Ric Davis Shares about FDLP at ALA Midwinter 2008
UPDATE 1/16/2008 - An alert reader who attended Ric Davis' speech wrote me to say that the speech was his prepared text and that there was more information about shared regionals than his speech text indicated.
If anyone else has observations, please make a comment. We welcome feedback and discussion.
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In a refreshing change from the mid 2000s, the Government Printing Office has already posted a speech given by Acting Superintendent of Documents Ric Davis at the 2008 Midwinter meeting of the American Library Association.
The speech can be found at http://www.fdlp.gov/file-repository/gpo-attended-events/lscm-director-speech-ala-midwinter/view.html and covers a variety of topics including GPO's Budget, the new FDLP desktop, web harvesting plans, current FDSys status and new marketing plans that sound like they will be developed in conjunction with depository libraries, at least in part. The whole 13 page, double-spaced speech is worth reading and I hope that at least some of you will have comments on it.
FGI tips its hat to Ric Davis for posting his ALA MW speech only a few days after it was given. It beats the months we've sometimes had to wait in the past.
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New Podcast Directory Entry: Smithsonian Institution
A reader recently left a comment on our Government Podcasts Directory informing us about the Spotlight on Science podcast from the Smithsonian Institution. This led us to the Smithsonian Institute podcast portal at http://www.si.edu/podcasts/. According to the 2007-2008 US Government Manual, the Smithsonian Institution is a quasi-official agency of the US Government and so fits our critera of a federal agency.
The podcast portal page has a wide variety of podcasted programs, including:
- The Folkways Collection
- Freer and Sackler Galleries Curatorial Conversations
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Podcasts
- Smithsonian Institution Libraries Podcast
- National Museum of the American Indian Podcasts
- African Art Museum Podcasts
Interestingly, the Spotlight on Science that we were originally pointed to isn't listed on the portal page. That may be because its last podcast appears to have been from April 2007.
If you know of a federal, state or local government podcast that isn't listed in our directory at http://freegovinfo.info/node/174, please leave a comment on the directory page, or here, or send an e-mail to admin AT freegovinfo.info.
Continue readingGPO and DLC: Thanks for Sharing
Recently, GPO released a sample of EPA documents that had been harvested from the EPA's website by software agents. These documents were gathered as a result of GPO's web harvesting project and a sample can now be found at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/harvesting/index.html.
According to the EPA Web Harvesting page, documents are being made available in two ways:
The first method involves the creating of brief bibliographic records for the monographs and the CONSER standard record format for the serials. The majority of publications included in this sample will be made accessible through this method. Users may conduct a keyword search in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) for the phrase “EPA pilot project” to review these cataloging records. The second method of access being tested involves posting a portion of the publications from the sample to GPO Access using a browse table. At the request of the Depository Library Council, LSCM is also trying to determine if there is a mechanism that enables public access to Web harvested content while these publications are in the queue for brief bibliographic records. LSCM has posted a small portion of the sample to GPO Access using a browse table.
If you want to see the full methodology and the documents available through the browse table, then please visit http://www.gpoaccess.gov/harvesting/index.html.
Regular readers of FGI know that we have problems with brief bibliographic records with no subject access, but we definitely appreciate GPO's efforts at item description and posting the browse table.
We are also very thankful to the Depository Library Council for requesting that the public be able to access harvested content while the publications are waiting for their brief records. We hope that GPO can find a way to accomodate their request as it will open up many possibilities for getting EPA publications in a timely yet searchable manner.
So thanks for sharing!
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Three Cheers for GPO: Tangible Copies of US Budget
I was very happy to hear that the Government Printing Office will be producing paper copies of the annual US Budget despite a White House announcement to go electronic only. Here is the GPO message sent out to FDLP-L today:
From: Announcements from the Federal Depository Library Program [mailto:GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV] On Behalf Of FDLP Listserv
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 12:03 PM
To: GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV
Subject: Tangible Copies of the Budget of the United States Government
On January 9, 2008, Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle announced that the Budget of the United States Government would be released in a web-only format for Fiscal Year 2009 on February 4th, 2008. Mr. Nussle cited the cost savings of such a move as the reason for the discontinuance of paper copies of the Budget.
GPO wishes to assure the members of the Federal Depository Library Program that we are committed to keeping the various Budget publications in printed format. To this end, OMB has agreed to provide GPO with files of the Budget documents that will be put to press for the purpose of dissemination to the public through the FDLP and Publication & Information Sales Program. We intend to ship these tangible copies of the Budget in conjunction with the February 4th internet release.
The class numbers, titles, and item numbers involved in this announcement by OMB are:
PREX 2.8: Budget of the United States Government; 0853
PREX 2.8/1: Budget of the United States Government; 0853-C
PREX 2.8/5: Analytical Perspectives; 0855-B
PREX 2.8/7: Budget Revisions; 0853
PREX 2.8/8: Historical Tables, Budget of the United States
Government; 0853
If you have questions, please use the GPO online help service at:
<http://www.gpoaccess.gov/help>.
Why is this good news? For several reasons:
Preservation - At this point in time, tangible formats are the only absolutely proven way to ensure something will be readable 100 years from now. LOCKSS and other technologies may eventually change this, but certainly in digital preservation still belongs to the future. And folks in 2109 will want to know how our government spent its money in 2009.
Access - While electronic versions of documents like this are terrific for searching for a specific piece of information, they can be cumbersome to use. And for the 80,000,000+ Americans without internet access, a tangible format is the only access they'll have to the President's spending plans.
Privacy - With the United States called a pervasive surveillance society by Privacy International and other groups, the best way to avoid gov't and commercial scrutiny of your scrutiny of the US budget is by using the paper version. I still plan to use both print and electronic, but it's nice to have the choice in my hands.
I haven't asked GPO their reasons for continuing to print the US Budget in light of its migration to the Internet, but I am very glad they will be preserving this year's documents for future generations. Three Cheers!
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2004 EPA Report Concluded Libraries had Great ROI
The Government Printing Office recently posted a small sample of EPA documents harvested from the EPA web. I'm not writing about this effort today, but so far it looks promising and I commend GPO for sharing part of the results with the community. There will be more about this later.
Today I'm writing about one of the fruits of their web harvesting. One of the reports that GPO pulled and I hope is eventually widely distributed in print is:
Business case for information services : EPA's regional libraries and information centers
by United States. Office of Environmental Information.; United States. Environmental Protection Agency. National Library Network.
EPA 260-R-04-001, Published January 2004
Because I'm uncertain what will happen to the current GPO page once the pilot is finished, I've elected to post this report to the Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/details/BusinessCaseForInformationServicesEpasRegionalLibrariesAndCenters.
What really impressed me about this report, which might have been mentioned before, is how the authors found a strong financial benefit to EPA running regional libraries. Here is their Executive Summary (bolding mine):
The Environmental Protection Agency?s network of regional libraries and environmental center libraries provides substantial value to the Agency, its professional staff, stakeholders, and the public. Calculated conservatively, the benefit-to-cost ratio for EPA library services ranges between 2:1 and 5.7:1. Libraries and librarians are nonetheless a significant investment, costing the Agency roughly $6.2 million annually to operate and maintain. It is an opportune time to initiate an Agency-wide dialog on the extent and nature of library services at the Environmental Protection Agency.
The rest of this 24 page report basically expands on these findings. Unsurprisingly, time as well as money were saved. According to a table at page 16 of the PDF file, 2003 reference for EPA staff saved the agency over 16,000 hours and over 14,000 hours in serving external users.
So, speaking conservatively, keeping the EPA libraries open provide $2 of benefits for every dollar spent on the libraries PLUS freed up over 30,000 hours a year that EPA staff could spend on other tasks. Makes you wonder why the agency chose to close the libraries anyway.
According to Open WorldCat, there is only one paper copy of this report in the nation's libraries. Hopefully some of you will change that.
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