Peter Suber is a tireless advocate of open access. His Open Access News blog is the definitive source of news on the open access movement to scholarly communication. On April 22, Suber added this comment to the story about the Santorum bill that would drastically limit distribution of weather data by the government:

The argument used by Santorum --that government shouldn't compete with private-sector companies-- has been used against OA to research literature as well. If the private-sector companies are not repackaging and reselling publicly-funded resources, then this argument might be taken seriously. But when they charge customers for something already paid by the customers' taxes, then the argument collapses. For example, if the private weather companies collected the same data at their own expense, then it might be wasteful duplication for the government to do so as well. But if the companies want to use publicly-funded data, then their request to be the sole distributors is simply the request to rip off the public. Governments have an obligation to prevent that from happening, not an obligation to step back and let it happen.
Santorum wants to end OA to publicly-funded weather data

Suber has posted more information about the bill and its supporters here.

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There is new information on the Remix page. Recently added: U.S. Congressional Committee Meetings Index from NCSU and INSIDE Idaho; Idaho's official geospatial data clearinghouse. If you have suggestions for this page, please send them to us or post a comment on the Remix page. It is part of our growing library of information.

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Greg over at Open Stacks now has a podcast feed. And guess what? He has some nice things to say about FGI and especially our article, "Government Information in the Digital Age: The Once and Future Federal Depository Library Program" in podcast 10 -- although he calls the 3 of us here at UC San Diego "professors" when in truth, we're "librarians" ;-) . Thanks for the props Greg! Continue reading →

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Thanks to Arlene Weible, we now have a summary of the large academic libraries breakout of the "tangibles" discussion at the Spring 2005 Depository Library Council meeting. We welcome other summaries, whether or not they agree with Arlene's. Go ahead and send those to dnlcornwall@alaska.net. We'll post yours as well. The more people contribute, the better picture we'll have. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Thanks also belong to Hui Hua Chua of Michigan State University for letting us know that Akamai/Disaster Recovery was not discussed at Tuesday's GPO Access Open Forum.

If you attended the Spring 2005 DLC, we are still looking for the very first summary of the following sessions:

• Depository 101 (Sunday April 17)
• Government Information Quarterly (Sunday April 17)
• Regionals' Meeting (Monday April 18) NOTE: If this meeting was attended by regionals only and meant to be a closed meeting, please drop us a line so we don't post proceedings from a private meeting. We're only interested in the public record. Continue reading →

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To provide your own take on the Large Academic Libraries breakout session on "future tangible distribution", please either comment below, or send your notes and/or multimedia to dnlcornwall@alaska.net. Please let FGI know whether we can use your name and affiliation.

The following notes were contributed by Arlene Weible of the University of North Texas library.

All interpretations of documents and comments made are those of the notetaker and do not reflect on their home institution. All mistakes are those of the notetaker and/or FGI. Please feel free to post corrections.

1. Users of depository libraries have differing needs for tangible documents.
   • What is unique about your library’s users and how to those characteristics create a requirement for the use of tangible documents? What information needs do tangible documents meet for your users that are not met through electronic information.
   • Many land grant universities have to serve the public, so economically disadvantaged users have trouble using electronic only publications due to inadequate Internet access and prohibitive printing costs. Continue reading →

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