Good to be back on the grid. My unexepected time away gave me a chance to gather some more threads together and plan for a post-liberation effort -- in other words, once we reach January 20, the new President joins the new Congress, what happens next?
Well, just a few days after the swearing-in ceremony on the Hill, we are going into a season of library association meetings -- ALA in Denver, ACRL in Seatlle, and the Federal Depository Library council in Tampa -- in four short months. If these aren't opportunities to discuss and debate and organize about the future of government information services and civic engagement, then what are we doing with our time?

In the meantime, in a brief response to Jim Jacobs thoughtful piece in response to my koan "Can there be librarians without libraries" -- don't confuse the lack of control over information with the inability to do anything positive or proactive about how public information is distributed through a democratic society. My ideal of librarians and their institutions in this changed environment does not suggest either of Jim's arguments that we will become travel agents or proto-business managers with responsibilities to manage the content management rights for a specific set of users.

My argument lies less with what we will be doing in a digital world, and more with the notion that this library activity will not spring from possession (which is the same as control in Jim's argument I think), and more from mediation, context and praxis. Why is this? Even though Jim argues otherwise, the digital production and distribution of information/knowledge has upset the traditional relationships formed and exploited by librarians, users, and producers of information. Just check out the recent stories about publishers, bookstores, and other cultural institutions that aggregate (i.e. possess) information on behalf of their communities.

But more on this in subsequent posts along that road to liberation and beyond.

I missed you all and can't wait to get back into the thick of things.

In his continuing series about Government Information Liberation, John Shuler considers the role of collections in libraries. One particularly revealing moment in his discussion is his day 60 post in which he describes a series of questions that he poses to his graduate students to get at the "fundamental things we do."

The Question and Conclusions

Can doctor still be a doctor without a hospital? They usually answer -- of course. Can you be a lawyer with out a courthouse? Again -- affirmative. Now the money shot -- Can you be a librarian without a library? Dead silence.

One would hope that the questions prompt a discussion and don't just end in "dead silence." Although John doesn't tell us what the discussion, if any, was, he does give us his conclusions: possession of "material" might have once been central to the purpose of libraries but, in the digital age, possession is much less important part of what libraries do.

Even though John qualifies his conclusions to allow for some limited role of collections for some libraries, he overwhelms his caveats with assertions that collections begin and end with the physical ownership of "material" and that "we will not own (possess) much of the material." He even coins the phrase "Gutenberg Librarians" to deprecate "possession and/or control" (66) of information by libraries.

So, John's essential, bottom-line conclusion, regardless of his caveats, comes across clearly: The net, John says, has brought on "the beginning of the end" of library collections (35).

I think his conclusion is wrong and the question he asks is misleading. You can see how misleading the question is by turning it around and realizing that the professions/institutions he uses are not parallel:

• Do doctors build hospitals? (No)
• Do lawyers build courthouses? (No)
• Do librarians build libraries? (Yes)

But the real problem is that the question implies a shared understanding of what a library is -- a shared understanding that I think we need to articulate explicitly. I think that, before one asks "Can you be a librarian without a library?" one should ask "What is the role of the library is in the digital age?" John has been outlining what he thinks the role of librarians should be and he apparently wants to separate the role of librarians from the role of libraries. Very well: let's examine the roles of both with some discussion, not dead silence.

Librarianship

I think John is implying is his series of posts that librarianship in the digital age will be about helping people navigate a complex, networked maze of shifting, changing information. Librarians will help users "connect the dots" and find connections that are not otherwise explicit (47). While there is nothing wrong with this view, and there is much to recommend it, it doesn't go far enough and it misses a key role for libraries.

As John portrays it, this view accepts that libraries will be less about selecting and preserving information and building digital collections and more about providing services for information over which librarians have no control. Librarians, in this view, are valuable precisely because they have no control over information.

This view accepts that information will be tightly controlled by producers and distributors. What is available, who can use it, under what conditions it may be used, and when it becomes no longer available will all be controlled by government agencies, publishers, individuals, organizations, and other "content" producers.

John also proposes that "librarianship" will be more important than "libraries." To me, this sounds like librarians will be analogous to travel agents who, because they deal every day with the complex, difficult, disparate, unconnected systems, are better able than the traveller to navigate these systems and find the best flight at the best price. So librarians, in this view, will help casual information users navigate a variety of complex, difficult, disparate, unconnected, public-freely-available and proprietary-and-licensed information systems. Just as travel agents have no control over what flights or trips are available or what they cost or what restrictions are placed on them, so librarians will have no control over what information is available or what it costs or what restrictions are placed on its use.

In this view, librarians will not manage collections but will license the right to read from those who control information. Whether the license comes in the form of payment of dollars to a commercial vendor and a written contract that licenses access, or an FDLP designation, or a contractual "partnership" with GPO, or the anointing of permission by Google Books legal department, the result is the same. As a recent article in Library Hi Tech says, "In future, librarians will no longer manage media, they will manage rights" (Böhner, Dörte. Digital rights description as part of digital rights management: a challenge for libraries. Library Hi Tech 26, no. 4 (2008): 598-605). This view reshapes the role of librarians from information providers to information gatekeepers; from information curators to business-officers who sign contracts and pay bills.

Who would want to go into that field?

Libraries

John hasn't said much about the role of libraries except to assert that, for many people, the digital environment is now the "default library" [emphasis added] that supports broad access to a "collection" of government information (51).

But, shouldn't we be asking about the future, not just describing the present?

Shouldn't we be asking about the relationships between doctors and lawyers and information? Certainly doctors and lawyers need a body of literature to practice their professions. Instead of asserting that users have access today, shouldn't we be asking, "Who will build and manage and preserve those collections and ensure long-term, free access to them?"

Shouldn't we be asking what guarantees we have that the information we want today will be available if we want it tomorrow? Shouldn't we be asking who controls access to that information and what are their reasons for providing access? Shouldn't we be asking who will pay for long-term preservation and access?

Just because users who are not familiar with information policy, information economics, or information technologies are happy with current access to information does not mean that they will be happy with the access (or lack of it!) tomorrow or in ten years or a hundred years. Providing easy access at one point in time does not guarantee easy access at a future point in time and can actually mask problems of long-term access.

It is one of the roles of librarians to think beyond today and one of the roles of libraries to guarantee access for tomorrow. We need to think about the long-term. Using short-term convenience as a reason for avoiding that kind of thought is evading one of the key roles of librarianship. And assuming that producers and distributors will have the same values and ethics and practices as librarians is to confuse the role of producers with the role of currators.

Maybe the real questions we should be asking are:

• Can lawyers practice without libraries?
• Can doctors practice without libraries?
• Can libraries exist without librarians?

The word "library" does not mean "I have some information." If it did, bookstores would be libraries and publishers would be librarians. We need libraries in addition to publishers and bookstores (and government agencies that distribute information as a by-product of another, primary, mission).

It is all about control

Let's be clear, then. Even in the paper and ink world, libraries and their collections were about wresting control of information from producers and distributors and granting control to local communities and information users. A publisher could take a book out of print, but a library could keep it available. A user could purchase a book and pay for magazine subscriptions, but could use the information for free at the library. Libraries leveraged economies of scale for the benefit of the community, enabling every community member to have benefits of access to information that no individual could possibly afford.

The need for wresting control of information away from those who wish to control the access to and the use of information has not changed in the digital world. But the battle lines have shifted and we need librarians in the fight to keep free, open, usable access.

"Content providers" want to replace copyright with license agreements. Producers want to charge for every single use and dictate who can use information, under what conditions, and in what way. Governments want to be able to alter and even withdraw information after it has been released. And the proliferation of requirements to register to read or use information portends a world in which people will not have the right of privacy when reading.

It is ironic that, given technologies that enable almost unlimited use and re-use of information and that enable information to be distributed and used and re-used almost without cost, we face a horde of stakeholders who want to limit access, charge for every use, restrict re-use, and look over your shoulder to see what you're reading.

More inaccurate conclusions

As noted above, John hedges his conclusion a bit. His wording is that "possession is much less exclusive or destiny for any one institution" and preserving and organizing the information sources "will remain important -- but is no longer our exclusive responsibility" (66). He expands on that idea:

• [G]overnments are taking back their possession of information sources. (60)
• [M]any other web sites [are] capturing the lost or deleted pages. (60)

And from these, he draws conclusions:

• [Information will] remain with the producers or be delivered directly to the users by the producers. (50)
• [W]e will not own (possess) much of the material we mediate on behalf of our user communities. (51)
• Possession ... is no longer a social good that is dominated [by] the dominion of libraries. (60)

To me, these summarize one possible scenario out of many. And, IMHO, this scenario is not one librarians should be content to accept or embrace. Why? Because it almost certainly guarantees that a lot of bad things will happen: loss of access, loss of free access, licensing constraints, DRM constraints, loss of information, loss of usability of information, and more.

Different Questions, A Different Answers

In a separate post, I will examine those issues in more detail, but I'll close this post with some assumptions and a couple of final rhetorical questions as a way of addressing John's question, "Can you be a librarian without a library?" The assumptions:

Society needs: organizations that select that information that deserves preserving from the plethora of information that surrounds us; organizations that then acquire, organize, and preserve that information; organizations that provide trusted, free, private, secure access to and service for that information.

Society needs organizations that have the complete mix of all of these roles as their primary mission (not a secondary mission or a by-product of publishing, or dissemination, or making money). In the case of government information in a participatory democracy it is particularly important, even essential, that society has such organizations.

Reliance on those who have some, but not all, of these roles will ensure that some of these roles will go unfulfilled. Reliance on organizations that have some or all of these roles as a secondary mission or by-product of another mission will endanger free access to information, preservation and integrity of information, and the privacy of readers, and will increase the risk of the loss of information.

The rhetorical questions:

• What would you call an organization that fulfills all the roles listed above but "The Library"?
• Why would libraries want to abandon these roles to organizations that do not have these roles as their primary mission?
• If libraries do abandon these roles, what is the risk that society will lose free, open, access to its essential information?

I think those questions lead us to conclusions that are very different from the the ones John reaches. I will examine this in more detail in another post.

2. Seek to establish the most effective techniques individual bibliographic institutions can contribute to a national system of government information access, preservation and organization.

The 1990s represent some of the best and brightest efforts of advocacy, thinking and study about the future prospects of government information services in libraries -- here are some of the highlights (by no means complete; I will try to fill in more of the missing pieces in my subsequent posts)

Coming on the heels of OTA's Informing the Nation report, government information librarians were ready and willing to weigh in on the future of the federal depository library program in particular, and the role of libraries in the civic machinery of federal government information.

The decade began with a set of principles from the American Library Associations Governemnt Documents Roundtable -- published in Documents to the People, v.19:1 (March 1991):12, 14.

Soon after, a separate group of libraries came together around the issue and formed a coalition called the Dupont Circle Group, which issued its own set of principles, hosted a national conference, and made some specific recommendations on who the depository library program might change.

A year or so later, another loose affiliation of library groups came together with their own recommendations. The Coalition of Many Associations Framework debated many of the points rasied by the Dupont Circle effort, and issued its own report -- "Enhanced Library Access and Dissemination of Federal Government Information: A Framework for Future Discussion." Working Document endorsed by the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Special Libraries Association, 1995. American Association of Law Libraries Newsletter 27, no. 1 (September 1995): 14-15.

Not to be left out of the picture, the Depository Library Council issued its own statement on the challenges ahead -- Depository Library Council to the Public Printer (U.S.). "Alternatives for Restructuring the Depository Library Program: A Report to the Superintendent of Documents and the Public Printer from the Depository Library Council." September 1993. Administrative Notes 16, no. 16 (December 5, 1995): 23-59.

But wait -- there's more. ALA devoted significant chunks of its 1995 midwinter and summer conference to the issues -- and issued a report: * "Model for 'New Universe' of Federal Information Access and Dissemination: Preliminary Results of Forum on Government Information Policy, July 20-21, 1995, Sponsored by American Library Association." ALAWON, ALA Washington Office Newsline 4, no. 77 (August 9, 1995).

But then, the National Commission on Library and Information Science considered the problem, and issued its own set of principles, following work they did back in 1990.

GPO weighed into the fray -- and issued its own considerations -- "Report to the Congress: Study to Identify Measures Necessary for a Successful Transition to a More Electronic Federal Depository Library Program as required by Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 1996. Public Law 104-53." Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. June 1996.

But wait there is more ...

In 1996-7, GPO issued to other strategic documents -- "Study to Identify Measures Necessary for a Successful Transition to a More Electronic Federal Depository Library Program" and THE ELECTRONIC FEDERAL DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM: TRANSITION PLAN, FY 1996 - FY 1998

Finally, and again -- remember I am only touching on the highlights of ten years here -- NCLIS returned to the problem and issued its own massive report on the problem of public information in a digital age following on a large-scale national effort during 1999-2000: A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION DISSEMINATION FINAL REPORT -- JANUARY 26, 2001

I am tired just thinking about how many brain cells we killed during these ten years trying to get a handle on the future of government information in a digital age. In reviewing this good work, I am reminded of the phrase -- those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Let's not close out this decade with another series of reports or studies -- lets do something about it.

I will get back to this exciting decade tomorrow -- after some rest.

See you Day 33

2. Seek to establish the most effective techniques individual bibliographic institutions can contribute to a national system of government information access, preservation and organization.

Ah, the 1990s....the last decade of the 20th century began with the collapse of the cold war and closed with first hints of the next global struggle (i.e. the war on terrorism.) In between we had political revolutions at home and abroad; economic boom and bust; technological upheavals; and the beginning of the end of what I call Gutenberg Librarianship.

If there were just three themes that bound the decade's narrative together, they would have to be --

1. Political shifts: the last bastions of the Lyndon Johnson inspired "Great Society" finally disappeared after nearly fifteen years of "government is the problem, not the solution" drumbeat by conservative pundits and elected officials. By mid-decade, with the Republican take over of the congress, the last years of the Clinton administration would reinvent this mantra into something called "reinventing government" -- better technology will deliver public programs and services more efficiently and smaller government will be "ok". Librarians and their associations would spend much of this decade debating how their bibliographic institutions will fit into the rapidly evolving "national information infrastructure." Unlike the comparable discussions of the late 1970s which led to enactment of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 (primarily fostered by the many reports of the Commission on Federal Paperwork) -- the government reform efforts of the 1990s had the technology readily at had to match their ambitions -- the early grid of what was called the "information superhighway".

2. Technological and regulatory shifts: for the first time in nearly a century the old public service monopoly that bound the telecommunications industry would be overturned by, first, technology and then by changes in public oversight. Just as reinventing government imagined a leaner and more agile public administration culture, so to did the possibilities of a more interactive and consumer-driven model of telecommunication began to take shape -- largely because of the growing world wide web, the rapidly falling prices of expensive computing power, and the interoperability of certain software tools that shifted the communication from textual to graphical interfaces. The late 1990's federal laws governing telecommunications were rewritten and the "public monopoly" granted the telephone and telegraph companies almost 90 years before was lifted. Note too, with two years of these major rewrites, Congress and the President rewrote the laws governing public welfare...

3. Social and economic shifts -- at some point during the decade everyone suddenly felt much less poor, and more able to access, if not demand, many material goods and services once only available to the most affluent just a few short decades ago. Less regulation and government oversight translated into more consumer choices -- in bigger cars, bigger homes, more opportunities to participate in the digital economy through a robust information infrastructure. Public institutions such as libraries, universities, transportation authorities, health care providers, etc. now "had" to compete with an organizational model that presumed the best approach was one that relied on two purposes: it must be driven by the user and must make money or it must be the most cost-effective approach.

Against this backdrop of larger social, political and economic developments government information librarians came out of the 1980s talking, debating, thinking, pontificating about how public electronic data products were going to change the way they do business. Rhetorical focus would shift from the culture wars fought over secrecy and privatization of government information to cybercommunities, digital democracy, "keeping the information superhighway free and open to all, and not digital toll roads." One of my favorite conference themes during this time was one that focused on how to keep libraries from being road kill on the information superhighway. Remember -- between the early and late 1990s digital problems for most libraries revolved around the capacity and speed of computers used in their institutions, the used of new fangled media such as CD-ROMs, and how to perform increasingly sophisticated mediated searches using expensive databases such as DIALOG. I many ways, government information librarians were at the bleeding edge of innovation when the Clinton administration decided to embrace the graphical interfaces of the world wide web in late 1995.

How the government information librarians reacted to all this change we will leave for tomorrow.

See you on Day 34.

2. Seek to establish the most effective techniques individual bibliographic institutions can contribute to a national system of government information access, preservation and organization.

I said yesterday I would get to the 1990's and reflect on the substantial policy and research analysis created during those ten critical years. But, first, we must step back into the 1980s for a moment and set the stage.

I paid homage to Hernon and McClure body of work yesterday -- but I want to put some other national efforts into perspective as well.

First, the Association of Research Libraries created something they called the "Task Force on Government Information in Electronic Formats." in the mid-1980s. Following on a report, ARL held several town hall style meetings that helped frame much of the discussion about how and why libraries should incorporate digital government information into their collections and services. This became one of the first set of "principles" produced by libraries about "government information."
Here is one version of those principles --
1. Open exchange of government information should be protected.
2. Federal policy should support the integrity and preservation of government electronic databases.
3. Copyright should not be applied to U.S. Government information.
4. Diversity of sources of access...is in the public interest and entrepreneurship should be encouraged.
5. Government information should be available at low cost.
6. A system to provide equitable, no-fee access to basic public information is a requirement of a democratic society.

I have to point out that this effort was also linked to another ARL goal to confront the growing evidence of how the Regan administration was using claims of secrecy and national security to restrict otherwise open and freely available information. In a report called Access to Information it issued in 1985, which followed on a statement from the Council on Library Resources called "Scholarship, Research, and Access to Information."

And not to put to fine a point on it -- it is amazing how all of this rushes back into one's memory with a little prompting from the web -- it was also the time when the FBI was conducting an extensive investigation of libraries and their users -- hoping to curtail and arrest the use of sensitive (but not secret) technical information found in many research libraries open collections. The argument was simply this -- taken separately, the technical reports (often government reports) were not classified or secret. But knitted together by a clever foreign agent doing good library research, a string of reports could reveal sensitive (even classified) information. One of the better books on this FBI program is "Surveillance in the Stacks The FBI's Library Awareness Program" by Herbert N. Foerstel.

The whole other subtext going on during the 1980s (again anticipating the arguments of the 1990s and early 2000s) centered on the ownership of the public's information. Another set of Regan policies sought to "privatize" as much government work as possible (and this include the privatization of government information.) Years of library debate, rancor, standing in professional meetings with hands on hips and yelling at each other, accusations of selling out, accolades for standing up to the "the man" to protect the public's right to know ... oy vey, those were days when government information librarianship and brawling in the streets were close cousins. I mean, we would get seriously worked up about it ... it is not an exaggeration to say that decades-long friendships broke up over the issue. At the international level, the struggle was framed in terms of something called the "New World Information Order." Based on a report issued by the United Nations, it was a very strong argument that private media companies in first world nations held unfair monopolies around the globe that drowned out different or indigenous information cultures.

But, if you think the Depository Library community was asleep or somewhere else during these crazy days -- they were busy hatching plans to include digital information in the depository library system. The culmination of that effort was something called "Informing the Nation". And, yes, Hernon and McClure had their hands in this effort as well as contractors. Prior to this epic, the community was also involved in another effort to get digital information into the depository library system -- in the early 1980s -- the GPO and the Joint Committee on Printing created something called "Ad HocCommittee on Depository Library Access to Federal Automated Databases." Hoduski, by the way, was the chair of this effort.

So, again, by the end of the 1980s we have a wealth of policy, research, and experience within the government information library community that deeply considered all of the implications of digital government information.

And the web was still five or six years a way from bursting on the scene.

See you on Day 35.

2. Seek to establish the most effective techniques individual bibliographic institutions can contribute to a national system of government information access, preservation and organization.

Since one refers to Hoduski/McKnelly and Malamud as bookends, let's take a look at some of the vast literature written about federal government printing and the depository library system over the last 40 years or so.

Think of this a primer for those library school students who plan on taking a government information course next spring. The past is but a prologue, as they say over in the Smithsonian.....

First up, let's go back to the 1980s -- when three of the most comprehensive studies of the federal depository library system were completed --

Charles McClure and Peter Hernon, Users of Academic and Public GPO Depository Libraries. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989. p ix. (GP 3.2:US 2).

GPO's depository library program : a descriptive analysis / Peter Hernon, Charles R. McClure, Gary R. Purcell. Norwood, N.J. : Ablex Pub. Corp., 1985;

Improving the quality of reference service for government publications By Charles R. McClure, Peter Hernon, American Library Association
American Library Association, 1983

and this general assessment of information policies --

Public access to government information : issues, trends, and strategies / Peter Hernon, Charles R. McClure. Norwood, N.J. : Ablex Pub. Corp., c1984

I would submit that many of the issues we currently debate over the future and purpose of the depository library system were framed best by these studies. They hit upon the essential problems of purpose that plague the program to this day; problems only slightly changed by the barriers and opportunities of today's technology.

We do not need to reinvent this research -- It's there waiting for us return to its home truths.

The next stop will be those crazy years in the 1990s. Much policy and purpose to be rediscovered during this time as well.

See you on Day 36.

2. Seek to establish the most effective techniques individual bibliographic institutions can contribute to a national system of government information access, preservation and organization.

Repeating cycles (sometimes called feedback loops)are important to any professional group or institution. Based on standards and protocols, these cycles often sustain efficiency and predictability. As Daniel Cornwell points out in an earlier comment -- loops keep the machinery going at some level. When we have to reinvent the wheel everytime -- that is where it becomes more curse than cure.

For the next couple of weeks, among other points I want to raise, I will point out where the Hoduski and McKnelly argument for a full fledge study of the depository system is not a feedback loop. I will document just how many times the depository system in particular, and GPO in general, has been studied, analyzed, investigated, and heaped with recommendations.

For instance, many of Carl Malamud's recommendations stand on the shoulders of earlier policy iniatives -- especially something called the Government Information Locator Service -- an early world wide web initiative to establish some kind of standardized descriptions of federal information resources. For another ancient link (1994) to this effort from (how many of us remember this group?) Taxpayer Assests Project -- desribes some of the rich policy history of GILS.

In this case, the feedback loop shared by GILS and Malamud's recommendations is one that tries to come up with a form of government information organization, classification and accessibility that is clear and open to any and all systems.

See you on Day 37.

1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture.

I was looking through an ancient artifact this afternoon called "An information agenda for the 1980s: a summary report". All this blog chatter about flickr projects in the Library of Congress, and innovative proposals from Carl Malamud, kind of made me nostalgic for "library big thinking" before the rise of the computing machine. This report is one of those dreadnoughts of library research that went on to frame much of the policy and research challenges of the early 1990s. It describes 101 specific projects that can help frame the research and understanding of how libraries must change in the crazy days of technological and economic revolution of the early 1980s.

It is very interesting reading, especially when reads the summary of the research topics with the eye of how far we have come, and how little we haven't.

Throughout the report there is an aching need to understand how and why our communities use our bibliographic institutions. There are early stabs at trying to frame the potential impacts of multimedia and digital transmissions on what the authors term the "knowledge gap" in society (which they define through education mostly, and not the income lens of today's (information have and have nots".) Many of the proposed research topics also examine the economic implications of a "knowledge economy" and possible future roles libraries might play in economic and social contexts where they might compete with other community information distributors.

Just the post card from the past to remind us how much the technology has changed, but how little the fundamental human aspects of our business remain as elusive as they were 25 years ago.

Perhaps we should ask those who participated in the research to come back to the table and reflect on what remains of their effort -- much like the Miller Center of Public Affairs does for important public policy and legal issues -- such as climate change, the American President, and the National War Powers Commission. Perhaps they could do it digitally?

The point being, I suppose, that if we don't remember, as a profession, what we suggest or recommend from one decade to another, than we are doomed to repetitive cycles that cover the same ground again and again.

See you Day 40.

1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture.

One simple question to pose tonight -- is it possible for federal depository libraries to tap into the critical relationship they share with either their designated congressional districts or senate sponsors? Much of our tradition and practice aims to serve the communities defined by our depository's host institutions -- academic, public, special or law libraries.

But, in this time of digital democratic transition and transparency, what if a major new goal for the federal depository library program was to shift the depository library obligation from our bibliographic institutions? What if we were to focus our energies on the civic and democratic communities represented by the districts and states they serve? For instance, imagine all the depositories in the Chicago metropolitan area collaborating with each other and through their respective House of Representative districts. This could involve using not only physical collections, but innovative digital tools to reach out to the constituents and local neighborhoods through the congressional district offices. Imagine reference tools designed to meet the particular social, economic, and cultural needs of these communities.

In the case of the Seventh Congressional District in Illinois, these communities could be as varied as part of Chicago's Gold Coast along Lake Michigan through the impoverished streets of the Austin neighborhood to the west, and along the inner suburbs of both the upper and middle classes found in River Forest and Oak Park.

In rural areas, where many of the congressional districts must somehow overcome both geography and infrastructure issues, imagine how the designated depository libraries might work together, hand in hand, with the congressional district offices to assure that the citizens and communities are kept informed in an affirmative fashion through technology and inter-library cooperation. This kind of civic renewal, I think, is a better way to strike at the "digital divide" issue.

If our discussions about the program's future began from these kinds of assumptions, rather than focusing on how much paper and how digital we should keep, I think the community of government information librarians will be in a much better place to take advantage of the civic possibilities made apparent during these days of liberation.

After all, its about documents to the people, not documents to the libraries.

Something to think about.

See you on Day 41.

1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture.

Good of McKnelly and Hoduski to post their thoughts on the future of regional libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program. After I have had a chance to review and consider their analysis, I will offer my own thoughts on this important issue. I encourage everyone to chime in -- this topic is going to be at the top of the agenda for the Public Printer's Depository Library Council.

For today's post, I want to follow-up on the theme of the enduring values shared by journalism and libraries as mediators between the community and their civic machinery. The seizure and forced federal court appearance of Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich and his Chief of Staff John Harris on corruption charges represents again where librarians and other media are in a race to get "government information" sources out to the public.

I first got a blip of the arrest through a Chicago Tribune email alert at around 8:30am on Tuesday. One or two people posted the information on University wide email lists shortly after. I went into the web pages for the Northern District of Illinois District Attorney, and found the 12 page news release about an hour later and posted it to email lists of the University. About an hour later, I located and posted the link to the seventy-six page complaint. By 11am central name, most of the major news sources were linking to the same sources.

After 1pm central time, there was no contest -- the web and other mass media sources were swamping the internet with stories, analyses, links to relevant documents and web pages. Though a bit rushed and breathless at first, much of the reporting by early evening had begun to place the charges in the larger context of corrupt Illinois politics in general (for instance, the number of sitting Illinois governors either been charged or sent to prison in last 50 years).

So, my observation that it would be most difficult for government information librarians to match the revelations unleashed in some kind of hopeless race with a reporters engaged in a feeding frenzy. Rather, they should take a step back from the "breaking news" and begin to craft web resources and links that direct users to specific sources and contexts that discuss the history of corruption in Illinois, constitutional succession in Illinois state government, impeachment processes in Illinois, who can and can not be seated in the U.S. Senate, implications of a powerful federal attorney taking on the powers (and corruptions) of local and state government....

You get the idea. I think digital government information librarians will play for the middle and long game, rather than the short chip shots of the daily media, preparing their users for greater understanding of what are, frankly, quite stunning events.

See you on Day 42

1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture.

Recent posts talk about how to render America's federal civic machinery transparent, accessible, and permanent (here, here and here). Each of these posts indicate some kind of "positive" authority either inherent or assumed by the national government in order to keep the civic machinery as open and accessible as possible.

This is good -- and something I want to add to the mix is the critical role various organizations, especially library organizations, might play in shaping the future of one critical player in the mix -- the Government Printing Office. Let me be more specific. I think there is going to be more than a few opportunities to discuss and debate the future of the Government Printing Office in general -- (after all, Obama gets to nominate a Public Printer and Superintendent of Documents for Senate consideration and approval -- these two appointments alone will kick up the dust and debate in the near future) -- and the depository library program in particular.

In regards to the program, the last two years have been dominated by discussions of
* a strategic plan;
* a draft report on the future of regional libraries in the program;
* several demonstrations and rollouts of a proposed new system to replace GPOaccess ;
* a growing number of innovative and positive partnerships with depositories that show how these libraries and GPO work together redefine the traditional boundaries of "depository library" obligations. Each of these partnerships represent a mutual amount of self-interest and collaboration. Included on this list, in particular, are several partnerships that capture many of the qualities sought in earlier FGI blog posts -- permanence, transparency, and distribution --
@Cybercemetery
@DOSFAN
@Historic Government Publications from World War Two
@Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights
* what's more, GPO is working with depository libraries on test beds and applications that seek to establish protocols for authenticity, digital distributive storage and preservation, and web harvesting

So, while we sharpen our rhetorical arguments for an open government that is both well preserved and accessible and seek to influence the incoming powers that be with position papers and agendas, let's not forget how much progress has already been made in the last two years. We should continue to build on this efforts, with the clear recognition that same may not meet our far-reaching expectations.

See you on Day 43.

1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture.

I think the toughest aspect of sustaining this kind of weeks long conversation is to try and keep all the different aspects of what we now call government information librarianship together into some kind of cohesive whole. In my last post I spoke about the underlying foundations of social capital shared by journalists and librarians that mediates between individuals or communities that want to know more about government institutions and sources of information produced by and about those institutions.

In the case of librarians, the cumulative social capital comes from centuries old traditions of gathering and organizing a community's information artifacts. As an outcome of this gathering and organizing, librarians might also choose to become familiar with the substance and dynamics of how government organizations function, study or address problems, communicate with the public (and other government organizations), and eventually how the government organization might stash its information stuff over the long haul (or not, as the case might be.) In an open and democratic society these librarians also take on the express purpose to proactively work with other organizations, groups, and interested individuals to keep the civic machinery of government as transparent and accessible as possible. The term civic machinery is not widely used in the library traditions, but is a term that constantly pops in the professional and popular press. example, see here, here, here and here.

I like the phrase "civic machinery" -- once used by Jane Addams to describe the critical role certain institutions might play in connecting a community to the democratic structures of their governments. Here is what Addams said specifically --

"As the policeman who makes terms with vice, and almost inevitably slides into making gain from vice, merely represents the type of politician who is living off the weakness of his fellows, so the over-zealous reformer who exaggerates vice until the public is scared and awestruck, represents the type of politician who is living off the timidity of his fellows. With the lack of civic machinery for simple democratic expression, for a direct dealing with human nature as it is, we seem doomed to one type or the other--corruptionists or anti-crime committees"

What the civic expansion of public digital information over the last 15 years now demands of librarians and their professional associations is simply this -- take advantage of the technology to preserve our traditions of sustainability and transparency.

See you on Day 44.

1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture.

I know the challenges of getting back online, Jim, and thanks for your linkage between my ideas of civic librarianship and journalism. You are right, there are similarities because I think they both share a purpose of mediation between a government and its community. They both share a common ground of making sense of complicated topics (with journalists, its through narrative; with librarians, through organized and structured knowledge.) Where I think the two worlds are coming together is along the narrative frontier.

Let me explain -- it use to be enough to have well organized (and accessible) collections of government information. Librarians' public service skills remained sharp by the constant interaction of explaining and guiding the public through these collections, and if what they want can't be found there, where they might find collections that might have what they seek. This still happens on a daily basis, but to fewer librarians than ten years ago because of the migration to a largely digital/e-government environment. Now we roam between our paper collections and what the governments now do on the web. So we still mediate -- just another format shift, much as we did when disks, DVDs, microforms were alternatives to paper.

But where we shift closer to journalists (and they to us, because I believe they are tapping into our traditions of organization and structure) is how we talk about what we are doing with our community. We are telling a story, writting a narrative, building a nuanced description of all the complexities and connections that bind together a particular -- or set of -- public policy or program. The best government information librarianship, I believe, is the act that links the variety of government information sources into a coherent narrative. The FGI guides to the presidential transisition take very much from this approach...

I commented about this connection when I wrote the an article back in 1996 -- "Civic Librarianship: Possible New Role for Depository Librarians in the next Century?" Journal of Government Information, vol. 23, no. 4. July/August 1996, 419-426. I draw a direct connection between the future of government informaiton librarianship and a movement called public journalism.

In this fashion, we are become "journalists" of government information, much in the same way FGI and other blogs connect the dots for the readers when certain sources of information are read, digested, linked, and discussed. Here are some recent expamples -- here, here and here.

See you on Day 46.

It's been a rough couple days, sorry about not transmitting yesterday.

For the next three weeks I want to try and sum up what I believe are the critical issues the government/civic information librarian community must confront and resolve to remain viable in the evolving government information infrastructure.

For the past month we have talked about many of these, and other FGI bloggers opened the conversation in other directions.When the next 48 days are behind us, a new federal executive and legislative leadership assumes responsibility in late January, we will need to keep the pressure going. This will mean some consensus among the various interest groups who try to influence the library policy agenda. It means individual librarians will need to work at the institutional, regional, and state levels to assure some kind of coordinated and collaborative response to the challenges ahead of us for the next few years.

So, starting tomorrow, here are the eight points I am going to emphasize till the end of the year.

1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture.
2. Seek to establish the most effective techniques individual bibliographic institutions can contribute to a national system of government information access, preservation and organization.
3. Create standards/protocols to inform best practices on how to integrate the impact of e-government services into our institutions.
4. Develop a model graduate curriculum/studies to prepare the next generation of government information librarians.
5. Build effective rhetoric of advocacy for open, free and permanent access to government information that binds the shared interests of our various professional associations. This shared rhetoric should come from consensus and not assent.
7. Deliver various programs of public education and outreach about government information policy structure that takes into account the cyclical nature of partisan election, but is not dependent on it.
8. Fashion new models of management and public service for government information resources in our institutions.

See you on Day 47.

When I started this long conversational march towards liberation, I thought libraries as institutions would be the first of those Gutenberg artifacts to be thrown onto our bonfire of change.

But I now realize that this rush towards bibliographic revolution was just too glib. The exchange over the last two weeks -- here, here, and here -- reminds me again just how much of the intrinsic conflict between services and collections (as James puts it, is a false dichotomy) still frames our very foundations as professionals, even in a digital environment.

I want to push this just a bit more. I fully recognize that a library world without collections is still very much in the distance of our professional perspective (much like the Pilgrim's "city on the hill"; something only realized by the approaching, never by the arrival.) And I fully recognize James' arguments for a collective bonding of local activism and global responsibility, or as he puts it so well,

The networked environment means that for all intents and purposes, the local IS the global. Networked technologies like P2P, cheap servers, ever better indexing/search, metadata standards, harvesting and preservation infrastructures etc means that all libraries can have locally-important digital collections (and both human and networked services!!) that are globally accessible and able to be shared/reconfigured/repurposed with other local digital collections

But this same networked ecosystem of digital political, social, cultural, economic and civic information ecosystems, in my opinion, does not automatically bestow the same kind of "authority" on these digital collections as they do (or might) on traditional repositories of paper and print civic information -- be they digital archives, libraries, institutes, centers, cooperatives, etc. I see governments at all levels binding their services and information sources more tightly together through the deployment of electronic government.

The bibliographic gap created in the distribution chain of print and paper allowed many traditional libraries to grow their own local collections of government information that met the purposes of their users, and also allowed them to become ad hoc service providers either officially (picture patent and trademark libraries here) or unofficially (picture tax forms, explanations of medicare provisions, regulatory and legislative research.)

In the digital world, this gap is eliminated. What is left is explanation, mediation, and organization of information sources that might be created by thousands of public and non-public institutions -- but for the most part will either remain with the producers or be delivered directly to the users by the producers (or a variety of third parties -- including libraries.) This is the kind of competitive information world (or the city on the hill) I see.

I am not arguing for an either/or choice (we had this zero sum discussion earlier.) I am talking about how librarians deploy their limited capital, social and labor, within this evolving information ecology coming out of electronic government. It is about choices, yes. And one of those choices will be how much emphasis we should put on collections and how much on services.

This new competitive environment among all these institutions, I argue, demands a different kind of government information librarianship.

We said we will never win each other over -- but let our sparks of difference better illuminate our path as we slog our way towards that distant civic prominotory.

This is fun.

See you on Day 49