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Reference question and the saga of chasing down a Congressionally mandated report
I had a student come to me looking for a federal document called “Population representation in the military services.” She was doing research into the history of enlistment in the armed forces and was interested in finding statistics on the number of enlistments and applications to enlist per state from 1985 – 2000. The report has supposedly been published since 1970, but unfortunately was only available online from 1997 forward on the DoD site and most library catalogs only had the link.
It appeared after much digging that this report was never distributed to libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) even though it was a Congressionally mandated report, reports that are required by statute to be submitted by Federal agencies to the Senate, the House of Representatives, or to Congressional committees or subcommittees (check out the long saga of Congressionally mandated reports which have historically been hard to find but after many years of advocacy by government transparency groups, librarians and others are not required to be sent to GPO!).
After consultation with my many govinfo librarian colleagues on the govdoc-l Listserv — the amazing hive mind of govinfo librarians around the country! — I was able to piece together reports back to 1983 from our own collection (which were not cataloged but buried in the microfiche of the American Statistical Index (ASI) which is at least indexed in the subscription database Proquest Statistical Insight), the agency itself, a couple of editions available on the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) database, and a solid run in paper back to 1983 at the Pentagon Library. There are still a couple of gaps in the series, but I have at least been able to piece together 1983 – present. I requested the Pentagon Library volumes (1983 – 1997) and Stanford Library’s awesome digitization services team are in the process of scanning them. After the volumes have been scanned, I’ll send the files to the Government Publishing Office (GPO) through their “unreported documents” process (the process whereby federal publications that should be but are not for some reason in the FDLP’s National Collection can be collected, cataloged, and made available to the public).
I do hope that GPO’s new Congressionally Mandated Reports collection will help to solve the issue of access to these important reports that are often lost in the ether. But it will take the dogged work of countless govinfo librarians to continue to hunt these unreported documents down for students, researchers, journalists, and the public.
Happy 16th Birthday to the LOCKSS-USDOCS network!
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.
John Oliver on food safety. Or: you never know where you’ll find an unreported document
I’m so glad John Oliver is back! His latest expose on food safety is as always on point – at the same time being extremely funny! He explains the system under which food in the US is regulated (or not!), including the crazy fact that both the FDA and the USDA have some regulatory responsibilities in this area. Watch on.
Oliver is also good at using government documents to make his points. And this episode had a good one. He referenced a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General report from 2017 “The Food and Drug Administration’s Food-Recall Process Did Not Always Ensure the Safety of the Nation’s Food Supply”; so of course I had to check the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP). It’s sadly not surprising that this report was NOT in the catalog and so I had to send it in to GPO as an “unreported document.” Executive branch documents have long been problematic in being included in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) — for more of this history see ““Issued for Gratuitous Distribution”: The History of Fugitive Documents and the FDLP” by yours truly. And Inspectors General offices are among the worst. GPO doesn’t even include its own IG reports in the CGP so that should tell you something.
I hope others will join me in my Quixotic effort to report executive branch reports to GPO — and especially those from agency Inspectors General! — so that these important reports can be included in the FDLP and be preserved and made available for the long term. And now back to John Oliver:-)
Public access to Congressionally mandated reports one step closer to reality!
Congress passed the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA) as part of the 2023 defense authorization bill — and many including FGI cheered!
This week, the collection of these important reports came one step closer to reality as the White House Office of Management and Budget released detailed guidance for agencies to implement the ACMRA starting in October, 2023. The Federal News Network has more context. In a nutshell, “starting on Oct.16, anytime an agency is drafting a legally-required report to Congress, they’ll also need to prepare to send it to the Government Publishing Office to be hosted in a new publicly-accessible web portal GPO is building.” GPO has also announced its work on this important project for government transparency. This will also be a boon to the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) as thousands of Congressionally mandated reports make their way into depository library catalogs and collections.
My great hope is that this will be a template going forward for how executive agencies can work with GPO to bring their publications and data into the National Collection of U.S. Government Public Information where it can be collected, described, preserved and given broad public access via the internet and through the federal depository library network.
GPO and NOAA Partner To Increase Permanent Public Access To NOAA Publications
GPO recently announced that it had entered into a partnership with NOAA to catalog 47,000+ NOAA documents to the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) and add permanent URLs (PURLs) in those records to NOAA’s digital repository.
FGI wholeheartedly supports this effort especially given that executive branch documents are woefully lacking in the National Collection of U.S. Government Public Information. We hope that this effort will spur other executive agencies to work with GPO to expand the National Collection for greater public access to and preservation of important US government publications.
If you want to read more about the history of “unreported” documents, please see my article “’Issued for Gratuitous Distribution’: The History of Fugitive Documents and the FDLP” to learn more about the historic difficulties with collecting, cataloging, and distributing executive branch agency documents in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).
U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Central Library is working to add more than 47,000 unique items published by NOAA authors and grantees to the National Collection of U.S. Government Public Information. GPO shares NOAA’s goal of providing additional avenues to access Government research and making these documents more discoverable to the public. GPO will add the NOAA Institutional Repository (IR) to the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) and create permanent URLs, ensuring documents in NOAA’s IR are available digitally for permanent public access….
…Items that will be added to the National Collection and digitally preserved date back to 1970, the year NOAA was founded. They include NOAA’s reports to Congress, strategic and policy documents, white papers, conference proceedings, Federally-funded scholarly research, and more. While many of these items have historically been available in print formats at Federal depository libraries, they will now be available digitally through the CGP for easier and wider access.
Items the public may find particularly interesting from this collection are:
Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act (Weather Act) Collection, including documents describing efforts to improve hurricane, tornado, tsunami, and subseasonal to seasonal forecasting
Endangered Species Act Section 7 Biological Opinions
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Restoration Collection, with documents related to NOAA’s response and restoration work in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill NOAA Annual Science Report
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