An example of the problems involved with the government relying on the private sector to provide access to government information is provided by the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation ("FPDS-NG"). This story from last February provides a good background on the issues.

Access Questioned In New Contract Database, by Rebecca Carr, Cox News Service, (02/04/05).

It describes how, for 25 years, the public could purchase CDs of federal contracting data for as little as $60 per quarter but that, in 2003, the General Services Administration paid a contractor $24 million to build a web based system. Problems with the sytem include:

• key search fields are not available
• users are required to register enabling the government to keep track of each user's research
• businesses and interest groups must pay a one-time fee of up to $2500
• A FOIA request for the data was refused

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The Los Angeles Times has an editorial about the subway map redistribution issue.

• Derailing iPod maps, EDITORIAL, Los Angeles Times October 3, 2005.

The editorial notes that there is no consistent solution to redistributing subway maps. The manager of www.ipodsubwaymaps.com has recreated some maps himself, the Metro system in Washington, D.C. has granted him permission to use theirs, and the New York MTA is demanding a fee of $500. The editorial notes that cities don't sell their subway maps, and neither is the website. In fact, the website is "saving the New York MTA and BART the expense of adapting their maps for the growing number of riders who keep iPods stuffed in their pockets or purses." And more:

The transit agencies may want to license their logos for T-shirts and baseball caps, but their maps should belong to the public.

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Berandine has an excellent comment this week on the govdoc-l mailing list and I encourage you to read it in case you missed it.

• Re: Cataloging Service Bulletin by Bernadine Abbott Hoduski, Discussion of Government Document Issues, Mon, 3 Oct 2005

Her comments relate specifically to the Library of Congress's "divided loyalties between making money and promoting the library community and complete cataloging" but notes that this is a general problem of title 44. The issue at hand "illustrates the slippery slope of title 44 when it allows LC and others an exception to chapter 19 in order to be self sustaining." Continue reading →

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There's a growing body of literature that supports the idea of distributed digital repositories as the best way to assure long-term preservation of digital information. Take for example this really important article that was just published: "Requirements for Digital Preservation Systems: A Bottom-Up Approach" by David S. H. Rosenthal, Thomas S. Robertson, Tom Lipkis, Vicky Reich, and Seth Morabito at the LOCKSS Project, Stanford University Libraries. The authors describe the various threats that can happen to digital preservation repositories (failure of storage media, hardware, software, operator error, natural disaster, external attack, economic failure, organizational failure, etc). They go on to suggest strategies to address these issues, such as replication, transparency, migration, diversity, audit, sloth (yes, sloth), and others. Their recommendations describe a P2P system like LOCKSS, with many systems geographically dispersed, many points of ingest, many organizations under different budgets. If this had been written 20 years ago, they'd be describing the FDLP! Continue reading →

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