ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 25, 1999 GP 3.16/3-2:20/14 (Vol. 20, no. 14) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Library Programs Service Update Remarks by Gil Baldwin Director, Library Programs Service Before the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer Kansas City, MO Monday, October 18, 1999 Good morning, everyone. This is an impressive turnout today. I believe this is the largest crowd ever for a field Depository Library Council meeting, and we appreciate the time you've committed to making the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), the public's pre-eminent channel for information from and about our Government. This is the year that online electronic U.S. Government information became the number one dissemination and public access medium in the FDLP. This continues the trends of the past five years, and the end isn't in sight yet. Since the beginning of the electronic transition, the Library Programs Service (LPS) has concentrated on increasing the electronic content in the program and on building the support mechanisms to enable depository libraries and the public to locate the desired electronic resources and to ensure that those resources remain permanently accessible. For the most part these developments have been funded from program savings resulting from agencies reducing the numbers of titles published in print media. Due to continuing funding constraints, future efforts will have to focus more on reducing duplication of formats and media and on containing costs. FDLP Collections The distribution of tangible products through the FDLP remained virtually unchanged since FY 1998. The FDLP Electronic Collection is growing rapidly; increasing to some 44% of the titles disseminated this year. While the trend toward online publishing is accelerating, we are seeing CD-ROM publishing dropping off. For the year the mix of products entering the FDLP is: Online titles on GPO Access: 25% Online titles on other agency sites: 19% Paper, including direct mail & USGS maps: 20% Microfiche: 35% CD-ROM: less than 1% Migrating Products from Microfiche to Electronic During the last Council meeting I talked about phasing out the physical distribution of certain FDLP microfiche titles and migrating to the online version, when an official, reliable electronic version is available from the agency. I am revisiting this issue today because I believe it is critical to move on this migration process. This is a rational next step in carrying out the Congressionally-directed transition to a more electronic FDLP. And increased reliance upon online dissemination also makes government information directly accessible to a growing segment of our population. The policies, criteria, and procedures for migrating tangible products to solely online electronic dissemination are applied only in those cases in which LPS has a choice of dissemination media. In many cases the publishing agency has already made the decision to eliminate the tangible medium. Then LPS incorporates the online product into the FDLP Electronic Collection by describing it bibliographically and linking to it. It is important to make a distinction between migration and conversion. Migration refers to choosing between available dissemination media when the agency publishes both online and tangible versions. Conversion refers to changing the agency's published medium to another, as LPS does when we convert paper documents to microfiche. At present LPS has no program to convert print products to electronic media, for example through scanning and digitization. During routine processing, LPS' Depository Administration Branch, Cataloging Branch, and Electronic Collection Team often identify new products that agencies issue in both print and online versions. When LPS determines that the content of the online version is substantially equivalent or superior to the print version, LPS selects the online version for the FDLP. These decisions are made in accordance with criteria described in "Migration of Physical Format Products to Online Distribution," published in Administrative Notes in 1999 and in Appendix II of Managing the FDLP Electronic Collection. These titles are described as "EL" in the List of Classes. Some examples include The Food Safety Educator, FEWS (Famine Early Warning System) Bulletin, and the Economic Working Papers. Given the continued pattern of essentially flat funding for the FDLP, and the delays inherent in the processing, conversion, and delivery of microfiche, LPS intends to begin actively migrating products currently distributed in microfiche and also available online by eliminating distribution of the microfiche versions. Whenever possible, the cessation of a microfiche serial title will take place at the end of a volume or annual run. LPS will announce these changes in distribution media in the Administrative Notes Technical Supplement. Some candidate microfiche titles for this migration include titles with low selection rates, such as the New Publications of the Rocky Mountain Research Station, the Small Business Innovation Research Program annual report, and the annual Report on the Survey of U.S. Shipbuilding and Repair Facilities. Other titles are under consideration for migration because they are currently offered in multiple formats with the online version available on GPO Access. Examples of this category include the daily Federal Register on microfiche, the daily Congressional Record on microfiche, and the Congressional Bills on microfiche. Self Studies We have heard your comments and concerns about the length of time between the submission of a depository library self-study and when you got a reply from LPS. Due to the staffing level on the inspection team we could not give a thorough review to each self-study and respond to you in a timely manner. Although we have reviewed over 250 self studies this year, we still have a backlog of 219 self-studies awaiting completion of their evaluations. In order to reduce the time lag between submission and reply, we are changing the self-study process. Next year we are going request self-studies in three stages, and the first batch of requests will be due to us in May. We believe that this plan will give us time to catch up with the self-studies we already have, since with a number of these the evaluation is already partially completed. Then by spreading the self-study process out through the year we should be able to avoid any more lumps in the snake. If you look in the Depository Services Staff handout, you'll see the details of which states will be asked for self-studies and their due dates. LPS Staff Developments 1999 has seen a several staff changes in LPS. Here are some of the personnel highlights: * Sheila McGarr was appointed Chief of the Library Division in June. Her new duties include oversight of the Depository Administration Branch, the Cataloging Branch, and the Depository Services Staff. Sheila began her career at GPO in 1981. She will continue to supervise the depository library inspectors and organize the annual Federal Depository Conference and the Interagency Depository Seminar. * Laurie Beyer Hall was appointed Supervisory Program Analyst in March. Her duties in this new position include supporting all of LPS' developing and legacy automated systems, coordinating the requirements analysis for a future integrated library system (ILS), and managing LPS' budget preparation. She is responsible for directing the activities of the LPS Program Analysts, the Office Automation Specialist, the Electronic Transition Specialists and network operations. Laurie has been with GPO in a variety of positions within LPS since 1985. * George Barnum, who came to GPO in 1997 as an Electronic Transition Specialist, is now on board as LPS' first Electronic Collection Manager (ECM). In this new librarian position, he will establish, review, maintain and modify comprehensive plans to assure permanent public access to products in the FDLP Electronic Collection. He will work closely with the Electronic Collection Team on permanent public access for electronic government information, creating partnerships between depository libraries, Federal agencies, information-related organizations, and GPO, as well as on managing the FDLP Electronic Collection (FDLP/EC). * Judy Andrews left LPS in August 1999 for Portland (OR) State University where she assumed the position of regional documents librarian. She came to GPO from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA on a one-year appointment as an Electronic Transition Specialist. Her primary focus was on the FDLP/EC. She worked to develop the Electronic Collection Team that concentrated on ways to implement procedures to streamline electronic products into the FDLP. She managed the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) pilot project and worked closely with the participating libraries to launch the active phase of the project in January 1999 and evaluate its potential for the FDLP. * Steve Kerchoff joined the LPS staff as an "Electronic Transition Specialist" for a one-year term, beginning just one week ago. Steve is a librarian from the Library of Congress' Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC), and one of his first areas of concentration will be on developing additional partnership opportunities with agencies and depository libraries. * John Tate, who many of you know from our Federal Depository Conferences, was appointed Chief of the Acquisitions and Classification Section of the Depository Administration Branch (DAB) in August. He supervises acquisitions and Superintendent of Documents classification of products in all media for the FDLP. He began his career at GPO in 1974 as a classifier, and from 1985-1999 worked in the Depository Services Staff as the designation program specialist. Electronic Collection Team In FY 1999, LPS staff concentrated on implementing the plans for the FDLP/EC, increasing outreach to Federal agencies and libraries, and developing the infrastructure and relationships that will provide permanent public access to FDLP electronic information. In order to put some structure around these efforts, we established a cross-organizational work group from LPS' Depository Administration and Cataloging Branches, the Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services (EIDS) and others. The group has been working to define the possibilities, identify the issues and develop strategies for dealing with the issues. The work group was successful in this endeavor and has been re-configured into an ongoing "Electronic Collection Team," which is examining and evaluating electronic products for inclusion in the Electronic Collection. While looking at these products, the team develops the processing procedures necessary to fully incorporate electronic resources into the FDLP. The Team also maintains the Pathway Locator service tools and the PURLs applications that enable users to access electronic titles. Electronic Collection Prototype Archive One critical step in the transition to a more electronic FDLP is to establish a digital archive for the FDLP Electronic Collection (FDLP/EC). Dissemination of online electronic information is the fastest-growing component of the FDLP, and a significant portion of the FDLP/EC consists of titles at agency sites to which we point. Most of these more than 59,000 titles reside on servers at agencies or institutions with which we have formal agreements that provide for permanent public access (PPA), principally at the Department of Energy or at the University of Illinois-Chicago Department of State Collection. But there are about 2,000 other titles in the FDLP/EC that are not under our control, and the potential number is far greater. In our 1998 report, Managing the FDLP Electronic Collection, we stated that the FDLP/EC includes "remotely accessible electronic government information products that GPO identifies, describes, and links to but which remain under the control of the originating agencies." It is GPO's goal to assure PPA to the electronic products to which we point and link since, by definition, pointing and linking makes those products part of the FDLP/EC and means that we have a permanent public access responsibility for them. Meeting our PPA commitment for the FDLP/EC requires bringing agency-disseminated Internet resources under GPO control by incorporating them into a digital archive. The FDLP/EC digital archive is a cooperative venture shared by LPS, EIDS, and GPO's Production Department. Since early this year a Production staff member has worked with LPS to provide space for our initial archive testing activity. The next step is the development of an integrated service to bring under GPO control selected individual electronic products that originated on other agency sites, and for which we do not have interagency or partnership agreements for PPA. Although we can capture agency files from the Internet at a particular point in time, without an agreement or a notification process in place we will face difficulties assuring that the publishing agency does not subsequently modify or supersede the product. Therefore a critical element in the archiving process is to establish communication with the publishing agency in order to develop a partnership or other formal relationship, so that the agency will notify us concerning changes in its products. A new server and a backup initially configured with two years' projected storage capacity were procured specifically for the digital archiving project. The first of the new servers was delivered in July and has been configured for use as the prototype digital archive. Functionally, the prototype FDLP/EC archive will be populated with electronic source data files by FTP transfers, downloads, file captures, or other means. The initial set of test files consists of source data files captured by LPS staff earlier in FY 1999 in conjunction with processing additions to the Browse Electronic Titles service. The files will be accessible through a persistent naming application and made freely accessible to public users through a Web interface. Users will be able to search cataloging or Pathway locator services record descriptions linked directly to the content described. We plan to open the FDLP/EC archive for public use later in 1999. For more detail and discussion on this project and other Electronic Collection matters, I invite you to attend George Barnum's presentation on Tuesday at 3:45 in the Crystal Room. Physical Distribution Issues Let's turn now to the distribution of paper products. We've been experiencing a real-life demonstration of the Pareto Principle, the "law" that suggests of 80% of your effort will go into 20% of your outputs. As noted earlier, paper products now make up about 20% of what's distributed through the FDLP, but in the last few months the different problems with physical shipments have been absorbing 80% of our attention. For Vicki Barber, it's probably closer to 100%. You probably know most of this litany all too well, but let me review some of the recent physical distribution issues. Beginning as soon as possible, some "direct mail" titles will instead be placed in regular depository shipments. As printing contracts are amended, LPS will include the titles on the Shipping List and distribute them in the regular shipment boxes. Claims for these tangible products will be handled in the same way as other materials on shipping lists. A few titles and paid subscriptions will not be affected by this action. Previously, in the interest of timeliness, these titles were sent to depository libraries directly from contractors or from GPO's printing plant to depositories via first or second class mail. However, more timely access is now provided for most of these titles from GPO Access, the Federal Bulletin Board, or Federal agency Internet sites. The change in distribution for the 13 affected titles will produce substantial savings in postage costs, which have risen to an estimated $1 million annually for the direct mail titles, while the appropriation that funds the FDLP has remained essentially static. Since mid-August you have been experiencing a series of disruptions in the established pattern of receiving shipping boxes from LPS. This started when our distribution contractor, Potomac Business Center (PBC), decided to subcontract deliveries to Roadway Package Service instead of United Parcel Service. For some reason RPS decided not to perform, held our work for about two weeks, and then returned all of the shipments to Potomac Business Center. PBC then shifted back to subcontracting with UPS. Hot on the heels of resolving that set of delays, we began to receive inquiries from depository libraries about the frequency of depository shipments. Some of these concern delays in the receipt of shipments, while others indicated that shipments were being delivered in batches rather than on a regular basis. LPS and GPO's contracting office have been pursuing these issues with PBC. We have determined that PBC continues to pick up depository library shipments from LPS daily. However, beginning on Monday, August 23, there was a change in the frequency of sending depository shipments. At that time, PBC's delivery contractor, United Parcel Service (UPS) began to pick up all processed depository shipments from PBC once every three days. This practice has the effect of creating batches of shipments that arrive in your library on an irregular basis. GPO's contracting office advised LPS that the "every three days" practice fulfills PBC's current contractual obligations with GPO. Most recently we have investigated the many messages that, taken together, implied that additional batching was taking place behind the scenes. We are fairly certain that UPS was aggregating multiple "every third day" pickups into a single delivery to you, meaning that a library might get several shipments in a batch every week or 10 days. LPS regrets the difficulties that these irregular depository deliveries have caused the depository libraries, and we are investigating the situation and working to develop a solution. GPO personnel are negotiating with PBC so that shipments can be delivered quicker and on a more regular basis. We intend to solicit for a new contract, with requirements designed specifically for depository library distribution. We are putting together a more stringent statement of work that specifically remedies these and other distribution issues. However, a new contract will not be in place until well into 2000. Even though we are monitoring the situation and are doing our best to improve contractual delivery services, we will be living with this current contract for some time. Until this situation is resolved libraries may still receive shipments in batches. We appreciate your patience cooperation in identifying shipment delivery performance problems. As always, please report delayed, missing, or irregular paper shipments to Vicki Barber, Chief of our Depository Distribution Division. So that's a very selective overview of what the Library Programs Service has been doing. For more details, relevant Web addresses, and more, I call your attention to the various handouts and updates available at the literature table. Thank you all for coming today, and we look forward to a great week.