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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.

DttP student article re SIGAR and the tenuous nature of born-digital preservation

The Fall, 2023 issue of Documents to the People (DttP) just came out. This issue is always interesting because it includes a section of MLIS student submissions. This time around was no different. An article by Miguel Beltran, a grad student at University of IL at Urbana Champaign (which also happens to be my alma mater!) caught my attention because it was on a subject that FGI has long written about: the exigency of born-digital preservation of government information.

Citation: Lessons Learned in Born-Digital Preservation. Miguel Beltran. Documents to the People (DttP), Fall, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/dttp.v51i3.8124.

Beltran’s insightful analysis revolves around the documents of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and an investigative report by the Washington Post entitled “At war with the truth.” Beltran points to the BIG ELEPHANT in the FDLP room: the processes, workflows, and infrastructures needed to curate (collect, preserve, and give long-term access) government information are not currently in place and that “clear strategies and widespread collaboration are necessary to preserve government information on these mediums.”

As more government documents are created in digital mediums, it is increasingly important that agencies could preserve and make them available to the public. This article discusses one group of government documents related to the war in Afghanistan and the
landscape that would potentially preserve them. Based on the current conditions, there is a possibility that these documents and those of a similar nature may be overlooked and lost to future generations.

I checked the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) for author: “United States. Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” and the newest SIGAR report there is from May of 2022. Herein lies the problem as Beltran notes. Without a agreement in place between SIGAR and GPO, many of this agency’s reports will fall through the cracks and not be cataloged for the National Collection or actively preserved. The main SIGAR site has been harvested by the Internet Archive many times since 2009 (but the reports page and its corresponding RSS feed have been collected far fewer times since only 2015, at very random intervals, and NOT by GPO!). That means that, though the SIGAR site is in the wayback machine, the reports from this agency are not necessarily even in wayback and certainly NOT in GPO’s FDLP web archive.

Therefore, the ONLY way to assure that these born-digital documents are curated is to go through the list one-by-one in a brute force kind of way to check to see if they’ve been cataloged in CGP and then report them as “unreported” documents to GPO. So that’s what I’m going to do 🙂

Thanks again to Miguel Beltran for again raising the important issue of born-digital preservation. Have you reported a document to GPO today? I challenge all of my FDLP colleagues around the country to report 5 documents per week to GPO. Together we can fill some of the cracks that are currently in the National Collection.

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

FGI comment on GPO RFC re Regional Online Selections Draft Policy

Last fall, GPO announced a new Superintendent of Documents (SOD) draft policy statement “Regional Depository Libraries Online Selections.” GPO surveyed regional depository libraries and released the results of that survey in February, 2021. They’re also asking the wider library community and interested parties for comment DUE MAY 16, 2021.

FGI has submitted a comment regarding this proposed policy change. Below is the text of our comment. In short, this policy change could negatively impact the preservation of and long-term access to the National Collection. Our suggestion was to change the policy and add a “digital deposit” requirement:

“Regional depository libraries may select “online” as a format IF AND ONLY IF regionals participate in a “digital deposit” program and agree to receive, host, and provide access to digital FDLP publications.”

We hope others will submit comments BY MAY 16, 2021!

Thank you for requesting comments from the Federal Depository Library community for this proposed major policy change for regional library collection management.

Suggested edit of draft policy:

“Regional depository libraries may select “online” as a format IF AND ONLY IF regionals participate in a “digital deposit” program and agree to receive, host, and provide access to digital FDLP publications.”

We at FGI have 2 concerns regarding this proposed policy change.

The first concern has to do with the current practice described in the background section of the proposed SOD:

“…they [regionals] no longer are receiving all new and revised tangible versions for all titles through the FDLP. Nor are regional depository libraries necessarily retaining a printed or microfacsimile version of what they receive.”

According to 44 U.S. Code § 1912, Regional libraries are required to receive and “retain at least one copy of all Government publications either in printed or microfacsimile form.” How many regional libraries are no longer following the requirements of the statute? What is GPO doing to assure that the letter and spirit of Title 44 are being followed by regional libraries? Rather than codifying this bad behavior, GPO should be doing more to help regionals fulfill the requirements of the statute and assure the long-term viability of the FDLP for all of the libraries and the wider public that rely on regionals. Any proposed SOD should seek to correct this unfortunate situation.

Our second concern has to do with the proposed policy change itself.

“Regional depository libraries may select “online” as a format, without having to make a corresponding tangible selection, for titles or series accessible through GPO’s system of online access, a trusted digital repository, or from official digital preservation steward partners.”

One of the primary functions of regional libraries is to participate in the long-term preservation of US government publications. Indeed, retention (ie., preservation) is written into 44 U.S. Code § 1912 itself. Selective libraries across the country rely heavily on this regional requirement to manage their FDLP collections.

The existing law is clear: “In addition to fulfilling the requirements for depository libraries” regional depositories must “retain at least one copy of all Government publications either in printed or microfacsimile form (except those authorized to be discarded by the Superintendent of Documents).” The only other mention in the law of the Superintendent being able to authorize discarding is for “superseded publications or those issued later in bound form which may be discarded as authorized by the Superintendent of Documents” (§ 1911).

As the Senate Report on the bill stated, “Complete document collections would thus be accessible to all the regular depositories within the State, enabling them to be more selective in the items they would request” (S. Rep. 1587, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. 1962). The legislative history is clear that the establishment of Regional Depositories was designed both to allow selectives to discard publications after five years and to ensure that all publications would be available from a Regional.

The law has not changed and this policy would contradict both the letter and intent of the law.

Although GPO continues to promulgate policies that wrongly equate “online access” with “deposit,” no change in the law allows this. We welcome online access and the efforts GPO is making to ensure preservation of digital government information, but, as GPO’s draft policy says, the policy is rooted in the past, in choices made twenty-five years ago. It would be wiser and more sustainable to base new decisions in the current and developing capabilities of FDLP libraries rather than on the past. We suggest that there is a better path that conforms to the existing law, enhances preservation, and improves access and use of digital government information. Our suggested edit looks to a future of GPO and FDLP libraries collaborating together to preserve and give access to the National Collection.

We suggest that, until Title 44 is changed, GPO should choose a simple and effective alternative that will accomplish more than GPO’s proposal.

We recommend a policy of allowing a regional depository to choose digital copies of government publications (instead of printed or microfacsimile) IF AND ONLY IF it agrees to actually receive, host, and provide access to those digital files. The SOD could do this by, for example, making regional selection and deposit format-agnostic or adding digital formats to the list of currently anachronistic “tangible” formats.

Our suggestion begins by respecting the existing law, which mandates that multiple copies of government publications be held for both preservation and access by libraries outside the government. For “access” our suggestion will allow libraries to provide digital services for specific designated communities. For preservation, it ensures against intentional or unintentional loss of access, corruption of content, or outright loss of information in the government’s care.

Our suggestion is also compatible with the work of the The Digital Deposit Working Group of the Depository Library Council (on which James is participating), which is currently working on recommendations for digital deposit based on FDLP community feedback which would directly contradict GPO’s proposed regional policy. Our proposal looks to a future of digital deposit. Indeed, ten regional libraries are already receiving and preserving all content published in govinfo.gov through the LOCKSS-USDOCS program. Our proposal provides GPO the opportunity to create a policy that will lay a solid foundation for the digital FDLP, increase participation by FDLP libraries, and enhance services for the National Collection.

It has long been established that the preservation of born-digital government information is a challenging endeavor. It also should be clear that a one-size-fits-all model of “access” without digital services is inadequate in the digital age. GPO cannot and should not go it alone. GPO needs multiple partners to participate in digital preservation and in the provision of digital services.

GPO’s proposed SOD, rather than strengthening the long-term viability of the digital FDLP, erodes its very foundation by literally erasing the critical, legislatively-required job for which regionals were created. Any library or individual can do what the draft SOD suggests (point to govinfo.gov), but FDLP libraries could do so much more. They can complement what GPO does by providing official, legislatively-mandated, redundant preservation, and by providing enhanced digital services targeted to specific OAIS designated communities.

Reps Quigley and Comer re-introduce Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA)

Representatives Mike Quigley (IL-05) and James Comer (KY-01) re-introduced the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA) to create a single website on which Congress and the public can easily search, sort, and download all executive agency congressional reports. Quigley has introduced this bill every Congressional session since 2011. In the last session of Congress, the bill passed the House of Representatives unanimously, but stalled in the Senate.

The ACMRA will be a boon to the American public and will add thousands of difficult-to-find executive agency reports to the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the “National Collection.” Take a look at the list of reports required to be submitted to Congress. This list is published at the beginning of each Congressional session as a House Document entitled “Reports to be made to Congress.”

Contact your Representatives and Senators to make sure we get H.R. 2485 over the finish line this time!

“As founder and co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Transparency Caucus, I am proud to re-introduce this hallmark transparency bill that I have introduced every Congress since 2011,” said Quigley. “This bill will increase government transparency by providing the public easily-accessible information on how agencies are accomplishing their policy goals. By consolidating this information in one location, my hope is that it will improve the institutional and technological capacity of the legislative branch and rebuild the public’s trust in our government. I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this legislation in the House again this Congress.”

“Good governance requires the American people have full, transparent access to information about their government. Congress receives thousands of reports annually from federal agencies about how they are fulfilling their missions, but there isn’t a spot to find all of them in one place. The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act provides Americans easy access to these reports by requiring all federal agency congressional reports be housed in one accessible location. If these reports can’t be easily found, the reports don’t serve their purpose. The American people need the information contained in these reports to be accessible so we can see and understand how the federal government is using their taxpayer dollars. The House and Senate must take up this commonsense legislation,” said Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member Comer.

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

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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