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Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

Happy 16th Birthday to the LOCKSS-USDOCS network!

March 5, 2024 / Leave a comment

Wow it’s hard to believe that the LOCKSS-USDOCS network of over 30 libraries has been up and running for 16 years! We can finally get our driver’s permit 🙂 LOCKSS-USDOCS harvests all of the content currently published on the Government Publishing Office (GPO)’s GOVINFO content management system and includes the most recently created collection of Congressionally Mandated reports.

If you and your library are interested in participating in this collaborative digital preservation project of the digital FDLP(!), please contact James R. Jacobs at jrjacobs AT Stanford DOT edu.

The USDocs Private LOCKSS Network (PLN) was launched in 2008 as a digital repository for the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), a network of over 1,100 participating libraries across the United States. The FDLP has for over 200 years ensured the safeguarding of documents published by the U.S. Federal Government through the same “lots of copies keep stuff safe” principle that now drives LOCKSS digital preservation networks. FDLP libraries select a basic subset of federal reports and documents, with individual libraries providing a wide range of additional specialized services and collections…

…At the heart of the FDLP lies the idea that libraries across the United States are not just passive repositories but active stewards of these vital materials. They dedicate themselves to preserving content for the good of society and to safeguarding democracy. FDLP libraries are driven by a mission: to provide free public access to official information, thereby empowering citizens with knowledge and fostering transparency. As the FDLP becomes increasingly digital, the GPO will print and distribute a decreasing number of titles in hard copy to just a few libraries in each of the four National Collection Service Areas (NCSAs), and the USDocs PLN will be collecting and preserving a growing percentage of the U.S. Federal Government’s output.

GPO’s Collection Development Plan falls short of the “National Collection”

October 28, 2020 / Leave a comment

The Government Publishing Office (GPO) recently released its updated document entitled GPO’s System of Online Access: Collection Development Plan (here are the 2016 and 2018 Plans for comparison) which is “revised annually to reflect content added to govinfo in the preceding fiscal year, in-process titles, and current priorities.” The Plan explains GPO’s designated communities for govinfo, the broad content areas that fall within scope of govinfo, and the various codes — basically Title 44 of the US Code and Superintendent of Documents policies (SODs) — which undergird GPO’s collection development activities. While there is no mention in this document of the “National Collection”, it describes the three major pillars of GPO’s permanent public access efforts as govinfo, the FDLP, and the Cataloging & Indexing program (which produces the bibliographic records for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP)).

The central part of the Plan is where GPO defines the govinfo collection depth level — defined in Appendix A of the Plan as collection levels modified from the Research Libraries Group (RLG) Conspectus collection depth levels and going from Comprehensive, Research, Study or Instructional Support, Basic, Minimal, to Out of Scope — of the various public information products of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the US government.

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Reject GPO’s proposal to drop metadata from CGP

March 3, 2019 / Leave a comment

The Government Publishing Office has a brief proposal to omit some metadata in the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP). As written in the announcement, the proposed change in policy seems simple and obvious. GPO says that, for publications in govinfo, “historic URLs” (the original, source URL) and PURLs (the Persistent Uniform Resource Locators) are “identical.” GPO reasons that, since the the two fields are “redundant,” the historic URLs are unnecessary:

“LSCM proposes to cease the inclusion of historic URLs only in catalog records for resources in govinfo.”

The announcement ask for feedback on how the policy change would affect “cataloging/metadata and other operations and processes.”

The proposal should be rejected for three reasons.

1. The premise is wrong

GPO’s premise is flat out wrong. The information recorded in PURLs and “historic URLs” is neither identical nor redundant. PURLs change over time and “historic URLs” stay the same. The two fields record different information even when they are the same: PURLs record the current location of a resource and “historic URLs” record the original location of the resource. PURLs exist because URLs change.

(If GPO could guarantee that the public URL of govinfo items will never change, then it could just as easily advocate not including PURLs in CGP records. But that would, obviously, be crazy. PURLs are needed to account for the problem of “link rot.” Link rot is a well documented problem including for government information. GPO’s own digital repository has had already had three base addresses over the years requiring PURL redirects: access.gpo.gov, gpo.gov/fdsys, and govinfo.gov.)

Because PURLs are necessary, the issue GPO should be addressing is whether or not the original URL is a valuable piece of metadata — even after it “rots” (changes). And the question GPO should be asking is not how omitting that information will affect “cataloging/metadata and other operations and processes,” but how it will affect users and long-term access to digital resources.

2. The historic URL is valuable to users

The original URL of govinfo resources is a valuable piece of metadata for users. They can use it to locate a copy of a document in other archives (e.g., the Internet Archive, the End of Term Archive). They can use it to compare copies when more than one institution has archived the same content (perhaps at different times, reflecting changes over time).

The historic URL is essential to retrieving copies in other archives and this would be vital if technical, administrative, legal, or budgetary changes interfered with GPO keeping PURLs up to date, or keeping its PURL server online, or keeping its online copy available. It would also be vital if government information is intentionally withdrawn or privatized. There is no good reason to deny such essential information to users.

Some resources in govinfo (such as the Federal Register) are available in other versions from other government sources. The CGP records should record the historic URL so that users can understand which versions are described and to which version the PURL points.

The govinfo website provides users with the URLs of resources, but does not provide PURLs. Most users of resources in the TDR will have those public govinfo URLs and not PURLs. Users who cite those resources and provide links to them will likely use those URLs, not PURLs. Having those URLs in CGP would help users find the PURL when those URLs change (as they inevitably will).

3. The proposal ignores the evolution of govinfo

The proposed policy change is notable in what it leaves out: the future. At its inception, the policy would, apparently, affect only content in GPO’s Trusted Digital Repository (TDR).[1] The proposal should explicitly define the scope of the policy.

Currently, as far as we can tell[2], the TDR contains two kinds of resources with CGP records: Born-digital items that are first published by GPO in either fdsys or govinfo (example CGP record: America’s water infrastructure needs and challenges); and digitized paper items that GPO has ingested into fdsys or govinfo (example CGP record: Internal revenue cumulative bulletin.).

But CGP includes historic URLs for other kinds of resources. For example:

This prompts several questions that the policy proposal does not address: Will GPO’s TDR ever contain other resources? Will it evolve and expand over time? Will the policy affect other kinds of content if they become “resources in govinfo”?

This is important because the historic URLs in CGP records for resources that, apparently, are not affected by the new policy today, could be affected if they were ingested into the TDR (or if the policy is broader than we think it is, or if GPO interprets the policy differently in the future, etc.).

The “historic URLs” for that other content is even more important in some cases than it is for the content currently in the TDR.

The source URL of a harvested item establishes the provenance (origin) of the item archived. The standard for Trusted Digital Repositories requires TDRs to preserve information on the provenance of resources they archive (TDR 4.2.6.3). If GPO ever ingests harvested content into its TDR, it will need the historic URL. Having it in CGP records could provide a useful link between CGP and the GPO’s repository.

Digitized paper resources present a special problem for users. More than one digitization project may digitize the same paper document or different editions or versions of the same title. Differences can occur because of the use of different source copies and because of different standards and levels of accuracy of different digitization processes. This is further complicated in CGP by the fact that some CGP records point to non-government websites (example: Joan of Arc saved France), some point to the TDR (example: An account of the receipts and expenditures of the United States), and some point to harvested content (example: Pots and pans for your kitchen). There are probably other permutations and combinations that we have not discovered. The “historic” URL (e.g., its original location) would help the user identify the source of the digitization and would enable the user to obtain a copy from that source or from an archive of that source.

Conclusion

The “historic URLs” in CGP provide information to users that PURLs do not. That information is useful to users because it will help them identify, understand, and locate copies of resources. “Historic URLs” may seem unnecessary to GPO today, but they will increase in value to users over time. Making a decision for “resources in govinfo” today fails to take into account what resources may be in GPO’s TDR in the future (including harvested content and digitizations). The proposal to drop historic URLs is short-sighted. Dropping historic URLs today would be a mistake that users would resent in the future.

GPO should clarify the scope of the policy and how it would be applied in the future and evaluate its effects on users and long-term access.

Authors:
James A. Jacobs, University of California San Diego
James R. Jacobs, Stanford University

Endnotes

  1. The announcement mentions getting TDR certification and refers to “resources in govinfo.” GPO does not make it clear, however, if “govinfo” is a reference to its digital repository or the website www.govinfo.gov. Without a clarification, the scope of the policy proposal is unclear and ambiguous. The website runs using the content management system drupal. It appears that everything in the TDR is available through the website, but not everything listed on the website is available in the TDR (e.g., see: the browse page that points to GPO partner resources). For the most part, though, the website appears to be the public interface to the TDR. As far as we know, GPO has not said if that will always be the case. Presumably, the website could be used to point at content in more than one repository (permanent.gpo.gov, for example), or GPO might want to ingest into the TDR the content it has harvested at wayback.archive-it, or GPO might replace drupal with a different CMS. Any of these would result in a different scope of “resources in govinfo.” ↵
  2. Since GPO has not yet shared its TDR certification report publicly, our evaluation is based on what we can infer from using the govinfo website. ↵

GPO Gets OAIS Certification!

January 15, 2019 / Leave a comment

Congratulation to GPO for getting govinfo.gov certified as a Trusted Digital Repository! This is an important step for ensuring long term preservation and access to the contents of the GPO digital repository. The Government Publishing Office (GPO) announced today that it has received this certification.

(For those unfamiliar with certification, check out the “core criteria for digital preservation repositories” that four preservation organizations wrote in 2007. These are a consensus guide auditing and certifying repositories and will give you a general idea of the concepts of certification.)

The certification was awarded to GPO by PTAB (The Primary Trustworthy Digital Repository Authorization Body). This was the second certification completed by PTAB and the first in the United States.

PTAB used the international standard known as ISO 16363, Audit And Certification Of Trustworthy Digital Repositories. This is the newest and official version of the standard also known as OAIS ("The Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System"). (The standard is available for free from CCSDS and for a fee from the International Organization for Standards ISO.)

PTAB is accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies of India (NABCB) to conduct ISO 16363 audits worldwide utilizing ISO standard 17021 (Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems) (freely available from CCSDS).

PTAB uses a two stage ISO 16919/17021 audit process.

Waiting for details…

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Title 44 “reform”: Privatization of printing and erosion of GPO functions mean less public access

January 9, 2018 / 1 Comment on Title 44 “reform”: Privatization of printing and erosion of GPO functions mean less public access

Happy 2018! We’re back after a quiet and relaxing new year hiatus. While it’s a new year, we’re still in the throes of Congressional “reform” of Title 44 of the US Code, which defines public printing, distribution of government information, and the federal depository library program (FDLP). Up to this point, we had focused our analysis of the Title 44 “reform” bill on chapter 5, which deals with the FDLP and also published Bernadine Abbott Hoduski’s eloquent argument for why the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) should be kept.

Peggy Jarrett’s recent piece on LLRX “Legislation Alert: Worrisome Changes to Government Publications Are Possible” has spurred us to go back and look more closely at chapters 1 and 3 which deal with the Government Printing Office (yes this bill changes the name back to the antiquated Printing Office!) and “implementation of authorities.” We believe that these were deliberately embedded into the bill to slash GPO’s budget and hamstring GPO’s ability to provide necessary services, thus severely impacting both public access to government information and the FDLP system. We highly recommend that readers go back and read these 2 chapters with a fine toothed comb and help us sift through. The draft bill is set for markup by the Committee on House Administration (CHA) some time toward the end of January. So there’s still time for the library community to get a grasp of the fine print of the bill and recommend changes to our library lobbyists at the ALA Washington Office (the point person there is Gavin Baker) and directly to the committee.

Here are the lowlights of what we’ve found so far:

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