According to an "Action Alert" (NARA NEEDS YOUR HELP, 30 Jun 2006) from the National Coalition For History, cuts in the budget of the National Archives will cause a lot of cutbacks including:

IF YOU EVER HAVE MADE USE OF A COMPILATION OF THE PUBLIC PAPERS OF A PRESIDENT -- BEGINNING NEXT YEAR THE VOLUMES WON'T BE PRODUCED ANY LONGER -- for years NARA has compiled the collected public papers of the president (speeches, transcripts of press events etc.) into hardback volumes. No more.

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Power Trips Database Goes Live: Info on Sponsors, Destinations, Costs of 5 1/2 years of Congressional Travel Made Public, Center for Public Integrity, JUNE 28, 2006.

More than 25,000 public documents detailing the privately funded travel taken by members of Congress and their aides from January 2000 to June 2005, was made public today by the Center for Public Integrity. -- The House of Representatives' forms are kept in a sub- basement of the Cannon House Office Building, where the public copies are often hard to read, torn and misfiled. It is against House rules to digitally scan the documents. -- The Senate travel disclosure documents are stored in a computer system in the Hart Senate Office Building, but the records are not available online.

But now... The database of these documents can be accessed at http://www.publicintegrity.org. Continue reading →

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**Note: This posting was sent in by Paul Schaffer** The June 19 posting on GPO's FDSys blog by Magan Fleetwood deserves a close reading. Keep in mind, as you examine it, the evolution of digital "public comment" filings responding to Federal Register notices. Agencies were initially prodded to set up their own arrangements (EPA had a fine one) for submitting and perusing comments. Eventually many agencies felt obliged to abandon their individual software and accept the URL and field structure of www.regulations.gov. Presumably OMB played a role in that though I'm murky on the details. I think GPO's hope is that all executive branch webmasters will eventually be obliged to obtain an FDsys unique identifier for any web file intended to have official standing. Among the metadata repositories will be one containing preservation characteristics for every document in the system. (I'm not using quote marks here but I'm staying close to Fleetwood's nomenclature.) By my reading, GPO hopes FDsys will let it regain its former semi-monopoly of tranforming originating agencies' material into legally valid publications. GPO won't be supplying the ink and paper, as in the old days, but it will be providing the equivalent of an ISBN identifier. I am particularly intrigued with this sentence: "Discussions are also under way defining system rights and privileges, including what data may or may not be overwritten, the conditions for overwriting data or creating new records, what takes precedence, etc." I think what she's talking about is allowing (eventually requiring, via OMB?) agency webmasters to create and submit appropriate FDsys metadata at the time a significant document is about to be uploaded. If I'm surmising GPO's agenda correctly, I think it has strong potential for improving document transparency in the long run. However so many of the cards are face-down at this point that it's hard to assess the pluses and minuses. Continue reading →

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This post, all earlier postings in this series, and my “not a lawyer” disclaimer can be found at http://freegovinfo.info/title44 or through our library under Nonlawyer's Journey through Title 44. When I first considered today's subject, 44 USC 1913:

TITLE 44--PUBLIC PRINTING AND DOCUMENTS CHAPTER 19--DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM Sec. 1913. Appropriations for supplying depository libraries; restriction Appropriations available for the Office of Superintendent of Documents may not be used to supply depository libraries documents, books, or other printed matter not requested by them, and their requests shall be subject to approval by the Superintendent of Documents. (Pub. L. 90-620, Oct. 22, 1968, 82 Stat. 1286.) Historical and Revision Notes Based on 44 U.S. Code, 1964 ed., Sec. 85a (June 27, 1956, ch. 453, Sec. 101, 70 Stat. 369).

my first reaction was “Huh?” and my second reaction was “What?” I was puzzled because a plain reading of this statute seemed to imply that Federal Depository Libraries should never get anything they do not select, except for regionals who by definition, must get everything that the Government Printing Office (GPO) produces. Since GPO does send some items to all libraries, like the 9/11 commission report, I decided this couldn't be the right interpretation of the law. But what to make of it? Fortunately I was able to turn to a REAL expert on Title 44, Bernadine Abbott Hoduski, who worked on GPO's oversight committee the Joint Committee on Printing for many years, and wrote the book on advocating for government information. This is what Ms. Hoduski had to say about sec. 1913, which makes sense to me:

The section on GPO not sending publications that libraries have not requested is based on the 1962 depository law. Before that all libraries had to receive everything, there was no selection process. Once it was determined that only regionals would receive everything, GPO had to design a distribution system based upon consent. JCP has a certain amount of discretion and can authorize GPO to send out publications that are high visibility and needed asap in order to be useful. GPO does that on a limited basis.

I did not realize that the current system of regional depositories only came into existence in 1962 and that prior to that EVERY library had to keep EVERYTHING. Even with my love of geographic duplication, I don't think we needed more than a 1000 libraries keeping all publications. Yet another reason to love regionals. Finally, after I consulted Bernadine Abbott Hoduski, I remembered that in the current item selection system used by GPO, all libraries must select item 0556-C which GPO uses to distribute certain high-profile items. So, after all my confusion, libraries never get items not in their selection profile. Whether the selection profile meets their needs is not a Title 44 question. I wasn't sure whether I should share my uncertainty and confusion with you regarding this section of depository law. But in the end I thought it would be useful for you, the FGI reader, to know that some things about government information are difficult to understand even to those of us who devote their non-work hours to it. It's also good to realize that all of us, no matter our knowledge level, have people to turn to. Make the most of that. Next week we conclude our consideration of the chapter of Title 44 dealing with the Depository Library Program with another short section of depository law that appears to be more straightforward "Sec. 1914. Implementation of depository library program by Public Printer." Continue reading →

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Hi all. I'm at the Govt Documents Roundtable (GODORT) update in New Orleans! here's a stream of consciousness blog report. I make no assurances that I've caught everything that was said: Superintendent of Documents Judy Russell is giving an update as we speak. As I walked into the room, she was talking about GPO's Z39.50 server and how it'd be operational later this summer. This excited me because I've recently been looking at Library Thing. LT is a nice little web service that uses Z39.50 to get bibliographic records for books and then displays them in a nice way. Check it out. I'm' planning on using LT to highlight our collections, have a "govt document of the week" or a "reference book of the week." One GODORT member mentioned how certain law publishers are printing off Web DoJ documents that used to be distributed via FDLP and SELLING them to law libraries. I think this is a growing problem (and not just for legal documents!) that needs to be dealt with. Another member mentioned that regional libraries are only receiving 1/2 of what they used to receive (I'll get numbers later but it was drastic!). He pointed out that libraries can no longer check with their regionals to be certain of document publications. If you feel that GPO should be forcing agencies to uphold Title 44 in order to keep up the bibliographic record for US documents, contact Judy Russell and tell her your concerns. Another GODORT member brought up the issue of broken purls. She mentioned that there are at least 2000 broken purls. She asked Ms. Russell if those documents have been captured? Ms Russell mentioned that there is phased documentation of purls to assure that documents are indeed harvested and on the GPO server. Each week, @ 1/4 of purls are checked and harvested. Those documents will be harvested and cataloged. Now George Barnum from GPO is talking about FDSys. He's also coming to the Govt Information Technology Committee (GITCO) meeting on sunday so I'll blog more about that later. Stay tuned... Continue reading →

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