Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee reported out the Legislative Branch 2013 budget. According to the August 2, 2012 press release, GPO’s budget request was fully funded and will include:

• $83.7 million for Congressional Printing and Binding
• $34.7 million for Salaries and Expenses of the Superintendent of Documents
• $7.8 million for the revolving fund
• $126.2 million total

Government Printing Office - $126.2 million – This funding level is identical to the fiscal year 2012 enacted level in total funding. At the recommended levels, Congressional Printing and Binding will be funded at $83.632 million. This is a 7.8% reduction from the fiscal year 2012 enacted level and is identical to the request level. Within this reduced funding level, full funding is provided for printing the 2012 edition of the U.S. Code, which is published every six years under authority of Title 2, U.S. Code.

The amount recommended for Salaries and Expenses is $34.7 million, which is a reduction of $272,000 from the enacted level. This funding level would allow the GPO to continue mission requirements ordered by the Congress.

The bill would provide $7.8 million for GPO’s Revolving Fund for critical maintenance of printing systems. Of this amount:

• $3.4 million is for Information Technology Projects such as development of a replacement system for the XML system, and replacement of systems critical to GPO’s network security monitoring and protection;
• $3.8 million is for Federal Digital System Projects; and
• $460,000 is for fire and safety projects at GPO facilities.

Also in the bill, the Library of Congress' budget allocation is slated for $592.2 million. The bill would provide an additional $4.9 million for the LOC, which is an increase of 0.8% above the fiscal year 2012 enacted level. This funding level assumes current staffing levels.

There's still some haggling to be done with House Legislative Branch FY13 appropriations bill -- most notably the revolving fund is only budgeted at $4,096,000 rather than the Senate's proposed $7.8 million. Stay tuned!

The Interagency Depository Seminar is a week long event regarded by most of the librarians we know as one of the best events a government information specialist can attend. As the name implies, instructors from other agencies come and provide in-depth training and insight into the information products from their agencies.

Traditionally this has been an in-person event. For the first time this year, GPO will be webcasting parts of the event, according to this e-mail sent to the FDLP-L list:

From: Announcements from the Federal Depository Library Program [mailto:GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV] On Behalf Of FDLP Listserv
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 11:23 AM
To: GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV
Subject: Join the Interagency Depository Seminar from Afar!

Next week for the first time, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) will provide remote access to portions of the Interagency Depository Seminar. The virtual sessions are free, but registration is required. Register now and join us live for four segments of the Seminar:

07/30/2012 -- Monday morning: 8:30 AM - Noon (Eastern Time)
* Welcome & Introductions
* History of GPO
* LTIS Update
* Education & Outreach
Register: http://login.icohere.com/registration/register.cfm?reg=270&evt=IADS-Mond...

07/30/2012 -- Monday afternoon: 1:30 PM - 4:00 PM (Eastern Time)
* Federal Reserve Bank's FRASER, FRED, and ALFRED
* DSIMS: Depository Selection Information Management System
Register: http://login.icohere.com/registration/register.cfm?reg=271&evt=IADS-Mond...

08/02/2012 -- Thursday afternoon: 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM (Eastern Time)
* U.S. Geological Survey
* U.S. Department of State
* National Agricultural Library
* National Library of Medicine
Register: http://login.icohere.com/registration/register.cfm?reg=272&evt=IADS-Thur...

08/03/2012 -- Friday morning: 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM (Eastern Time)
* Introduction to GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys)
* Advanced Navigation in GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys)
* Closing Remarks and Adjourn
Register: http://login.icohere.com/registration/register.cfm?reg=273&evt=IADS-Frid...

Once your registration is completed, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions for logging into the virtual Interagency Depository Seminar sessions. Virtual attendees will receive certificates of participation. Contact Cindy Etkin (cetkin@gpo.gov) if you have questions.

We at FGI have long advocated for more distance training opportunities for government documents librarians and other government information stakeholders. We haven't been alone. And for the past few years, the Government Printing Office has been listening. This latest advance comes on the heels of a number of online classes for FDSys and other Federal resources.

Thanks GPO for continuing to expand opportunities for librarians and other staff not available to travel. We especially appreciate you webcasting from your signature training event!

via infoDOCKET (now part of Library Journal)

Post includes:

1. Link to Full Text of CRS Report

2. Complete Summary From Report

3. Link to FCW Article

4. Link to FierceGovernmentIT Article

From the CRS Summary

The transition to digital information raises a number of issues of possible interest to Congress. This report discusses those possible concerns as they affect FDLP. These issues, which are in some cases interrelated, may not only affect FDLP, but also extend beyond the program to a variety of contexts related to the management of government information in tangible and digital forms. Issues include the following: maintenance and availability of the FDLP tangible collection; retention and preservation of digital information; access to FDLP resources; authenticity and accuracy of digital material; robustness of the FDLP Electronic Collection; and the costs of FDLP and other government information distribution initiatives.

Time once again for a selection of news and new resources that we hope will be an interest to the FGI community. The following posts are from INFOdocket.com (@infofodocket) where we compile and post new items daily. The oldest item in this roundup was posted on January 26, 2012.

1. President Requests $231,953,777 for Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

2. MEDLINE/PubMed: List of Serials Indexed for Online Users, 2012 Now Available in XML

3. South Dakota: State Archives Going Digital

4. Recently Launched iOS App: United Nations News Reader from the UN News Centre

5. Full Text of Prepared Testimony: Librarian of Congress, Public Printer, & Others Testify at House Appropriations Committee Hearing (re: FY 2013 Budget)

6. Montana: “New State Librarian Leads Digitization”

7. Government Information: A New Issue of the FDLP Connection Newsletter is Now Online (Vol. 2, Issue 2)

8. New Reference Resource: PACrimeStats.Info (Pennsylvania Crime Data)

9. EPA Releases New Interactive Tool with Information About Water Pollution Across the U.S.

10. FEMA Grant Helps Restore New Orleans’ Katrina-Damaged Archives

11. Listen Online: National Park Service Releases Historic Audio Recordings Made by Thomas Edison’s Recording Engineer

12. New Feature: The World Factbook Now Allows Users to Listen to the National Anthems of Most Countries

13. U.S. Congress: THOMAS Adds Direct Links to House Committee Hearings

14. New Document from NIH: Public Access Policy Implications

15. New Database: See Who’s Donating to Super PACs

16. LOCPix: New iOS App Provides Access to Digitized Photos from the Library of Congress

17. New Interactive Reference Resource: State Transportation Facts and Figures

18. U.S. Congress: Financial Contributions: MapLight Launches New Company Pages

19. Let’s Fly! FAA Launches Mobile Web App

20. New Search Tool from the IRS: Exempt Organizations Select Check

Daniel Schuman went to the hearing today on budgets for GPO, LoC, GAO, and CBO. On the Sunlight Foundation blog, he reports on the tiny room, the lack of space for the public, and he posts documents that were handed out:

• An almost live look at today's H. Leg Branch Approps hearing, by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation, (Feb. 7, 2012).

The new acting Public Printer, Davita Vance-Cooks, gives her opening remarks.

GPO Press Release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 7, 2012 No. 12-10

ACTING PUBLIC PRINTER PRESENTS APPROPRIATIONS REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013

WASHINGTON-Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks presented the FY 2013 appropriations request for the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) today before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations. GPO is requesting no increase over the level of funding the agency is receiving for FY 2012 due to savings garnered from cost-cutting activities last year as well as projected workload changes for FY 2013. GPO's budget request also includes a significant shift in funding away from conventional printing and distribution toward digital systems. The current level of $126.2 million is a 6.6% reduction from FY 2011 and about a 15% reduction from FY 2010. GPO's funding level for FY 2013 is provided through three separate accounts in the annual Legislative Branch Appropriations bill:

. The Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation covers the cost of information products in digital and print formats that GPO produces for Congress. About 70% of this cost is for preparing the electronic files used for both digital access and printing. For FY 2013, GPO is requesting $83.6 million, a decrease of about $7 million.

. The Salaries and Expenses Appropriation of the Superintendent of Documents primarily covers the cost of the Federal Depository Library Program, which works in partnership with 1,220 libraries nationwide to provide public access to Federal Government information. For FY 2013, GPO is requesting $34.7 million, a decrease of about $300,000.

. The GPO Revolving Fund receives appropriated funds for specific technology investment and facility improvements. For FY 2013, GPO is requesting $7.8 million. The request includes funding for the continued development of GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) to support increased online access to congressional and Federal agency information as well as other digital information technology improvements.

GPO achieved significant savings in FY 2011 by reducing unnecessary overhead expenses and conducting a buyout that helped reduce staffing by about 15%. As a result, GPO achieved positive net income of $5.6 million for the year. The agency, whose information production and dissemination operations have transitioned to digital technologies, is currently operating with its smallest workforce in more than a century.

"GPO is doing more with less in meeting the digital information needs of Congress, Federal agencies, and the public," said Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks. "GPO's plan of reducing costs while continuing to expand services to our customers is working and showing real and measurable benefits."

Library Journal has an article with information about GPO's budget, the status of FDSys, and discussions on regional library issues:

• GPO Names Acting Public Printer, Issues Assurances About FDLP, FDsys Despite Budget Cuts, By Michael Kelley, Library Journal (Jan 3, 2012).

Press release from GPO:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 3, 2012
No. 12-01

DAVITA VANCE-COOKS BECOMES ACTING PUBLIC PRINTER
FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON-Deputy Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks becomes Acting Public Printer for the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), the first woman to lead the agency. Vance-Cooks assumes her new role effective immediately, following the completion of Public Printer Bill Boarman's term. She will serve as the Chief Executive Officer and lead the 1,900 GPO employees in carrying out the agency's 150-year mission of Keeping America Informed on the three branches of the Federal Government.

Vance-Cooks is a seasoned business executive with 30 years of private sector and Federal Government experience. She has held a succession of senior management positions at GPO for nearly eight years including: Chief of Staff, Managing Director of GPO's Customer Services and Procurement business unit and Managing Director of Publication and Information Sales. Before coming to GPO, Vance-Cooks held several private sector management positions. She was the Senior Vice-President of Operations for NYLCare MidAtlantic Health Plan where, among other duties, she was responsible for a digital print work center for production of variable data printing products. She also served as the Director of Customer Service and Claims, Director of Membership and Billing, and Director of Market Research and Product Development for Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans. She also served as the General Manager of HTH Worldwide Insurance Services. Vance-Cooks earned her Bachelors degree from Tufts University and her MBA from Columbia University.

"I am honored and humbled to serve as GPO's Acting Public Printer and I look forward to continue working with GPO employees as we serve the needs of Congress, Federal agencies, and the public," said Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks. "I want to thank Bill Boarman for the opportunity to serve as his deputy and Chief of Staff. I have enjoyed working everyday, side-by-side with Bill as we reinvented GPO into the digital information platform it is today."

"I have great confidence and trust in Davita and her ability to serve as the leader of GPO as the agency begins its 151st year if service to the Nation," said Bill Boarman, the 26th Public Printer of the United States. "Davita's institutional knowledge of GPO combined with her experience in the private sector makes her the ideal person to assume the position of Acting Public Printer."

Happy Holidays from the Lost Docs Team-

In addition to our usual monthly report, we at the Lost Docs Project Blog will from time to time revisit, check, and update posted document receipts that at the time of their corresponding monthly reports were still classed as fugitives. The following report focuses on the receipts posted April-May, 2010.

Report/Update

Of the 54 fugitive document titles from receipts posted April-May, 2010, 37(69%) of the titles have had records added to the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP), as of this report. 17(31%) remain fugitives.

We are appreciative of those records that have been created and added to the CGP. Found documents can be viewed by looking at the blog posts with April and May, 2010 dates at http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and/or view a listing by visiting https://sites.google.com/site/founddocslisting/

Cataloging times

39% of the items cataloged from the April and May 2010 posted receipts were cataloged between 50 and 100 days. A more detailed breakdown is provided below. Note: 38 items are represented below, as one of the receipts was for both the electronic and print versions of an item/title. Both formats have now been cataloged.

less than or equal to 15 days
7(18%)

>15 days but less than or equal to 50 days
2(5%)

>50 days but less than or equal to 100 days
15(39%)

>100 days but less than or equal to 200 days
7(18%)

>400 days but less than or equal to 500 days
7(18%)

If you report a fugitive document to GPO, please send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you receive it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."

Note: This post is a longer response to a recent comments left on the LJ article written by Jim A. Jacobs and Melody Kelly.

Recently, Library Journal published a short article that Melody Kelly and I wrote (The Future of the FDLP: From Conversation to Confrontation). In such a short opinion piece, we did not have the space to document our arguments and expand on our reasoning. Since the article was posted, it has received a few comments. So we are using this post to expand on our LJ piece a bit and re-post here our replies to those comments.

As we said in LJ, the discussions about shared regional depositories have morphed from a conversation into a confrontation. This was our main point. As Daniel Cornwall said here recently, just as GPO needs to work with FDLP, so all FDLP libraries should be working with GPO, not working against it. We are concerned that the tactics adopted by ARL and many of the association's prominent members are more confrontational than cooperative and that such tactics may harm GPO at a time when it needs our support.

Some of the issues involved are complex and confusing and we imagine that many non-FDLP librarians -- and even some in the FDLP community -- find it difficult to follow the sometimes arcane, legal details of the arguments on both sides. This is particularly true when attempts are made outside the current GPO rules to redefine the scope or procedures of an existing Regional.

Because the FDLP is based upon federal law in Title 44 of the US Code, any changes in the role of the regional depository libraries would require legislative revision and will therefore be slow. As the FDLP community knows from past experience, legislative revisions to Title 44 must be carefully orchestrated, may take several Congressional sessions, will require the support of the entire FDLP community working with GPO and Congress, and is probably unlikely. But there is much that can be done, and done now -- by individual libraries and groups of libraries and by GPO that will move us all forward toward our shared goals of permanent no-fee access to government information regardless of format.

Moving forward together.

In comments to the LJ article, Bill Sudduth and John Burger said that the article has inaccuracies, innuendos, and fabrications. Mr. Sudduth says that we raise "narrow issues" and straw-man arguments and implies that we have irrelevant standards of "satisfaction." Strong words! But we believe that both Mr. Sudduth and Mr. Burger badly misinterpret our concerns. Here is our reply to their comments:

The comments of Mr. Burger and Mr. Sudduth imply that we object to the goals of the ASERL proposal, but we do not. We share their goals. We have expressed concerns about whether or not the ASERL plan will accomplish its goals. They have not addressed what we see as legitimate concerns.

As government information librarians who have for years been urging GPO and FDLP libraries to move to a digital FDLP, we support the goals of ASERL to improve bibliographic control of our collections and to provide digital access to older printed materials and we share the frustration of not being able to move forward more quickly. But as digital librarians who have created and managed government-information digital-library projects and who have a combined professional experience of over 40 years of designing, building, supervising, and evaluating digital library and digital preservation projects of all kinds, we also question some of the specific means ASERL is proposing to reach those goals.

The good news is that ASERL can accomplish the majority of its goals (create better inventories of their collections, increase and enhance cataloging, digitize documents to provide "additional access points") without GPO approval. They can also build their Centers of Excellence under existing FDLP procedures for Shared Housing Agreements.

The only thing they cannot do without GPO's (or, indeed, the Joint Committee on Printing's) consent, is weed the existing print collections in the regional depositories. Although Mr. Burger says that ASERL does not "advocate" "wholesale weeding" or replacing tangible copies with digital surrogates, we believe the plan will permit just that. Indeed, the ASERL Implementation Plan explicitly allows for "the region" to have "at least two complete cataloged sets of print publications." To us, this explicitly permits a reduction from twelve copies to two. Although the Plan allows for the possibility of retaining more than two, it does not require more than two nor does it justify how only two copies might be adequate.

We are further led to this conclusion because for years we have read how ARL libraries advocate weeding their collections, minimizing the number of paper copies, and using digital surrogates to replace paper. (See for example Burger; Schonfeld Documents for a Digital Democracy; ARL; Russell 2003; and Russell 2004.) Now that ASERL has a concrete proposal that could apparently do just that, we are concerned that the plan lacks the necessary safeguards that would ensure it can meet the needs of users for both paper and authenticated digital copies.

We suggest that ASERL continue to move forward now on its project goals that do not require GPO's approval, and simultaneously work with GPO and the entire FDLP community to resolve the legitimate, long-term issues regarding digitization and national collection preservation. This will benefit not just ASERL but all FDLP libraries and all users of government information, both now and in the future.

--Posted by Jim Jacobs on December 18, 2011 07:45:40PM

Concerns about weeding.

As noted above, we are concerned that the ASERL proposal in particular will result in weeding from regional depositories. One of the issues we raised in LJ was that we do not yet have adequate information to justify reducing the number of paper copies in the FDLP system. We believe that we need to be cautious about weeding and should determine how many paper copies are needed to ensure both preservation and access. There are studies that address this issue (e.g., Schonfeld What to Withdraw, Schottlaender, Yano) but we believe there are two reasons that they do not provide adequate information to apply them to our FDLP paper collections.

First, these studies mostly focus on substituting digital surrogates for paper journals articles. While scholarly journals are a relatively homogeneous body of literature about which we can make generalizations, government publications present a very heterogeneous body of literature about which it is difficult to generalize. By focusing on journals, they do not address the particular qualities of government publications and our ability to produce even adequate digital copies of them. These qualities include:

• We lack adequate bibliographic control and granularity of descriptive information for much of our collections making it more difficult to control, preserve, and provide access to digitized collections;
• Government publications come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes and bindings (and non-bindings) and types and have many serials and multi-volume sets and looseleaf updates making them difficult to digitize adequately at a reasonable cost (GPO, 2004);
• Many publications are old and have brittle and yellowed paper which will be more difficult to accurately digitize;
• Many publications have tables of statistical information which is difficult or expensive to digitize accurately. (See below for more information about this);
• Many publications also have charts, graphs, photographs, drawings, models, and other types of images and too little is known about how to digitize them accurately.

Second, these studies rely on having a perfect digital copy as a preservation copy. For reasons we explain below ("concerns about digitization"), we believe it is premature to assume we can create such digital copies for government publications.

When we consider weeding our valuable collections we need to consider access as well as preservation. It is not just about keeping an emergency copy-of-last-resort in a vault or about Title 44 legal requirements. It is about keeping an adequate number of working, usable, loanable copies geographically near their users. We do not think this is a controversial position. Even Mr. Burger says libraries need to retain an adequate number of paper copies for direct user examination. So the issue is, How do we determine what "an adequate number" is?

To summarize, we believe we should be cautious about weeding and discarding paper copies. We do not believe this is a contentious issue, but we do believe that any given project that involves any weeding of Regionals (which were, after all, established to guarantee preservation and access of these materials) should have adequate accountability and be approved by GPO. We believe that we should move cautiously so that we avoid actions that we will regret later. We are reminded of what Judith Russell, the chair of the ASERL Deans FDLP Steering Committee, said when she was Superintendent of Documents at GPO:

"Many years ago GPO turned over its historical collection to the National Archives and almost immediately we began to regret the absence of a tangible collection. We have decided to re-establish a comprehensive collection of tangible and electronic documents as a collection of last resort for the program, and the new organization will dedicate staff resources to that effort." (Russell, 2003)

Concerns about digitization.

Another concern we expressed in the LJ article was that we do not yet have enough research to guarantee we can make accurate, usable digital copies of government publications.

We are particularly concerned with the accuracy of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of the many statistical tables in government publications. The key study of this issue was done at Yale (Green, Linden) and demonstrates the difficulty and expense of accurately digitizing statistical tables. Shafait has studied the difficulty of just locating tables during scanning. Bicknese noted the difficulty of OCR scanning of tables and so excluded tables from a sample in testing the accuracy of Making of America OCR scans. In trying to determine OCR accuracy, Blando found that many tables were illegible and generally useless. In a 2004 study, Joseph examined quality of images and figures in journals scanned by Elsevier after removing paper copy journals to a remote location. He found that 73.6% of the issues had at least one image with unacceptable quality. In a test of OCR accuracy for searching only, the Harvard LDI team excluded 19th century materials because they assumed that failure rates would be higher for them because of the lower contrast of older printed pages. Schonfeld, in a study of "What to Withdraw," notes that too little is known about the share of the intellectual content of charts, graphs, data tables, photographs, drawings, models, and other types of images that is captured by existing scanning and format standards. And Tanner looked at the OCR accuracy of "groups of numbers" in scanned online newspapers, and found the accuracy only 64.1% for 19th century newspapers and only 59.3% for 17th and 18th century newspapers.

(It is important to understand that digital images of statistical tables -- if legible to the eye -- will probably serve the needs of many users and are welcome as an additional access point to government information. Our concern here is not about adding an access point that is at least as good as, but no better than, the paper copies. That can be done now without the approval of GPO. As noted above, we do have concerns about that, too, because even that low standard often results in illegible images (GPO 2004, Joseph) which means that users will need to have paper copies to consult and libraries will need paper copies to re-digitize to fix errors. But we are expressing a separate concern here.)

Our concern here is with the accuracy of the actual numbers if a user wanted to (for example) cut and paste those numbers. Our concern is that the tables contain a wealth of metadata about the numbers themselves and this information is rarely captured and associated with the number in a usable way. Searching for statistical information can be greatly hindered without accurate information about the numeric information.

In short, if all we want is to make simple images of our documents more available, then almost any legible scan will suffice. But, if we want to do more than create surrogates for paper, if we want to turn paper into usable and re-usable, machine-actionable digital objects, if we want to go beyond replicating paper in the digital world, we can only do so if we have a reliable way of creating accurate, functional digital objects -- and we do not yet have a single, reliable, affordable way of doing that (Green). That means that any scanning we do today will have to be re-done sometime in the future with new technologies that are capable of better, more accurate conversions of documents to usable digital objects. (This is not a hypothetical concern; we have already seen that the National Archives digitized documents as recently as the 1990s using then-current technology that makes them difficult to read online. [Marks]) And that means that we need to account for digitizing at least twice (and possibly multiple times) and we have to make sure we have enough usable print copies around for those re-digitizations. Saving enough copies to ensure we can do this is essential because several digitization methods, particularly high-quality digitization, effectively destroy the documents and older, more brittle documents are at a greater risk of destruction with any digitization.

In summary, we believe that digitization projects should account for preserving an adequate number of paper copies for re-digitization with better technologies in the future and for direct user examination when digitization is flawed or inaccurate. And we believe that, as we work toward a fully digital FDLP, we must aim for fully functional digital objects and not be satisfied with simple digital surrogates of paper.

Concerns about authentication.

Being able to authenticate digital documents is very important and not something that can be ignored until later or done retrospectively. It should be relatively easy for GPO to work with the FDLP community to create a Superintendent of Documents Policy Statement ("SOD") that would provide authentication credentials in the form of Preservation Description Information (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems) when an FDLP library digitizes a legally deposited paper document (GPO 2004). Such a SOD could specify chain of custody and provenance through a documentable workflow, consistent metadata standards, and a digital signature. It could also specify that participating libraries would sign on as "digital partners" with the GPO and be recognized as such. Standards such as these would provide documented assurance to users of the authenticity of digitized documents and would provide the participating FDL host institution a framework for a continuing commitment to funding and staffing to ensure these digital collections are maintained as technologies evolve.

Moving forward now.

As noted above, there are many things that libraries can do today.

ASERL, for example, can enhance bibliographic access and improve its inventory of its existing collections without asking permission from GPO;

Libraries can scan documents to provide an additional access point today and many are doing so. (See the Digitization Projects Registry at the FDLP web site;)

Existing procedures allow libraries to house documents in shared facilities using "Selective Housing Agreements" (GPO, 2011);

GPO can work with the FDLP community to add and modify Superintendent of Documents Policy Statements to account for digitization, authentication, and digital deposit; and

The FDLP community can use existing studies that examine replacing print with digital surrogates as a starting point and contribute to this knowledge base by systemically researching the issues specific to our older, paper collections.

We can do all this without turning GPO into an adversary. To repeat what Daniel Cornwall said here on this same issue:

We at FGI yield to no one in our desire for a fully functional digital FDLP. We have been advocating that for seven years and are just as anxious -- if not more so -- as anyone to move forward to the next phase of the FDLP. Over the years, we have criticized GPO and its policies -- and will continue to do so when we believe such criticism is warranted. But our intention has always been to challenge GPO to do more and to do better, and to work with FDLP libraries, not work against them or arrogate responsibilities from them. Just as we want GPO to work with FDLP libraries, we want FDLP libraries to work with, not in opposition to, GPO. We at FGI believe that the future of the FDLP will be most secure if GPO and FDLP libraries work together to a common end.

We all in the FDLP community share a common set of goals and beliefs about the value of government information. We can do this together.

-- Melody Specht Kelly – Documents Librarian University of North Texas Libraries 1974 – 2001; Associate Dean of Libraries, 2001 – 2009. Adjunct Professor College of Information, 1984 – present: “Government Information Services.”

-- James A. Jacobs. Librarian Emeritus University of California San Diego 2006- present; Center For Research Libraries, Technical consultant for digital library certification and long-lived repositories 2008- present; Instructor ICPSR Summer Program "Providing Social Science Data Services: Strategies for Design and Operation," 1990- present; Data Services Librarian, University of California San Diego 1985-2006.

---

endnotes

Association of Research Libraries, "Future Directions for the Federal Depository Library Program." (December 2008).

Bicknese, Douglas A., Measuring the Accuracy of the OCR in the Making of America, Ann Arbor, Mich.,: University of Michigan, School of Information (1998)

Blando, Luis R., Junichi Kanai, Thomas A. Nartker, and Juan Gonzalez, "Prediction of OCR Accuracy."

Burger, John, Paul M. Gherman, and Flo Wilson, ASERL's Virtual Storage/Preservation Concept, ACRL Twelfth National Conference, Minneapolis, MN (April 2005).

Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System, (OAIS) CCSDS 650.0-B-1 BLUE BOOK, January 2002. CCSDS Secretariat (2002).

Green, Ann, Sandra K. Peterson, and Julie Linden. Supporting Economic Development Research: A Collaborative Project to Create Access to Statistical Sources Not Born Digital, A Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. New Haven, CT: Yale University (2005).

Joseph, Lura E., "Image and Figure Quality: A Study of Elsevier’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Electronic Journal Back File Package" Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services 30 (September 2006), 162-168.

LDI Project Team. Harvard University Library, Measuring Search Retrieval Accuracy of Uncorrected OCR: Findings from the Harvard-Radcliffe Online Historical Reference Shelf Digitization Project. (August 2001).

Linden, Julie, and Ann Green, "Don’t Leave the Data in the Dark", D-Lib Magazine, 12 (2006).

Marks, Joseph. "National Archives' first Wikipedian in residence to bring more holdings to the public", NextGov (07/11/2011).

Russell, Judith. Remarks by Judy Russell, 142nd ARL Membership Meeting, 142nd ARL Membership Meeting, Federal Relations Luncheon (May 15, 2003).

Russell, Judith C. Preservation And Authentication Of Government Information: Are We Ready For The 21st Century?, IS&T Archiving Conference, San Antonio, Texas, (April 23, 2004) The Society for Imaging Science and Technology.

Schonfeld, Roger C., and Ross Housewright, Documents for a Digital Democracy, Ithaka S+R (December 17, 2009).

Schonfeld, Roger C., and Ross Housewright, What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization, Ithaka S+R, (September 29, 2009).

Schottlaender, Brian E.C., Gary S. Lawrence, Cecily Johns, Claire Le Donne, and Laura Fosbender, Collection Management Strategies In A Digital Environment, A Project Of The Collection Management Initiative Of The University Of California Libraries, Final Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. University of California, Office of the President, Office of Systemwide Library Planning (January 2004).

Shafait, Faisal, and Ray Smith. "Table Detection in Heterogeneous Documents", 9th IAPR Workshop on Document Analysis Systems, DAS'10. Boston, MA, USA, (June 2010).

Tanner, Simon, Trevor Muñoz, and Pich Hemy Ros, "Measuring Mass Text Digitization Quality and Usefulness", D-Lib Magazine, 15 (2009).

U.S. Government Printing Office, Office of the Superintendent of Documents. Legal Requirements & Program Regulations of the Federal Depository Library Program. Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office (June 2011).

U.S. Government Printing Office. Report on the Meeting of Experts on Digital Preservation: Metadata Specifications, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office (14 June 2004).

Yano, Candace Arai, Z.J. Max Shen, and Stephen Chan, Optimizing the Number of Copies for Print Preservation of Research Journals, Berkeley, CA: University of California Berkeley, Industrial Engineering & Operations Research (October 2008).

Update: Jim Jacobs made some small changes to the above item for clarity on January 2, 2012.