video into the Video Library."

Browse the C-SPAN video library.

Hat tip to INFOdocket!

There is so much coming out about the Google Book Settlement court decision that it seems redundant now to repost links here on FGI. I did think it might be useful to weed through so many and post a few highlights here and that's what I have been trying to do (here and here and here and here).

Even though most of the GBS controversy is over copyrighted materials and most government information is not copyrighted, I believe that this issue is relevant to government information. That relevance relates to who will control information access and how we will build our digital libraries. The Settlement and the trends it was promoting were not good for the public, for privacy of reading, or for libraries. As google relentlessly blocked full access to most scanned government publications, the HathiTrust made most of those same publications publicly available. The press has repeatedly referred to what google was building as a "library" and continues to do so now, even though the judge explicitly said it was not ("The Google Book Search initiative envisioned in the [agreement] is not a library... It is instead a complex and large-scale commercial enterprise in which Google -- and Google alone -- will obtain a license to sell millions of books for decades to come.") Google transformed what it originally described as indexing (in the same way that it indexes web-pages) -- and therefore fair use, into a giant bookstore in which it would sell access to individuals and sell and limit access to libraries.

What happens next may turn those trends around and give us a better chance of going beyond google's avowed policy of making money without doing evil, to a more enlighted policy of actually doing good for our communities.

In that spirit, here are a few more links on the GBS decision.

• The Google Books Settlement: Where Things Stand, and Some Suggestions for What’s Next, by David Crotty, Scholarly Kitchen (Mar 24, 2011).
• Google Book Settlement -- Opponents 1, Google 0, by Rick Anderson, Scholarly Kitchen (Mar 23, 2011).
• Inside Judge Chin's Opinion, by James Grimmelmann, The Laboratorium (March 22, 2011).
• Google Book Settlement Rejected: Press Review, Comments, and Resources, By Gary Price, INFOdocket [updated link]
• Google Books Decision: "The Privacy Concerns are Real", by Cindy Cohn, EFF, (March 22, 2011).

A lot more good commentary and analysis is coming out about the recent Google Books Settlement decision. Here are a few not-to-be-missed items:

• Research Libraries See Google Decision as Just a Bump on the Road to Widespread Digital Access, By Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education (March 23, 2011).

  [T]he Association of Research Libraries ...did not take a pro or con stance on the proposed settlement. Along with the American Library Association and the Association of College and Research Libraries, it did raise privacy and antitrust concerns about it and questioned whether academic libraries' interests were adequately represented.

• A Copyright Expert Who Spoke Up for Academic Authors Offers Insights on the Google Books Ruling [interview with Pamela Samuelson] by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education (March 23, 2011).

  The thing that surprised me about the opinion was that he took seriously the issues about whether the Authors Guild and some of its members had adequately represented the interests of all authors, including academic authors and foreign authors.... Academic authors, on average, would prefer open access. Whereas the guild and its members, understandably, want to do profit maximization.

  ...as we all know, Google basically also wants to know everything that we look at and everything that we read, and they would be engaged in profiling and serving up ads. There were virtually no privacy guarantees for users in the settlement agreement.

• Google Book Search rejected: why not try fair use instead?, by Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing (Mar 23, 2011).

  ...what Google had originally set out to do -- index all the books, in the same way that it indexes all the web-pages -- is arguably fair use, and Google could have mounted a fair use defense against the Authors Guild claim. A victory there would have paved the way for a competitive landscape of multiple search engines indexing books under the same legal theory.

Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library and leader of the movement to establish a digital public library of america, writes about the Google Books Settlement decision:

• A Digital Library Better Than Google's, by ROBERT DARNTON, New York Times (March 23, 2011).

  ... the settlement didn’t do what settlements are supposed to do, like correct an alleged infringement of copyright, or provide damages for past incidents; instead it seemed to determine the way the digital world of books would evolve in the future.

  ...Perhaps Google itself could be enlisted to the cause of the digital public library. It has scanned about 15 million books; two million of that total are in the public domain and could be turned over to the library as the foundation of its collection. The company would lose nothing by this generosity, and might win admiration for its good deed.

  ...only a digital public library will provide readers with what they require to face the challenges of the 21st century -- a vast collection of resources that can be tapped, free of charge, by anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Here is another good post on the Google Book Settlement decision from IHE. Kolowich quotes Pamela Samuelson, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Joseph Esposito, John Wilkin, and others.

• Please Refine Your Search Terms, by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed (March 23, 2011).

  "The Google Book Search initiative envisioned in the [agreement] is not a library," the judge wrote in another footnote, quoting Samuelson directly. "It is instead a complex and large-scale commercial enterprise in which Google -- and Google alone -- will obtain a license to sell millions of books for decades to come."

Sunlight reports on the House bill that will slash funding for major government data sharing and transparency projects. Noting that the funding for these programs is only a few million dollars, Daniel Shuman says, "The returns from these e-government initiatives in terms of transparency are priceless."

• Budget Technopocalypse: Proposed Congressional Budgets Slash Funding for Data Transparency, by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation Blog (March 23, 2011).

  Data.gov, USASpending.gov, and other Obama tech innovations face virtual extinction if the FY 2011 budget bill passed by the House of Representatives in February or considered by the Senate in March becomes law.

It is not just the Statistical Abstract and related compilations that we are in danger of losing due to budget cuts (see The demise of the Statistical Abstract and other critical Census titles). Budget cuts are aimed at some of the most basic government information programs.

In such a climate, how can we rely on GPO, FDsys, NARA, and government agencies as our sole source of the government information that is released? We need this information in our digital depository libraries so that our communities can decide what is essential for long term preservation and access!

The best analysis I have read so far of the court's decision on the Google Books Settlement is from Barbara Fister:

• March Madness: Judge Denny Chin Rejects the Google Settement, by Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed (March 23, 2011)

  ...The judge also gave a nod toward the Department of Justice's complaint that the class action took what was a copyright complaint and turned it into a proposal for a profitable and far-reaching business endeavor. The Google project would cease being a search engine and instead become a retail platform; not a virtual library, but a bookstore, selling books that could not legally be bought from any other vendor

  ...Thanks to the continual erosion of the public domain through repeated copyright extensions, we've made a large portion of our cultural history virtually inaccessible. Congress, which is constitutionally authorized to make copyright decisions, has failed to make reasonable arrangements to let those books be used to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."

San Diego Citybeat's Dave Maass is leading a project to help San Diegans obtain public records and other data from government agencies. Produced under the Open San Diego umbrella, it's called Flashlight:

Open San Diego Flashlight is basically a big collection of bookmarks for San Diego’s enterprising community of journalists, researchers, citizen watchdogs, muckrakers and data nerds. This site contains hundreds of links to free databases, maps, records, archives and searches—each tagged and categorized for quick, convenient access.

This FishbowlLA story takes a look at Flashlight along with a similar "Fishbowl" endeavor being undertaken by the LA Times: Southern California Papers Helping Wage Public Records Transparency War.

There has been a lot of discussion and suggestions for action on GOVDOC-L and various library listservs and ALA Connect about the pending demise of the Census Bureau's Statistical Compendia Branch and along with it the elimination of the Statistical Abstract of the United States (aka Stat Abs) and all other titles produced by that branch (State and Metropolitan Area Data Book, County and City Data Book, USA Counties, Quick Facts). Here's the US Census Bureau's budget estimates for 2012 (PDF).

Librarians around the country are beginning to mobilize. Alesia McManus, the Library Director at Howard Community College in Columbia, MD, has created a Facebook group “Save the US Statistical Abstract” to try to help spread the word and share information. ALA Washington Office has just announced a Legislative Action Alert opposing the defunding of the Statistical Compendia Branch.

Lastly, below is a sample letter that I hope all of our readers will send/email/fax to their Senators and Congressmen -- many thanks to Starr Hoffman at the University of North Texas, Hailey Mooney at Michigan State University, and Kevin McLure at Chicago-Kent College of Law for getting the letter rolling! Feel free to copy and/or edit the letter to suit and forward this post far and wide.

Here's an easy way to find the contact information of your Congressional delegation:

TO YOUR SENATOR:
The Honorable (full name)
(Room #) (Name) Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator ___________:

TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE:
The Honorable (full name)
(Room #) (Name) House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative __________:

Paragraph 1: Why you are writing and who you are. List your "credentials." (If you want a response, you must include your name and address, even when using email.)

My name is __________, and I’m a librarian at INSTITUTION which has served the government information needs of the constituents of your Congressional district and state since DATE LIBRARY BECAME A DEPOSITORY. I’m writing because I and many other librarians are deeply concerned that the U.S. Census Bureau's Budget Estimates for Fiscal Year 2012 calls for the termination of the Statistical Compendia Branch which would mean the elimination of the United States Statistical Abstract and all titles produced by that branch (State and Metropolitan Area Data Book, County and City Data Book, USA Counties, Quick Facts). The library community is deeply upset at the thought of losing access to this important program and urges you to take action to stop this program change.

Paragraph 2: more details about the situation.

The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published annually since 1878, is a key publication for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), which provides free, public access to government information. Both the print and online versions of the “Stat Abs,” as many librarians affectionately refer to it, are on the FDLP Essential Titles list. It is the first place that many librarians, researchers, students and your constituents(!) look for statistical information, because it compiles a vast amount of information, some of it unpublished and not available anywhere else. The Statistical Abstract also provides a citation for the original source for each table, acting as a guidebook to a huge array of diverse government statistics. The Stat Abs (as well as all of the titles published by the Statistical Compendia Branch!) is a staple of reference librarians and the public for its ease of use, comprehensive content, and as a guidebook to federal statistical sources.

These long published titles -- and the federal depositories that distribute it to the American public -- are not an earmark, but are critical to the provision of social, economic, and political indicators to the American public and greatly benefit every American in every Congressional district. Without it, librarians, the public and your constituents(!) will waste much valuable time looking for statistics in multiple places and compiling longitudinal data.

Paragraph 3: Close by requesting the action you want taken: a vote for or against a bill, or change in general policy. If a certain bill is involved, cite the correct title or number whenever possible.

Please urge the Department of Commerce to reinstate the budget for the Census Bureau's Statistical Compendia Branch and the essential, valuable titles that the Branch provides to the public. Many thanks for your time and your service.

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME
YOUR POSITION
YOUR INSTITUTION
INSTITUTION/CONTACT INFO

References:

Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP): http://fdlp.gov

FDLP Essential Titles: http://snipurl.com/essential-titles

US Census Bureau budget estimate 2012: http://snipurl.com/census-budget-estimate-2012

Do you have links to pages at House.gov on your website or in your catalog? You might want to schedule a link check in April or May as the House Technology Operations Team is planning to revamp the House website and hopes to have changes in place in April.

House Website To Get Facelift, By Juliana Gruenwald, Tech Daily Dose (March 18, 2011).

Do you do "data reference"? Would you like to do it better?

Almost all of us who work with government information help users find statistical information. Many of us also help users locate and use the raw data from which statistical tables are built.

Whether you love or fear questions related to statistical information or data, the current double issue of the IASSIST Quarterly (2009: Winter), "Data Reference in Depth" will be a welcome guide.

Bobray Bordelon of Princeton University Library edited this special issue. It features articles by experts, many of whom you probably know:

• The Pedagogical Data Reference Interview, by Kristin Partlo
• Sources for International Trade, Prices, Production, and Consumption, by Amy West
• Data Reference in Depth: Sources of International Labour Data, by Walter Giesbrecht
• Financial Crisis Data Resources: A Brief Guide, by Mary Tao
• Data in Development: An Overview of Microdata on Developing Countries, by Kristi Thompson
• The American Community Survey: Benefits and Challenges, by Michelle Hayslett and Lynda Kellam

If you're not already a member, consider joining IASSIST. It is an international organization of professionals working with information technology and data services to support research and teaching in the social sciences. Its 300 members work in a variety of settings, including data archives, statistical agencies, research centers, libraries, academic departments, government departments, and non-profit organizations.

Because it's Sunshine Week, there's lots of news about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). First off, the US Department of Justice just announced their new site FOIA.gov as a central repository for FOIA compliance across the Federal government, agency FOIA data since 2008 (detailed reports here), and FOIA spotlight in the news. Interestingly, they haven't put up a link to individual agency FOIA electronic reading rooms, but I've sent in that request and hopefully it'll soon be added to the site.

Do you want to assist in the FOIA process? If so, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a job for you. The EFF has so many liberated/FOIA'd documents in the realms of privacy, due process and civil liberties, that they're seeking help from the public to pore over those liberated government docs as part of their cooperative FOIA review project.

Here's how the Cooperating FOIA list will work: Send us an email to put your name on our list. When we get government documents in response to a FOIA request, we'll post a note to the list with a basic description of the project (for example: "Documents from DHS detailing government use of social media - approximately 100 pages" or "Documents from FBI detailing misuse of National Security Letters - approximately 10,000 pages"). If you're on the list and are interested, you contact us, and we'll tell you how to access pdf versions of the documents and what we're looking for in the information. Then you review the documents and let us know what you find.

Interested in being a Cooperating FOIA Reviewer? Send a note to coopfoia@eff.org with your name, email address, and some brief information on who you are and what you're interested in, and we'll add you to the list.

And finally, check out SunshineWeek.org for FOI news roundup and event listings around the country. You can also play the Ray of Sunshine game!

This just in from the Census Bureau via GPO:

Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 11:43 AM
To: Holmes, Mary A.
Subject: FW: Fw: Statistical Abstract and the Consolidated Federal
Funds Report

Dear Mr. Lansky:

The just released 2012 budget does not include funding for the
Statistical Compendia Branch which would mean the elimination of not
only the Statistical Abstract, but all titles produced by that branch
(State and Metropolitan Area Data Book, County and City Data Book, USA
Counties, Quick Facts). No new editions would be produced in print or
online. We have already started work on the Statistical Abstract 2012
edition and are still working on the local area products (highlighted
above). We will continue to work on these products and have a
contingency plan to have the Statistical Abtract 2012 out by the end
of September, due to our uncertain future.

Sincerely,

Branch Chief
Statistical Compendia Branch, ACSD
U.S. Census Bureau

If you've been on govdoc-l over the last couple of days, you've no doubt read about the demise of the US Census' Statistical Abstract of the United States, published every year since 1878 and one of the most heavily used items in libraries across the US. According to the Department of Commerce's 2012 Congressional Budget Justification document (see pp 82-92), the entire Statistical Compendia Branch as well as the Federal Financial Statistics Program of the US Census is slated to be defunded. Not only will the Statistical Abstract no longer be published, but it also means the elimination of ALL titles produced by that branch (State and Metropolitan Area Data Book, County and City Data Book, Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR), Federal Aid to States (FAS) etc.).

Please write/phone/email/fax your representatives NOW and let them know how critical these publications are to an informed citizenry and to your daily library work. Congress.org has a handy page that will allow you to write all of your representatives at once. Please also forward this message to any library listservs to which you subscribe and send to your friends and family.

UPDATE 3/15/11: In reading further, this looks to be a decision by Census to shift funds to a new program that will use new ways to collect and disseminate data. But Census still seems to be putting the StatAb cart before the new data dissemination horse here. Census Bureau will first kill StatAb etc and *then* initiate a pilot project to see how this new method of disseminating data will work. The new program will not be in place for 1-2 years and in the meantime the American public will not have access to the easy to use and handy Statistical Abstract.

Our Reading List for Following Nuclear News From Japan, by Marian Wang, ProPublica (March 15, 2011).

If you're trying to follow the news from Japan, you may be finding that the news is coming out faster than you can actually read it.

We've compiled a few resources that we've found helpful as we track this developing story. With the news itself overwhelming enough as it is, we're trying to keep it short so as not to overwhelm with quantity....
more

At the last couple of depository library council meetings, I've heard comments from documents librarians -- especially from librarians at smaller institutions -- that they'd love to participate in the digitization process of historic government documents, but for various reasons (lack of $$, staffing, time, technical infrastructure etc) could not undertake large scale digitization projects.

Now there's a way for lots of libraries to chip in on the greater goal of increased access to historic government documents with very little $$ or infrastructure. We've mentioned before about BookLiberator and DIYbookscanner, two projects working on low cost hardware solutions for digitizing books using off the shelf digital cameras and free opensource software called Book Scan Wizard.

But there were still 2 pieces missing to make the whole workflow run smoothly for libraries and government documents collections of all sizes. The third piece to the puzzle just became a reality with yesterday's announcement that Book Scan Wizard had teamed up with the Internet Archive to provide automatic uploads of scans to the Internet Archive (directions and more information here). Hardware: check. Software: check. Digital infrastructure: check.

With the new version of Book Scan Wizard, or even through just uploading directly to the Internet Archive, any PDF composed of images of book pages or organized zip file filled with images of book pages will be automatically processed. The Internet Archive’s servers will then automatically perform optical character recognition (OCR) on the book and make a pdf, epub, kindle (mobi), daisy, djvu, and text file copy of the entire book available for download by anyone, anywhere. You can see a sample book from this process to get a better idea. All this happens within a few hours of the book being uploaded and then anyone can download it. This is free OCR for anyone in the world.

Now there's one last piece needed: Scan on demand. This idea has already been put into practice by the Internet Archive's Open Library and their partnership with the Boston Public Library. What we need is to open up the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) -- which will soon include over 1 million records from GPO's historic shelflist spanning 1870s - 1992 -- similar to the way the BPL's scan on demand project (now retired it seems) allowed users to request a scan of a public domain book directly from the Open Library catalog.

GPO could manage this scan on demand process -- or allow libraries to pick and choose documents from the CGP -- connect the bibliographic metadata from the historic shelflist, and upload to both the Internet Archive and FDsys. The circle is complete. Am I missing anything? Would love to hear readers' thoughts.

Congratulations to Stephanie Braunstein, Donna Lauffer, Susan Lyons, Mark Phillips, and Arlene Weible on being named to serve on the Depository Library Council! Here's the GPO press release:

Public Printer Bill Boarman announced his appointments to the Depository Library Council (DLC) by saying,

"I am honored to appoint these talented individuals to the Council and look forward to their advice on how to advance the mission of the FDLP. GPO has a strong partnership with the depository library community, which is also the foundation of GPO's mission in disseminating Government documents and information to the public."

The five new DLC members (who will serve from June 1, 2011 through June 1, 2014) are:

* Stephanie Braunstein, Assistant Librarian at the Troy H. Middleton Library at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, one of Louisiana's two regional libraries. Braunstein's outreach with the library community includes presenting at conferences, partnering with GPO to host an online list of Federal agency web sites, and contributing to Browse Topics, an online subject based portal for government information. She currently serves as Coordinator of the Federal Documents Task Force (FDTF) of the American Library Association (ALA) and is the Louisiana Library Association Councilor to ALA.

* Donna Lauffer, County Librarian for the Johnson County Library system's 13 branches in Overland Park, Kansas. Lauffer has a strong track record in delivering government information to the public and in promoting civic engagement. Her leadership in support of government information and relevant programming in her library system led to the Johnson County Library being honored as the 2010 Federal Depository Library of the Year.

* Susan Lyons, Reference and Government Documents Librarian at the Rutgers University Law School Library in Newark, New Jersey. Lyons' professional interests include digital preservation, authentication, and permanent public access to government information. She has served as Chair of the Government Documents Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Librarians (AALL), President of the New Jersey Law Librarians Association, and President of the Documents Association of New Jersey.

* Mark Phillips, Assistant Dean for Digital Libraries at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Phillips specializes in digital collections, knowledge of infrastructure for digital collections, preservation techniques, and web harvesting. He currently serves on the Access Committee in the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative's, Dublin Core Library Profile Workgroup.

* Arlene Weible, Government Documents and Technical Services Librarian at the Oregon State Library in Salem, Oregon. Weible has a broad background in technical services and public services, and experience working in state and academic libraries. She currently serves on the National Digital Stewardship Alliance and the regional coordinator for Oregon's intrastate shared regional, a successful shared housing arrangement that serves the depository libraries in Oregon.

The DLC consists of fifteen members appointed by the Public Printer. Its mission is to assist the U.S. Government Printing Office in identifying and evaluating alternatives for improving public access to Government information through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and for optimizing resources available for operating the Program. Members serve three year terms, with five members retiring each year and five new members entering. At least half of the Council's members work in depository libraries and have experience in a Documents department.

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