Since I've been mentioning my and other FGI volunteer talks at the Nevada Library Association Annual Conference, I thought I'd share my handout from my "Capturing e-docs on the last frontier talk." I find this outline especially worthwhile to mention here because it touches on the notion of digital deposit for a state depository program. Disclaimer - This is not a proposed solution for Federal Depository Library Program. I don't believe that what I'm doing or planning to do in Alaska would scale to the vastly larger volume of federal documents. But I hope it will be food for thought. And now, the handout... ----------------------------------------- Capturing E-Docs on the Last Frontier Presented by Daniel Cornwall, Alaska State Library to the Nevada Library Association, October 2005 History Alaska has been collecting “Internet Only” state publications since 1998. We went from manual harvesting in 1998 to automated harvesting in May 2002 with Teleport Pro to automated harvesting using the Illinois State Library commissioned Capturing Electronic Publications starting in August 2004. Continue reading →

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If you read my govdoc-l posting on this topic on October 12, 2005, there's not much new here other than a few more links. I'm offering these thoughts here because Free Government Information does have readership outside of the govdoc-l community. As part of the government information community takes this week to consider the future of government information, I wanted say a few words about the need to continue the option of tangible (i.e. print and microfiche) distribution for which agencies still produce a tangible product. Print is still used and needed. "Wait, Wait! Congress decided awhile back that everything was going to be digital only. Besides the gov't can't afford it!" I'm not talking today about what is politically convenient or easily affordable. I'm talking about needs. For example, it is neither easy nor cheap to provide medical care to the poorest Americans through Medicaid, but the need is there. Our nation may choose not to meet that need, but that doesn't make the need go away. Ok? Continue reading →

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We have updated our Fall 2005 Depository Library grassroots proceedings page with two sets of presentation slides linked to FGI by permission of the authors. Our thanks to presenters James Shaw and Greta Marlatt for sharing their content with Free Government Information prior to close of Council. If you presented at the Depository Library Council/Federal Depository Library Program Conference and would like to see your presentations available here at FGI, please drop me an e-mail at dnlcornwall AT alaska.net with either your presentation files or your presentation URL. Letting us host your files does NOT preclude you from also sharing them with the Government Printing Office. Have a comment about these presentations or about the meeting in general? Just use the "add comment" link at the bottom of this page or at the bottom of the conference page! Continue reading →

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You may have noticed that the layout of the FGI site is slightly different. I hope it's easier to read. I've also just created two new pages on FGI: one for collecting technologies of interest to digital govt information and one to collect interesting blogs, like the LOCKSS blog. the technologies page is linked off of the FGI library, and you'll see the blogroll page at the top of the site on the navigation bar. As always, please email us at admin AT freegovinfo dot info with ideas, suggestions, comments, content suggestions or just to say "Hey!" Continue reading →

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