---

A special appeal to lostdocs reporters: please try to send us your report receipts the same day you receive them from GPO. While all reports are appreciated, sending reports as you receive them makes for a smoother workflow that better reflects when lostdocs/document discovery reports are received by GPO.

If you use Microsoft Outlook for e-mail, you can set up a rule to send your lostdocs reports to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info automatically. Check out these two YouTube videos to see how to create rules in Outlook:

• MS Outlook Setting and Using E-mail "Rules"
• Creating Rules in Outlook to Filter Messages

---

REPORT

August 2010 was a deceptively light month. We only posted nine lostdocs reports. I say "deceptively light" because we received only a handful of reports until late August, when we received approximately 50 reports in two days. These reports were made from late June through late August. What couldn't be posted for August is being posted for September. Don't let this backlog stop you from sending us your current reports.

I'm excited to report that of the nine reports we were able to post last month, four were quickly cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with August 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records and note that the cataloged documents were all oil spill related. GPO is matching effort to newsworthiness and we commend them for it.

No false positives were found in our small sample.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, 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 get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

Note: There was no report for June 2010 owing to scheduling difficulties. Reports sent to us in late May through July were posted in July.

REPORT

In July 2010, we posted 32 "lost docs" e-mail receipts sent by GPO to the librarians who reported these missing documents. These civic minded librarians in turn e-mailed us their receipts.

Of the 32 reported items that were posted to the blog in July, two items have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with July 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

This month we reluctantly concluded that two of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in July were already in the Catalog of Government Publications. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with July 2010 dates.

We say "reluctantly concluded" because of two factors. First, the people who made these particular reports have a reputation for checking the catalog before submitting their reports. Second, both of these reports were for electronic documents and it appears from the 005 Marc fields that the records were worked on after the date of the fugitive document report. This almost sounds like URLs were added to a preexisting record. Were this the case, then we'd class these two e-docs as "found" rather than "false positive". But since the most recently published GPO cataloging policy we're aware of says they create new records for every format, we can't say for certain that adding a URL to an existing print record is what happened.

If you have a good explanation for these records or are aware of a change in GPO cataloging policy, please let us know.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, 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 get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

REPORT

We have now gone two months on the Lost Docs Blog, without a false positive. None of the 33 reports made to GPO and posted by us were in the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) at the time the report was made.

Five of the 33 reported items that were posted to the blog in April have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can see the cataloged items by visiting http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking for items with a May 2010 date. We are appreciative of these items being cataloged.

There were six instances where a record for the paper item was in the CGP, but there was no indication this item was also available electronic. To view these items, visit http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/catalog-eversion/ and look for items with a May 2010 date.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, 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 get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

Several observers at the recently closed Spring 2010 Depository Library Council conference reported that GPO staff are asking people to use the askGPO form available at http://gpo.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/gpo.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php when reporting fugitive documents instead of the LostDocs form. The LostDocs form may be in the process of being revised.

We at the LostDocs blog want to do whatever we can to ensure accurate reporting that gets to the right people at GPO. So we encourage people to use the askGPO form after first checking the Catalog of Government Publications.

When you get to the askGPO form, be sure to select "Federal Depository Libraries" as a category, then select fugitive publications/lostdocs as a subcategory. Then provide as much as you know about the document like title, producing agency, URL if there is one, author contact if available and so forth. Give GPO everything you think you would need or want to know to locate a copy of the document on your own.

askGPO also sends out e-mail receipts. So if you make a report through askGPO, we ask that you forward your askGPO receipt to lostdocs "AT" freegovinfo DOT info, so they can be posted to this blog.

One particularly exciting piece of news that came out of the Spring 2010 DLC was that GPO may institute statistical reporting for fugitive documents/documents discovery. All of us at FGI hope that this is true. GPO could give out a more complete picture of what is happening to reported documents than we can. We're a flashlight in the dark that highlights some documents but not others. A fully transparent GPO reporting program on fugitive documents could be the full light of day that would benefit everyone.

REPORT

For this first time since we started the Lost Docs Blog, we had no false positives. None of the 38 reports made to GPO and posted by us were in the Catalog of Government Publications at the time the report was made.

The reports were sent to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info in late March and April. Some of the original reports to lostdocs@GPO were made in February, but not sent to us until late March.

One of the 38 reported items that were posted to the blog in April has been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. This item was Tornado Protection: Selecting Refuge Areas in Buildings. You can find the report and cataloging date at http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/2010/04/tornado-protection-selecting-refuge-areas-in-buildings/. We are appreciative that this was cataloged.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, 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 get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

Vicki Tate is an active contributor to the Lost Docs Blog. She also independently tracks her own fugitive documents submissions to GPO.

She recently sent me her summary and supporting spreadsheet for her 2009 reports. Vicki gave FGI permission to publish her disappointing results:

---

I finished my summary of Lost Docs for 2009 and checked their status. There are two sheets--monographs and serials. The summary information for monographs is:

78 Monograph/individual titles submitted
8 Titles with records in CGP
5 Titles with PURLs
32 Titles with NO cataloging in OCLC

Serial titles fared even worse.

---

I have attached her spreadsheet to this blog post. Feel free to look it over and come to your own decisions.

Although 8/78 titles is only a 10.2% cataloging rate for reported items, it is important to remember that this is one librarian's experience. Other librarians may have had better luck. Without full data from GPO, it's hard to say. We are trying to fill in the gaps with the lost docs blog, but our data is only as complete as you make it. Plus we're never sure of what proportion of documents reported to GPO we're made aware of.

If you are treating your reports to GPO with the same level of tracking and supporting documentation, we'd like to hear from you. Please leave a comment or e-mail lostdocs@freegovinfo.info.

We at FGI salute Vicki Tate and other librarians like her trying their best to ensure a complete record of government publications.

REPORT

In February 2010, we posted 25 "lost docs" e-mail receipts sent by GPO to the librarians who reported these missing documents. These civic minded librarians in turn e-mailed us their receipts. How many reports did GPO receive? Only they know, but the more people who send their fugitive docs e-mail receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, the more accurate our count will be.

This month's count is particularly underreported. Owing to my attendance and blogging at the 2010 Public Library Association Conference and participating in an excellent distance delivered Museum Registration class, I was unable to post many lost documents receipts I got. They will be posted in April. My apologies to the librarians who sent me reports but failed to see them posted.

Of the 25 reported items that were posted to the blog in March, three items have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with March 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, three of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with March 2010 dates.

In two of these "false positive" cases, it looks like GPO had received the tangible item near the published date of the item and cataloged an electronic equivalent, but did not distribute the tangible item to the Federal Depository Library Program. This may or may not be in accordance with GPO SOD 301 which states that budget permitting, tangible documents will be offered when both tangible and online formats are available.

With the available information in these two CGP records, it is unclear whether GPO made a conscious, budget related decision to not offer these publication or just forgot to send them out. We encourage GPO to begin putting notes explaining why a given item was not distributed to the FDLP into the item's bibliographic record.

If you are interested in viewing this category of publication, visit http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/explain/ and look for items with March 2010 dates.

We strongly encourage people with instances of CGP cataloged but non-distributed federal documents to use GPO Help and not GPO's Lost Docs form.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, 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 get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

February 2010 marked the first month where the only documents posted to the Lost Docs Blog were receipts submitted during that month or during the last week of the preceeding month.

We also established a new blog category that we hope we will not need to use very much. That category is "Explanation Needed" and if you need an explanation, see my blog entry about it.

Now on to the February 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal

REPORT

In February 2010, we posted 27 "lost docs" e-mail receipts sent by GPO to the librarians who reported these missing documents. These civic minded librarians in turn e-mailed us their receipts. How many reports did GPO receive? Only they know, but the more people who send their fugitive docs e-mail receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, the more accurate our count will be.

Of these 27 reported items, two items have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with February 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, six of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with February 2010 dates.

In three of these "false positive" cases, it looks like GPO had received the tangible item near the published date of the item and cataloged an electronic equivalent, but did not distribute the tangible item to the Federal Depository Library Program. This may or may not be in accordance with GPO SOD 301 which states that budget permitting, tangible documents will be offered when both tangible and online formats are available.

With the available information in these three item CGP records, it is unclear whether GPO made a conscious, budget related decision to not offer these publication or just forgot to send them out. We encourage GPO to begin putting notes explaining why a given item was not distributed to the FDLP into the item's bibliographic record.

If you are interested in viewing this new category of publication, visit http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/explain/ and look for items with February 2010 dates.

As I stated in the post introducing the "Explanation Needed" category of the Lost Docs blog, we strongly encourage people with instances of CGP cataloged but non-distributed federal documents to use GPO Help and not GPO's Lost Docs form.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, 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 get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

3/1/2010 - Updated to add criteria of non-distribution of tangible product to FDLP.

Thanks to some documents reported to FGI's Lost Docs Blog last month, the Lost Docs blog has a new category that needs explaining. The category is called "Explanation Needed."

GPO lost docs receipts submitted to lostdocs.freegovinfo.info will be assigned this category if:

1) Cataloging records exist for both tangible (Paper and/or microfiche) and online versions of the item submitted that were added to the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) earlier than the datestamp on the lost docs receipt.

2) The catalog record for the tangible version indicates that GPO cataloged the tangible version within five years of the publishing date of the item.

3) There is clear evidence from the bib record or depository librarian testimony that the tangible item was NOT offered to Federal Depository Libraries.

We have a five year limit because GPO Acquisitions staff have indicated they rarely have success in finding depository copies of tangible items more than five years old.

We at FGI don't insist that GPO distribute a tangible item when that item is solely available in an online format, but when a tangible item is available and fits the program, it should be distributed. GPO's policy on dissemination, SOD 301, states (emphasis mine), "When the product is available both online and in a tangible format, GPO will disseminate the online version to depository libraries. Tangible versions will be offered as well, budget permitting." Hopefully this means that most of the time the budget will permit this. If an item wasn't distributed for budget reasons, GPO should note this in the print record.

Until the non-distribution of these tangible items is explained and obviously noted in the cataloging record for a given item, it will keep the "Explanation Needed" tag. However, we will also continue to tag such items as "false positive" since we believe the primary focus of "lost docs" is documenting government publications that have escaped the National Bibliography GPO is required to maintain and because people do have access (at least for now) to the online version.

We encourage depositories to report non-distribution of CGP-Cataloged documents through GPO help and not through the Lost Docs form.

The Government Printing Office (GPO) has posted their recent session on reporting fugitive documents at their OPAL archive:

Helping GPO Identify Fugitive Publications presented in January 2010 by Joe McClane, Manager of Content Acquisitions, and Linda Nainis, Acquisitions Librarian, U.S. Government Printing Office.

• Streaming audio with slides (runtime 69:10)
• Downloadable MP3 audiorecording (22 MB; runtime 69:10)

If you have any interest in the fugitive document problem -- agencies publishing information that slips between the cracks -- I highly recommend this session. This is an informative and frank discussion about GPO's efforts to address this problem and how librarians and other interested govinfo types can help contribute to the solution. Or at least one solution among many.

With the January 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal, we have come to the last of our "saved receipts" with which we first seeded the blog. This means that starting February 1, 2010, every single posting to the Lost Docs Blog will be a receipt submitted during that month or during the last week of the proceeding month. That means that if everyone who sent in a lost document report to GPO also sent to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, we would have an accurate report of the volume of document reports provided to GPO. We hope you will help make this happen.

Now on to the January 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal

REPORT

Thanks to the continued generosity of documents librarians, we posted 85 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. About two thirds of these items were reported during December 2009/January 2010.

Of these 85 reported items, 11 items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with January 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, three of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with January 2010 dates.

There were two items added to the "E-Version Needs Cataloging" category. You can view these items by visiting http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/catalog-eversion and looking for items with January 2010 dates. If your library has either of these documents, please consider adding an 856 field to the record(s) so your patrons will be able to link to the electronic version(s) through your catalog.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, 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 get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

If you'd like to hone your skills at locating and reporting fugitive documents, check out this e-mail from GPO:

----------------------

From: Announcements from the Federal Depository Library Program
[mailto:GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV] On Behalf Of FDLP Listserv
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 12:40 PM
To: GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV
Subject: Chat with GPO: Helping GPO Identify Fugitive Publications

On Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 1:30PM EST, Joe McClane, Manager of
GPO's Content Acquisitions and Linda Nainis, GPO's Acquisitions
Librarian will discuss how documents librarians can help GPO identify
fugitive publications. 

The presentation will feature a 30-minute slideshow that explains how
GPO staff find fugitive documents and ways the community can help GPO
improve the researching and processing of new documents. Time will be
allocated at the end of the session for questions. 

Space is limited to the first 100 participants on a first come basis.
GPO recommends arriving at least 10 minutes early in order to reserve
your spot and test your connection.

Connect to the GPO OPAL Room:
<http://www.conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs38bb0e4b3a5a>.

For more information on GPO's OPAL implementation and OPAL requirements,
visit: <http://www.fdlp.gov/outreach/onlinelearning/68-opal>.

_________________________________

If you have questions or comments, please use the askGPO help service
at: <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/help>. When submitting a question,
please choose the category "Federal Depository Libraries" and the
appropriate subcategory, if any, in order to ensure that your question
is routed to the correct area.

-----------------------

If you have an interest in identifying fugitive publications, I strongly encourage you to attend this OPAL session. The better reports that GPO has, the faster any given item will be cataloged. This benefits everyone. Hope to see you there.

In September 2009 we at Free Government Information (FGI) started the "lost docs blog" at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info to collect your receipts from GPO about the fugitive documents you reported through GPO's lost docs form at www.fdlp.gov/lostdocs or through GPO's Help system at gpo.custhelp.com.

Here is the December 2009 Lost Docs Report and Appeal:

REPORT

Thanks to the continued generosity of documents librarians, we posted 93 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. More than two thirds of these items were reported during November/December 2009.

Of these 93 reported items, nine items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with December 2009 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, seven of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in December were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with December 2009 dates.

This month we added a new subcategory of fugitive document to the blog, that of "needs URL addded." These are reported documents where a record of the tangible version is in the CGP, but the record makes no reference to online availability. Since we feel that documenting online availability is important, we left them listed as fugitive documents because the electronic version are unknown to GPO. This month there were 20 items where the CGP knew about the tangible version but not the internet version. You can view these items by visiting http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/catalog-eversion and looking for items with December 2009 dates. If your library has any of this documents, please consider adding an 856 field to the record(s) so your patrons will be able to link to the electronic version(s) through your catalog.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month.
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

UPDATE 1/5/2010

John Stevenson, my friend and distinguished government information librarian, reminded me that current GPO cataloging policy is to create multiple records for a given work based on format. This means that instead of adding a URL to an 856 field in an existing record, GPO would create a new record based on the electronic format of the document. I wonder how efficient that is, but that's another post for another time.

So we have renamed our new category "eVersion Needs Cataloging." You can get a feed for just these items by subscribing to http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/catalog-eversion/feed/.

Keep comments and your lostdocs receipts coming!

We started the LostDocs blog back in September 2009 to collect e-mail receipts for items that were reported to GPO as "fugitive documents" -- agency documents that should have made it into the Federal Depository Library Program and/or the Catalog of Government Publications.

In the process of running this blog, we have identified 40 documents reported since April 2008 that were cataloged by GPO after being reported as "fugitive documents." These fall into the "found documents" category of our blog.

You can find our list of 40 (and counting) cataloged fugitives here. This spreadsheet will be updated whenever we identify new GPO cataloging for items that had been reported as fugitive documents.

The results are interesting and somewhat disturbing, but not definitive.

The 40 items were cataloged in times varying from three days to 524 days. The mean cataloging time was 213 days. The median cataloging time was 184 days or about six months.

If the cataloging times above were typical of all documents reported through the LostDocs process, we think this would be a major problem for GPO that would require some serious soul searching and dialog about how this result could be changed and what tradeoffs and/or extra community involvement would be required as a result.

We are NOT making the claim that these cataloging times are typical for reported fugitive documents. We honestly do not know what is typical. Jim Jacobs, FGI's resident data librarian, had this to say about our sample of cataloged documents:

As for sample size and relevance: the number of items in the sample can't tell us the significance or accuracy of the results. We'd have to know two other things: the size of the universe (of all reported lost docs), and the accuracy of the sample. Since the sample was self- selected (by those reporting) rather than random, and since we don't know if the sample is 1% or 85% of all submitted lostdocs, we can't claim that the findings necessarily reflect the status of the whole universe. (does that make sense? If only people w/ long waits reported to us, our sample does not accurately reflect all lostdocs.)

When we first thought about making lostdocs reports available to the community at large, we first approached GPO with a partnering opportunity. We would maintain the blog, and offer them the opportunity to comment on the blog whether something was out of scope for CGP or already in the catalog. In return, we asked them to modify their LostDocs form so that when they received a report, the blog would automatically get a copy. If this partnership had been accepted, then we would know the two facts Jim cited above that are needed to tell us whether we have typical results or not. GPO declined to accept our partnership agreement, citing their workload. We're not questioning that they are overworked.

We do feel that the results above deserve further investigation. Perhaps GPO could prepare a report on documents cataloged as a result of fugitive reports over the past few years. Unless they've discarded the e-mail receipts (which would be defensible), they have the dates of when documents were reported. The CGP lists when an item was first added to the CGP. They could have an intern make a semester project of putting the two together and then posting the results to fdlp.gov.

If they have tossed previous e-mail receipts, they could start saving them for a year starting in January 2010 and do the analysis we propose above in 2011. But in either case we feel the analysis should be done. If it confirms our results then it will be good ammunition in Congress to procure more cataloging staff or to start cataloging collaborations with FDLP members. If the GPO analysis concludes that items reported to lost docs are in fact cataloged in a timely manner, then that will help build trust with the documents community and motivate more people to report fugitive documents. Either way it is a win-win for GPO.

In September 2009 we at Free Government Information (FGI) started the "lost docs blog" at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info to collect your receipts from GPO about the fugitive documents you reported through GPO's lost docs form at www.fdlp.gov/lostdocs or through GPO's Help system at gpo.custhelp.com.

Here is the November Lost Docs Report and Appeal:

REPORT

Thanks to the continued generosity of documents librarians, we posted 60 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. These receipts were a mixture of old receipts and items actually reported in November 2009.

Of these 60 reported items, 17 items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with November 2009 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, only one of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in November were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications or were already in the catalog. You can view this item by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with November 2009 dates.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month.
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.