FGI Bibliography on Issues Related to Government Information
Below is a bibliography -- alphabetical by title -- of resources relating to the many intertwining issues surrounding government information. You'll find here articles on copyright, Freedom of Information (FOIA), digital library management among others. We've also started using a Zotero group to collect articles on an ongoing basis. If you'd like to suggest other titles, please email us or post the citation(s) as a comment to this page.
- "Facts for Sale by Holley Knaus. Multinational Monitor, 5 (1991)
- Government Documents at the Crossroads [2001] by Karrie Peterson, Elizabeth Cowell, and Jim Jacobs, American Libraries, (Sept 2001) vol. 32 no. 8 p. 52-55.
- Government Information in the Digital Age: The Once and Future Federal Depository Library Program. by James A. Jacobs, James R. Jacobs, and Shinjoung Yeo [Article to appear in Journal of Academic Librarianship, May 2005, http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jacalib]
- Is the GPO Endangered? Miriam Drake, Information Today, August 5, 2002.
- "Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet be Reclaimed?" (PDF) by Susan Nevelow Mart, University of California, Hastings College of the Law. 98 Law Libr. J. 1 (2006) (It's also available via the Social Science Research Network)
- "Records Management Guidance for Agencies Implementing Electronic Signature Technologies." National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), October 18, 2000.
- State-by-State Report on Permanent Public Access to Electronic Government Information (2003) By Government Relations Committee and Washington Office American Association of Law Library
- Text of speech by Wayne Kelly, formar Superinendent of Documents, to the Federal Documents Task Force at ALAÃs Midwinter meeting in Washington DC (1997)
- Undocumented Evidence. The Politics (and Profits) of Information: The 9/11 Commission One Year Later. Max Holland, Washington Spectator,November 1, 2005
Official Documents by and about GPO and FDLP
Documents here are listed in chronological order, newest at the top.
- The Federal Government Information Environment of the 21st Century: Towards a Vision Statement and Plan of Action for Federal Depository Libraries. Discussion Paper Prepared by the Depository Library Council. September 2005 (PDF)
- GPO FDLP Statistics Compiled by ALA GODORT for discussion (June 22, 2005) (PDF). Compiled by John Stevenson, GODORT Chair.
- Update for ALA June 2005 (PDF). Statistics and information for GODORT Update at the 2005 ALA Annual Conference.
- ID 73: "Harvesting Federal Digital Publications for GPO's Information Dissemination (ID) Programs." This policy governs both manual and automated harvesting of publications from Federal agency web sites for inclusion in the Federal Depository Library and National Bibliography Programs. Continue reading
Conference Notes and Proceedings
There are many meetings and trainings in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) sponsored by the Government Printing Office (GPO). Most of these events are open to the public provided they register for the event. Because many librarians can't make these events, GPO makes efforts to inform the depository community by publishing proceedings in their publication Administrative Notes.
While commendable and necessary, the Administrative Notes proceedings suffer from two significant problems: they can take quite awhile to come out, and they are issued from the perspective of GPO alone. FGI wants to change that by providing faster and more diverse coverage of FDLP related events from YOU, the meeting attendees. See our invitation for details.
Below are the events for which we are providing coverage. If you attended the event, feel free to contribute your take on the event in the comments section.
If you plan to attend any future FDLP events and are interested in contributing notes or multimedia (audio, video) of public events, please drop us a line at the "talk to us" link below.
Continue readingquestion about paper documents
A comment by one of the law librarians at the GODORT meeting last monday evening got me thinking. Since law libraries obviously have a strong desire and valid legal reasons to have certain govt information continue to be made available in paper, I think GPO should survey AALL members to build an essential titles list. What do y'all think of that? Continue reading
OMB report to Congress on citizen access to govt info
The Office of Management and Budget has just released their "Section 213 of the E-Government Act Report to Congress: Organizations Complementing Federal Agency Information Dissemination Programs" (April 15, 2005). Lots of good information and statistics on the various ways that government information is disseminated to citizens (FDLP, Community Technology Centers, NARA research rooms etc). One thing that caught my eye was appendix 1 and the disparity between numbers of FDL's and public libraries and the populations being served. For instance, in CA, there are 92 FDL's and 179 public library systems, but each one serves on average almost 125,000 people. Contrast that with Maine, where 11 FDL's and 273 (yes 273!) public library systems serve 4,500 citizens. Read on! [Thanks to Herrick Heitman for posting to govdoc-l and beSpacific for originally calling it to our Continue reading