GPO’s draft regional libraries report and FGI comments
A few weeks ago, the Government Printing Office released their draft report entitled, Regional Depository Libraries in the 21st Century: A Time for Change? and asked for comments until June 30. I'm not sure how many comments they received, but wanted to publish comments we submitted. Lynne Bradley, Director American Library Association Washington Office, DID submit comments that were endorsed by the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS), and the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT). GODORT republished Ms. Bradley's letter on their wiki. While we are in general agreement with ALA's letter calling for increased flexibility of Title 44 (*not* wholesale changes in the title) and increased appropriations for GPO initiatives and "regional depository libraries to help offset the costs of storing and preserving government property," our comments deal with the more philosophical issues embedded in the draft report. Please let us know what you think.
I. Delete from the report all uses of the adjective "legacy" when referring to collections. The use of the word "legacy" as an adjective comes from computer science and is used to indicate things that are "outdated" and "undesirable." When the report uses the phrase "legacy collections" it implies that it is referring to unwanted and outdated collections. (The report uses "legacy" as an adjective in only one other context: in its reference to sections 1911 and 1912 of Title 44 USC as "Legacy Sections" -- apparently in order to define these section as out of date and undesirable.) Thus, the use of the phrase "legacy collections" is either inaccurate and misleading, or imprecise. In its place GPO should use phrases that accurately describe the collections it wishes to discuss. For example, in place of "legacy collections" the report could uses phrases such as "collections without adequate bibliographic records" or "collections of print materials" or "collections without digital equivalents" or other phrases that accurately describe the collections GPO is referring to. If GPO does wish to refer to unwanted out of date materials it should describe them that way explicitly rather than use the term "legacy." II. The report should more explicitly and accurately address the difference between roles and responsibilities that are legally mandated and those that have been assumed without a legal mandate. Specifically, we object to the following sentences of the report (Section V.B. pages 16-17) that gloss over these differences. (These sentences refer to Public Law 103-40, The Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993.)Continue readingThe implementation of the GPO Access Act ushered GPO into the online age and accelerated the paradigm shift in the FDLP that changed GPO’s relationship with depository libraries. Regional depositories have the responsibility for permanent public access in the tangible publication environment. In the online information environment GPO has assumed primary responsibility for ensuring content and permanent public access. [emphasis added]We suggest the following wording instead:While the GPO Access Act specifically required GPO to "provide a system of online access" and to "operate an electronic storage facility for Federal electronic information," it did not specify any change in the roles of the depository libraries. It added new roles for GPO, but did not reduce, alter, or delete the roles of depository libraries. Since 1993, Congress has consistently provided funds to GPO for the "distribution" of government publications to designated depository libraries. This wording was carefully chosen. In 2000 the House attempted to substitute the wording "on-line access" for "distribution," but that language was rejected. Nevertheless, GPO has chosen to implement this law in a way that is shifting the relationship between GPO and depository libraries. GPO has chosen to assume responsibility for permanent public access to digital materials and has chosen not to offer digital deposit as an option to FDLP libraries. This has resulted in a paradigm shift in access, preservation, and service within the FDLP. Instead of relying on FDLP libraries and their different locations, funding, and technological infrastructures, GPO has chosen to implement policies a) that do not "distribute" digital objects to FDLP libraries, b) that make it difficult for FDLP libraries to build local digital collections, and c) that create a preservation system that depends on a single centralized collection with a single funding source. While these choices seemed appropriate 15 years ago, much has changed over the years. Many libraries are developing institutional repositories and other digital collections. In a survey in August of 2005, 85% of responding FDLP libraries expressed "high" or "very high" interest in being able to "pull" content from GPO and 65% were equally interested in GPO "pushing" digital content to FDLP libraries. In the current survey of Regionals, 52% expressed a willingness to receive digital files on deposit. Commercial and open source software for managing digital collections is now widely available. As we look at new models and roles for FDLP libraries, we need to consider true digital deposit as a viable and important option. We need to look beyond the now-old model of relying solely on GPO having primary responsibility for ensuring content and permanent public access.
FISA amendments vote on July 8: dump telecom retroactive immunity!!
As you know, we've been following the FISA and telecom immunity debate for some time. It's a particularly hot topic in this political season and the House just passed a compromise (compromised?) version of the FISA reform bill that would give telecom companies immunity from prosecution for their complicity and cooperation with the Bush Administration with its efforts to bolster intelligence gathering and surveillance without going through the FISA courts as the law states that they should. Senator Barack Obama has gotten in a lot of hot water recently from his own supporters when he decided to support the current version of the bill which includes telecom immunity -- after he had said he would not support telecom immunity and *would* support a filibuster if immunity was included. And today, Nancy Soderberg, former deputy national security advisor and an ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration, wrote an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times defending the FISA bill and telecom amnesty -- calling it a "good-enough spy law." The odd thing about Soderberg's piece is that she admits that the administration's end-run around FISA WAS NOT LAWFUL. But she still thinks the telecom companies should be protected from law suits because they "are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power." Huh? I just don't get this line of reasoning at all. Protecting these companies from litigation falls under one of the 14 points of fascism defined by Laurence Britt ("Corporate Power is Protected"). Is this what this country has become? Glenn Greenwald, one of the best and most thorough journalists working today, has nailed this one in his Salon.com piece, "The political establishment and telecom immunity -- why it matters":
Contrary to what the Nancy Soderbergs of the world want people to believe, these laws enacted by the American people in order to prevent spying abuses weren't only directed at the Government but specifically at the telecom industry as well. The whole point was to compel telecoms by force of law to refuse illegal Government "orders" to allow spying on their customers. That's why Qwest and others refused to "comply", but the telecoms that were hungry for extremely lucrative government contracts agreed to break the law. They did it because, motivated by profit, they chose to, not because they were compelled. Breaking the law on purpose and then profiting from the lawbreaking is classic criminal behavior. The conduct which those laws were designed to make illegal -- and which they unambiguously outlawed -- is exactly what the telecoms did here.I urge everyone to contact your Senators and tell them to reject telecom immunity in HR6304 FISA Amendments Act of 2008 and to support the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment (S.A.5064) to be voted on on Tuesday, July 8th that will strip out telecom immunity.
New Feature: Guide of the Week
Government Information librarians have acquired a lot of expertise. We've written a lot of guides and pathfinders to government information. The Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of ALA has been collecting these handouts for years so we docs librarians wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time we needed to create a handout or give someone a starting point for research. Recently, this GODORT "Handout Exchange" has been wikified at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Exchange. The Handout Exchange is divided into four areas:
- Guides & Handouts for Depository Management
- Subject-oriented Guides and Tutorials
- Source- and Geography-oriented Guides and Tutorials
- Product-oriented Guides and Tutorials
- Books like The Port Chicago Mutiny. Warner, NY, 1989.
- Journal articles like "Report on the Negro Soldier". Infantry Journal, #59, Dec., 1946 (UD1 .I43)
- Electronic resources like Desegregation of the Armed Services at http://www.trumanlibrary.org/9981.htm.
Honk if you love e-Government
One of the presentations I was able to attend at ALA was Libraries & Government: Issues, Services and Strategies. Notes and handouts to this session should eventually be available on ALA's 2008 Conference materials site at http://presentations.ala.org/index.php?title=Monday%2C_June_30#Monday_10:30am_Start_Time. The presenters were John Carlo Bertot, Mary Alice Baish, Suzanne Sears and Pat Ball. The presentation was a good mix of policy level and library level ideas on egovernment as it affects libraries. All libraries, not just Federal Depository Libraries. John Bertot introduced the session and suggested people look at his college's E-Government for Public Librarians site at http://www.libraryegov.org/. Suzanne Sears' part included tips on how to assist people looking to use egovernment services while respect most libraries time limits on Internet computers. The tip that most stood out to me was to have worksheets (like the ones for student aid FAFSA forms) available in the library. Encourage patrons to complete the worksheet prior to getting on the computer. This seems like it would decrease frustration for everyone. Mary Alice Baish provided an overview of the E-Government Services Act of 2002 and of efforts to renew this expiring Act. Among other things, this is the Act that brought us usa.gov. If the Act ultimately expires, a lot of things could go away, including usa.gov. That would be bad. There is a good chance that the Act will be renewed, since a recent OMB report said that while e-government initiatives cost agencies $121 million/year, the federal government is collecting $340 million in fees from egovernment sites. So it's a great deal for the government, if not for taxpayers. That's why Mary Alice's organization, the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is working with ALA and other stakeholders for improvements in the legislation. She asked librarians to help in the reauthorization movement and offered several suggestions including:
- Contact your Senator, especially if they serve on the Senate Homeland Security Committee and tell them you support S. 2321
- Assess government web sites and services and publish your findings.
Isn’t it great to be in the depository?
I saw the LITA's President's program at ALA on Sunday, June 29, 2008. The program was called "Isn't it great to be in the library? Wherever that is." The presenters were Joe Janes and the bloggers from OCLC's It's all good blog. While it was aimed at libraries in general, I think it has special relevance for document depositories of all levels of government. Joe Janes answered the question, "What does it mean to be in a library?" as follows, "Anywhere, anytime, any way, which people interact with information organized and/or provided that is supported by their own community via their library staff." Notice that this is a definition that takes in physical as well as virtual transactions. Janes suggested that a library in the 21st Century is both somewhere and everywhere. In terms of how to serve our patrons, Janes asserted, "We must be available, positioned, and ready to support our patrons, to assist and participate with them -- on their terms." This seems like good advice for depositories, whether federal, state, or international. We need to remain physical places to accommodate the 80 million plus Americans who are not online and may not be joining the net anytime soon. But we also need to be available for the hundreds of millions of Americans who ARE online. Our libraries, our resources and our expertise must be easily discoverable on the web for our local and remote users. How can we do this?
- Like James Jacobs has suggested, we can blog our answers to interesting reference questions. Especially if the answers are not findable on the public internet.
- If you are a Federal Depository Library coordinator, stop reading this post right now and e-mail John Shuler about how your library can participate in Government Information Online, the nationwide govdoc chat reference service that now has about two dozen partners, including my library. It's easy to participate and will only get easier as more libraries join. The service is already been used. I've personally helped people locate documents on the 1960s New Left, found HUD info specific to Native Americans and point veterans towards educational benefits.
- Join Rebecca Blakeley and the Washington State Library in establishing LibraryThing accounts.
- Join the Alaska State Library in establishing Open WorldCat lists that come with RSS feeds.
- Join the growing number of libraries offering RSS feeds for new fed docs.
- Survey your users and see where they like to find information online. Then try to be in at least one of those places.