October 2009 Lost Docs Report and Appeal

Last month 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.

Starting this month, we want to provide you a monthly summary report and appeal for help.

REPORT

Thanks to generous and retention minded librarians, we posted 45 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. These receipts were primarily from 2008. Once we get the backlog posted, we hope to post receipts as we get them and will then be able to more closely track the number of submissions per month.

Of these 45 reports, 12 items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with October 2009 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

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

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