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

Having just experienced one of those travel nightmares engendered by a combination or bad weather and collapsing service resources in a major domestic airline, combined with underfunded road and traffic infrastructure investments that allows gridlock when only a few inches of snow fall (we are talking about the metropolitan Chicago area here -- no stranger to snowfall) -- I do not have many good thoughts left today to devote to the long term goals of government information liberation.

Except for this one stray notion -- which is spinning off of Rebecca's comment asking for a parsing of what we mean by "possession" and how it relates to the purpose of libraries.

For me, the idea of possession begins (and in some ways ends) with the physical ownership of material. Over the centuries librarians and libraries have built many intellectual tools (indexes, catalogs, classification schemes) and sustained services (reference, readers advisories, instruction). They often did this regardless of what the publishers or creators of the material wanted to do. They did cooperate on some projects -- but for the most part these tools and services were hatched according to local needs and sustained through local investment. To be sure, broad coalitions of library organizations supported what we now call standards and protocols (MARC records, AACR2, etc.) that greatly influenced how these tools/services were fashioned and deployed by local libraries. But, I would argue their primary purposes were shaped by local needs. We sustained our pre-Internet reference and public service cultures even more so on these local purposes, with only broad guidelines or studies being developed for these important library purposes.

In fact, I would argue that the indigenous reference cultures of many libraries remain still largely untouched by the social web in any substantial way at the organizational/departmental level. We still rely on a model that is largely one librarian to one user, with little cross sharing among the librarians except perhaps on through anecdotal comparison. I wonder how many libraries that use digital reference tools extensively keep the data for any length of time and go back and review the questions and answers for patterns, accuracy, ways to improve the reference interview throughout the department, not just at the individual librarian level.

And here is where I think I break with Jim and/or Daniel, or, as we politely put it, agree to disagree. Though I can see some kind of limited future for the traditional ownership/possession of material model (whether it is for preservation or civic purposes) -- I wager that the shape and future of librarians in general is going to come from how well we adapt our institutions to that stark reality that we will not own (possess) much of the material we mediate on behalf of our user communities. For many of our users, the digital environment is now the "default library" that supports broad access to a "collection" of government information once only possible through a physical library just a few short years ago. What are librarians to do in order to help people make some kind of civic sense out of this digital mash up of ownership?

Just as our possession of the physical volumes fostered a series of innovations and public techniques that supported free public accessibility, so to will we have to innovate some kind suite of tools and services to help our user communities make sense of all the possible choices they have when the government information can be delivered to their digital door step by either public agencies or other third parties.

Libraries and librarians will have to reanimate their primary missions in such a way that offer better services/resources in a local market now open to more competition from other national, regional, and local service providers (be they other libraries, public institutions, or third party information providers.) I do not think the three of us disagree with the overall purpose of government information in libraries for the near future -- they must remain critical links in our civic culture regardless of the technology.

However, the bibliographic bulwarks of information democracy created in a Gutenberg universe are not the same as those needed in an environment dominated largely by the dictates of digital creation, access, distribution and preservation. And these critical differences are what this present 75 day discussion is all about, and what Free Government Information, in my humble opinion, continues to seek to reveal and deepen among the community of government/civic information librarians.

Now, back to the gridlock.

See you on Day 50 (perhaps a red letter day.)