The views that follow are mine and mine only as an interested observer of the Federal Depository Library Program. I do not manage a depository collection and do not represent the views of the University of Minnesota Libraries.

The authors state on page 2 that

"The major flaw with the proposal to amend Title 44 to address the difficulties that regional depositories face is that Title 44 is not the cause of the difficulties. As the comments in the report demonstrate, the difficulties that regionals face are caused by local decisions to cut staff, limit space, and reduce budgets. The regionals are not being overwhelmed by new tangible deposits, in fact the percentage of FDLP information in tangible formats is decreasing each year. Even if it were possible to make very precise, limited changes to Title 44, it would not change the local conditions that are leading to staffing, space, and budget problems."

Yes, Title 44 is the problem: "Designation of regional depository libraries may be made by a Senator or the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico within the areas served by them...who shall first ascertain from the head of the library to be so designated that the library will, in addition to fulfilling the requirements for depository libraries, retain at least one copy of all Government publications either in printed or microfacsimile form (except those authorized to be discarded by the Superintendent of Documents); and within the region served will provide interlibrary loan, reference service, and assistance for depository libraries in the disposal of unwanted Government publications." 44USC1912

Title 44 specifies that to be a Regional is to keep either print or microfacsimile copies of publications. For a Regional that translates into "in order to be in compliance with the law, you must put your resources (time, people and money) into the maintenance of collections in only one of two formats." It further means that copies not in those formats are not acceptable Regional copies. Therefore, before any Regional can contemplate doing anything else, it must come up with the resources necessary to maintain buildings to hold the collection and pay staff to locate it. Statutorily specified formats lead to dedicated costs in space and staff which necessarily curtail efforts to develop innovative tools for public access because the money's already been spent maintaining the status quo.

I'm baffled by the opposition to either removing the format specifications or adding the option for a digital copy instead of print or microfiche. Once you have a digital copy, you've not only got a duplicate of what you already had, but you've got the foundation of a whole lot more. All of the fabulous text mining and customized delivery tools exemplified by the work of the Sunlight Foundation, GovTrack.us, Internet Archive's Americana collection and others show how much potential there is in large scale digital collections.

GovTrack.us has been particularly interesting because its developer has been using his technical skills to attempt to address intellectual complexities in legal research such as the relationship between a bill and the US Code. His solution so far isn't complete, but he's shown what you can do when you combine what you know about a type of information, a large amount of that information and software solutions developed to facilitate information sharing and distribution.

Why not give Regional libraries - many of which are located at large research universities and therefore potentially ideally suited to incubate new tools and services - the opportunity to pursue similarly innovative efforts based on their own collections?

Hi Amy,

Thanks for your comment. I agree with you that if you have the digital copy, there is a lot you can do with it. But I have problems with the idea of "adding the option for a digital copy instead of print or microfiche." My main problem with this is that throughout the age of the "digital depository", GPO's official documents and the libraries "substituting digital for tangible" have understood this as linking to third party, usually government servers. This leaves the copy completely outside the control of the library. If Congress decides that the severe economic times requires fee for access e-pubs, then the library's "substituted materials" disappear behind a fee wall. Of course, this problem can be fixed with digital deposit.

Even with digital deposit, there is a concern that the world does not yet have a guaranteed method of preserving electronic materials. This is why the Census Bureau has microfilmed the 2000 Census questionnaires so they'll be available to genealogists in 2072. With multiple copies of electronic files in systems like LOCKSS, we may be able to lick the problem of electronic preservation. But it might still be prudent for someone to keep a copy of mission critical documents in microfilm. Preferably more than one copy.

The bulk of your comment suggests that Title 44 is the problem because it creates undue burdens on Regionals. If Congress would relieve the Regionals of having to care for their legacy collections, then they could do all the interesting digital projects that I think both you and I would like to see them and other depositories do.

But would this actually happen? If we assume that the Regionals problems are driven by a lack of resources to accomplish their Title 44 duties, we can further assume their parent institutions are trying to spend the minimal amount they can on their Regionals. If this is the case, then I think that the liklier consequence of being relieved of keeping all tangible copies would be the parent institutions saying, "This is great, now that you're not stuck with keeping all those musty volumes, you don't need as many resources. We can cut your staffing and reduce your physical footprint." Then the Regionals will be back where they started, only without a reference copy of publications for their state.

Given the other risks a full scale revision of Title 44 entails, I don't think it's worth it to submit a revision in hopes that parent institutions will actually allow the Regionals to keep their current resources. The object of any revision to Title 44, should be as Bernadine and Michelle say, to explicitly improve service to users.

Like Amy, I am not involved in Regional management and my opinions reflect FGI and not my parent institution.

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"And besides all that, what we need is a decentralized, distributed system of depositing electronic files to local libraries willing to host them." -- Daniel Cornwall, tipping his hat to Cato the Elder for the original quote.

After reading the report, I am reminded again how parts of its narrative remain focused on the bibliographic purpose of libraries, rather than the communities they are supposed to serve. Find here my own riff on how the civic possibilities of a depository might better serve their communities -- and I argue we are now legally empowered to do this.

This also ties in with my earlier arguments of how librarians need to take a leadership role in the communities on affirmatively encouraging consistent, sustainable civic conversations. Technology and opportunity, especially if embraced by strategic changes to existing law, can only enhance this important civic value.

This is a great and valuable discussion -- I hope more people join the fray.

I suggest that people read Carl Malamud's open letter to the Department of Transparency. These two documents can be seen as good conceptual bookends for driving conversation forward.