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Tag Archives: Unreported publications
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.
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:-)
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.
Beautiful video on the history of fire lookouts – and fire! – highlights lots of US govt publications and records
Ever since I read Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums so many moons ago, I’ve been fascinated with fire lookouts. So I was delighted to run across this beautiful video by Aidin Robbins “Life as the Last Fire Lookout.” He does a great job explaining the history of fire lookouts through his interview with Russ Dalton, one of the last fire watchers, and explains how these structures have largely disappeared into the mists of history and why the remaining ones need to be preserved. But one of the best things I got from Robbins’ video was a long bibliography of US Forest Service documents and archival records from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that he helpfully listed in the description of this youtube video — and at least 2 of which are UNREPORTED documents that I’ve just submitted!
New US Treasury report confirms efficacy of unions. Submit your unreported documents NOW!
Once again, I’d like to encourage my depository library colleagues to hunt down and report these documents to GPO when you find them. Ben Amata at Sacramento State University does an amazing job at this and frequently posts his golden finds on the GOVDOC-L listserv for others’ benefit. There are other master unreported documents hunters out there too. But there aren’t enough of us and SO MANY publications especially from the executive branch go UN-reported, UN-cataloged, and UN-preserved.
So I implore all govinfo librarians to make this a part of your work week: track on your favorite executive agency, comb through your favorite newspaper/news site for mentions etc. Whatever your regular process or workflow is, add this small side step of reporting these documents to GPO. If all 1100+ depository librarians submitted a couple of reports a week, we’d be so much closer to actually having a “National Collection” of curated, born-digital publications from all across our federal government.
The empirical research on unions suggests that middle-class workers reap substantial benefits from unionization. Unions raise the wages of their members by 10 to 15 percent. Unions also improve fringe benefits and workplace procedures such as retirement plans, workplace grievance policies, and predictable scheduling. These workplace improvements contribute substantially to middle-class financial stability and worker well-being. For example, one study has estimated that the average worker values their ability to avoid short-notice schedule changes at up to 20 percent of their wages.
Importantly, the positive effects of unions are not only experienced by workers at unionized establishments. Other workers see increases in wages and improved work practices as their nonunionized workplaces compete with unionized ones for labor. In turn, the higher pay and job security of both unionized and nonunionized middle-class workers can further spill over to their families and communities through more stable housing, more investment in education, and other channels.
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