Hi Kevin,

Thanks very much for commenting.

As I read your remarks, it sounds like you want the Government Printing Office (GPO) to "continue" its responsibility to preserve government documents. That makes it sound like it has preservation responsibilities in the current program.

Do I understand you correctly, and if so, how do you see that? From what I can tell, while GPO has rightly had primary responsibility for discovering, describing, and distributing publications, it has never had a lead role in preservation before. If that's the case, we're asking GPO take on a new role, not a role that "remains" with GPO. If preservation is a new role, than it's one where GPO has no track record. While no one has a proven track record in digital preservation, depository libraries have a century and a half long track record in preserving tangible documents. In creating new preservation efforts, I prefer to build on institutions that have successfully handled other material.

I think GPO's most valuable role in preservation will be to take its distribution responsibilities seriously with an eye to no-fee permanent public access. This will likely mean a combination of tangible deposit where a tangible product exists, and the deposit of fully functional electronic files to multiple locations. Not all files to all libraries, but to all willing libraries.

Thanks again for joining the conversation, and if I've misunderstood you, or you have some evidence of a prior GPO role in preservation, I'm here to listen.

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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.