NSF understands what GPO doesn’t seem to
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has been active in technology and Internet efforts for many years. I think it's fair to consider most NSF people technologists. So, it was with pleasant surprise that libraries and the concept of geographically distributed local digital collections got several favorable mentions in the new NSF Cyberinfrastructure Vision and Strategic Plan. Although the plan doesn't explicitly deal with government information, I think it does have something to say to the depository community and to the Government Printing Office which appears to be favoring a centralized model of information dissemination. First the plan explains the advantages libraries held in preserving scientific output in print (emphasis mine):
In print form, the preservation process is handled through a system of libraries and other repositories throughout the country and around the globe. Two features of this print-based system make it robust. First, the diversity of business models deriving support from a variety of sources means that no single entity bears sole responsibility for preservation, and the system is resilient to changes in any particular sector. Second, there is overlap in the collections, and redundancy of content reduces the potential for catastrophic loss of information. - Page 19Rather than try to consign this robust system as a "legacy collection" of scientific information, the NSF has seen the future and has found it to be geographically and institutionally diverse (emphasis mine):
The national data framework is envisioned to provide an equally robust and diverse system for digital data management and access. It will: promote interoperability between data collections supported and managed by a range of organizations and organization types; provide for appropriate protection and reliable long-term preservation of digital data; deliver computational performance, data reliability and movement through shared tools, technologies and services; and accommodate individual community preferences. The agency will also develop a suite of coherent data policies that emphasize open access and effective organization and management of digital data, while respecting the data needs and requirements within science and engineering domains. - Page 20Where does NSF expect to find the expertise and willingness to build these diverse digital collections? In part, in libraries! (Emphasis mine):
At the institutional level, colleges and universities are developing approaches to digital data archiving, curation, and analysis. They are sharing best practices to develop digital libraries that collect, preserve, index and share research and education material produced by faculty and other individuals within their organizations. The technological implementations of these systems are often open-source and support interoperability among their adopters. University-based research libraries and research librarians are positioned to make significant contributions in this area, where standard mechanisms for access and maintenance of scientific digital data may be derived from existing library standards developed for print material. These efforts are particularly important to NSF as the agency considers the implications of not just making all data generated with NSF funding broadly accessible, but of also promoting the responsible organization and management of these data such that they are widely usable.The moral of this story for the depository library community is simple. If the Uber geeks at NSF appreciate the contributions of libraries and the logic of local digital collections, maybe we should too. Continue reading
Review of FirstGov’s new search engine & limits of search
Today I noticed that Search Engine Watch has posted a well written review of the new FirstGov search engine. For those of you not familar with it, FirstGov was established during the Clinton Administration and has this current vision:
FirstGov.gov, the official U.S. gateway to all government information, is the catalyst for a growing electronic government. Our work transcends the traditional boundaries of government and our vision is global–connecting the world to all U.S. government information and servicesIf you interact with government at all, this is a site worth visit for its well organized lists of resources grouped by user (citizen, business, other gov't) and by subject. The creators of FirstGov realized everyone isn't on the web yet, so they also provide 800 numbers for agency helplines. I've never thought that much of their search engine because it never distinguished between federal and state resources very well. Despite the great improvements outlined in the Search Engine Watch article above, this failing remains. Continue reading
New on FDSys: January 30, 2006 – Industry contacts, capabilities update
In the past week, the volunteers at FGI have observed a new file and a revised document at GPO's Future Digital System (FDSys) web site. The new file is called contact list and appears to be a list of attendees for FDSys' Industry Days in October 2005 and January 2006. Along with this addition, the document FDsys System Releases and Capabilities has been updated to version 2.1. According to its "document change/configuration control sheet", this revision updates Release 0 date and moved Style Tools to Content Submission. According to the document, Release 0 is "Supporting Digital Conversion Services for GPO Access" and GPO expects this version of FDSys to be available by April 2006. We at FGI wish to thank GPO's Office of Innovation & New Technology for posting more FDSys updates and hope this will continue to be a regular process. Continue reading
Digital Deposit in Action: Alaska State Documents via LOCKSS
Since July 2004, electronic state publications have represented about half of all documents collected through the Alaska State Publications Program. To eliminate broken URLs and to improve the preservation of electronic publications of state agencies, the Alaska State Library is storing electronic state publications on our web server and turning to a technology called LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). LOCKSS caches (computers), including ones at the Alaska State Library, Stanford University, and Yale University collect the cataloged electronic documents stored on our server at and stores them locally. If something happens to our local server, or if the institution where the LOCKSS cache is based loses access to the Internet, the documents are served from the LOCKSS cache and stay locally available. Further information about LOCKSS can be found at http://www.lockss.org. Two sections of the web site of special interest are Answers for Library Directors and For Librarians. For information about how the Alaska State Library is using LOCKSS, please contact Daniel Cornwall at dan_cornwall AT eed.state.ak.us. Continue reading
Likely space requirements for digital deposit
One of the understandable concerns expressed by Federal Depository Libraries about the possibility of local storage and serving of electronic government publications is that of unknown storage requirements. How big of a hard drive and how expensive a computer would a depository library need to maintain a local digital collection? Our assumption at FGI is that if libraries were offered the option of digital deposit, they would only store materials that fit their depository profile. Thanks to the wonderful folks at Documents Data Miner, we now have a way to estimate storage requirements for particular depositories. I selected the libraries below at random and used the "URL Locator" feature to determine how many electronic titles these libraries would have received in 2005 if a digital deposit system had been in place. I then calculated storage space based on an average document size of 5MB per document or 10MB per document to come up with an amount of yearly storage space. For comparison, an Alaska State Document averages 3.7MB per document, so I'm being VERY conservative in my space estimate. If GPO has a figure for the average size of a federal electronic publication, I'd love to know it. Continue reading
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