ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program --------------------------------------------------------------------- July 15, 2000 GP 3.16/3-2:21/10 (Vol. 21, no. 10) --------------------------------------------------------------------- The [Electronic] Future Is Now Remarks by Gil Baldwin Director, Library Programs Service Before the Federal Documents Task Force Government Documents Round Table American Library Association Saturday, July 8, 2000 Chicago, IL Good morning, everyone. It really is a pleasure to be here-or maybe I should say to still be here. It's been quite a memorable three months since the Council meeting in Newport, Rhode Island, and it feels like we've been on a roller coaster. Our wild ride began in early May when the House Appropriations Committee reported out their proposal for our funding for FY 2001. Since then we've tried to visualize what parts of the Federal Depository Library Program or the Library Programs Service would be left intact with the funding cuts the House of Representatives originally proposed, or even by the Senate's not-quite level funding proposal. Everyone in this room has a lot invested in the program we know as the FDLP. It's gained some name recognition over the years, so even as we evolve into an Internet-age program we want to retain the acronym. But clearly it needs some updating to be in touch with what Congress seems to want. So perhaps we should rename it FDLP the Fundamentally Digital Library Program. Or maybe it's just the Funding Deprived Library Program. It's amazing how the threat of budgetary extinction can sharpen up your vision and your reflexes. As we re-examine the FDLP, it has become clear the perceived basis of the Program is changing in a very basic way. As we move toward completing the transition to a predominantly electronic program, some libraries have questioned the value or utility of the FDLP. Put bluntly, the question is "If we don't get free publications from GPO, what do we get?" The answer, at least in terms of the Government to libraries interaction, is that the basis of this Program is shifting to one of added-value services. LPS, in administering the FDLP, is adding value to the innumerable Government publications on the Internet. We do this through updated versions of several of our traditional functions: we identify, evaluate, select, organize, and catalog electronic Government information products, and assure that they remain permanently accessible to the public. But the most important considerations remain the same: providing free and unrestricted public access to the published works of the U.S. Government, both today and into the future. And the mission of the Program remains to make Government information accessible to the public through a network of depository libraries. Our trip is not to a different destination, but we're going to arrive a lot sooner than we thought. Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Now I thought we might play a game; a short version of "Who wants to be a millionaire?" I'm going to read you a quote, and you get four choices to identify the source. Here goes: [T]he public availability of government information is a basic right of every American citizen that must be maintained. The Superintendent of Documents performs an important role in making government information available to the public through the administration and operation of the sales, international exchange, electronic dissemination, and depository library programs. Here, without any lifelines, are your choices. Please indicate your choice by a show of hands: a. James Madison b. Francis Buckley c. Al Gore d. House Appropriations Committee Is that your final answer? Well, of course it's D, from the House Report 106-635, reporting out the bill to cut our funding by 62% below the current fiscal year. I wish I had known when I wrote this that "Survivor" was going to be such a hit. Somehow it seems a bit more relevant to our situation. Deja Vu All Over Again Each year GPO submits a "full-needs" funding request for enough money to operate the best possible programs. GPO proposes, but Congress disposes, and it looks as if there will at least about a $4 million gap between what we need and what we will get. And if the House version prevailed that gap could be nearly $9 million. Much of what has happened in the Congress this year reminds me of the proposals set forth in 1995, and ultimately led to GPO producing the 1996 study on the transition to a more electronic FDLP. In 1995 the House proposed an immediate shift to an all-electronic program and reported out a bill that would have cut our funding significantly. Ultimately, the Senate view to maintain level funding prevailed. But the point is that such radical proposals inevitably result in changing the Program. Even though five years ago we ultimately received the funding we needed, the wheels of fundamental change were set in motion. The E-Teams Change is inevitable, and we must either move forward with it, or be swept aside. It is clear that online electronic resources are going to be the core of the FDLP, and our role is to organize and manage them to facilitate current and future public access. Recently, as part of the transition, LPS managers held a very intense meeting to design the workflow for processing online-only resources. We are in the process of changing the old, stovepipe LPS operation that for years has been based on a physical product workflow. Instead we will move toward giving top priority to processing online resources. We will devote more staff, time, and resources to searching out, acquiring, classifying, cataloging, and archiving online resources. As a first step we are going to establish two or three cross-organization teams that perform the complete range of processing for online electronic resources. Each team will consist of a combination of catalogers, publications management specialists, and a program analyst. They will work full-time on e-resource processing, and handle the electronic products from identification, evaluation, and selection, through classification, PURL assignment, and archiving, and cataloging and locator services. They will reach out to the publishing agencies, and will manage the cessation of the related tangible products. This pilot will begin in August and run through December. This effort will identify practical issues that must be addressed in this changeover, such as training needs, hardware and software requirements, and performance measures, and will provide a forum for resolving policy and workflow issues. Predictions Although it feels like we've been transitioning forever, we have completed just four years of that five-to-seven year transition. When major systems change you often have a time of parallel processing, operating your old system while testing and debugging the new one. In this parallel processing mode we often distributed both print and online versions of the same products. But driving slowly in the right lane of the information highway is about over; it's the express lane from here on out. Last year we conducted a management review of the various action items outlined in the 1996 study's strategic plan. In that 1999 review we asked, what would the FDLP look like in 3 years? As we speculated on that question we made some educated guesses about the FDLP of the future. We predicted that: * More information will be provided solely electronically * More users will download more content * There will be more emphasis on cataloging and locator services * There will be more electronic acquisition and archiving * There will be more reliance on partnerships It's no fun to be right for the wrong reasons. I had predicted these changes taking place as a continuing evolution, but instead it's going to be a period of rapid and unsettling change. We have had four years of moving steadily toward the electronic future in tandem with the technology and dissemination changes made by the publishing agencies. Clearly, we no longer have that luxury, and we are making some tough choices for the FDLP. And these choices are primarily driven by economic considerations. Hard Truths What follows is eyewitness reporting on what's happening to the FDLP right now. We have been trying to plan and re-engineer our workflow in the face of three budget proposals: the House's initial draconian cut down to $11.6 million, the House managers' amendment at about $25.6 million, or the Senate proposal at about $30.3 million. What do these three proposals have in common? They are all inadequate to support the FDLP. Even under the most positive scenario, with the essentially level funding proposed by the Senate, we will be obliged to curtail some traditional products or services, particularly the distribution of multiple formats. The continued pattern of level funding is more and more of a problem for us and, as the Public Printer has mentioned before, level funding over the long haul strangles the program. Constrained funding prevents us from undertaking everything that you or we would like to do. You may recall that we had actually requested $34.5 million for FY 2001. Most of that increase was earmarked for improving the public's ability to identify, access, and to permanently access electronic resources. These are essential functions of the FDLP of the future. There are many difficult decisions that we must consider because we simply do not have dollars or the human resources to do everything that we know you would like to have done in this Program. These decisions are taking place in the context of a zero-sum game. That means that to do more in one area, we are obliged to do less of something else. For example, we are going to have to reduce the amount of time and money we spend on exception processing of tangible distribution products. We have already eliminated reprinting shortages when there is an electronic version available, and we are thinking about eliminating all of the processes related to shortages, including the administratively resource-intensive "rain checks." As I have reported to you before, LPS is phasing out the physical distribution of certain FDLP microfiche titles and migrating to the online version, when an official, reliable electronic version is available. Therefore LPS will discontinue distribution of the Congressional Bills on microfiche effective with the last of the 106th Congress Bills. Bills are permanently accessible on GPO Access beginning with the 103rd Congress. We are aware of the issue concerning the official status of the electronic bills, and we are working to resolve that, but the potential cost saving of eliminating the microfiche is just too large to ignore. We estimate that eliminating the bills on microfiche will save us over $200,000 per year. When we migrate from the dissemination of a physical format to relying upon the online version, we have tried to make the break as clean as possible. For serials, we tried to stop the physical format distribution at the end of a volume or a year. However, experience has shown that even with the best intentions these clean breaks are rarely possible. There are so many factors involved; most of which LPS does not control. This was one of the key lessons of the changeover of direct-mail products last year. For example, many products are printed on year-long term contracts, and once the depository rider amount is set it's nearly impossible to change or stop it until the contract comes up for renewal. And often the contracts, which cover various 12-month periods, do not line up with volumes or annual runs. Making the change to online-only dissemination for any given title takes considerable research, judgement, effort, and coordination. In order to effect any cost-savings, we must make these changes quickly and move on. So we will migrate to online-only and change the quantities when we can, even if it does not result in completing a serial's run of issues. Many of our operations are still based upon the distribution of print publications. For example, last year we distributed a little less that 12,000 paper titles; yet we have over 7,000 active item numbers to characterize physical items. The complexity of the item number system is out of proportion to the amount of tangible products left in the FDLP. We need to find a way to simplify the administration of the item number system, especially as it is applied to online resources. Another example is inquiry processing. I realize the value of keeping the lines of communications open, and we want to know about issues that affect your ability to manage your depository operations or to serve the public. But last year we answered over 4,000 askLPS inquiries, and about 80% of these involved the whereabouts or classification of tangible products. Answering these inquiries is a major workload element for our staff, the same staff who could otherwise be processing online resources for the electronic collection. If we are to make progress in identifying, classifying, cataloging, and ensuring permanent public access for e-titles, it's clear to me something has got to give. We are strongly considering a moratorium on responding to inquiries dealing with tangible products. By now, you're probably rocking back in your chairs thinking, "What's GPO doing to us?" But here are some things to remember about these changes: * Technological advances, resource limitations and congressional direction drive these changes and decisions. * But it is our job to manage the Program within the resource limits and direction we are given. That includes LPS making decisions about what formats are made available to the libraries, and what work to prioritize. * Even though we strive to provide equitable public access, more and more, these decisions are being driven by short-term economic considerations. * No doubt some of these changes make you uncomfortable. Many of the changes make us uncomfortable as well. In an ideal world we would have the resources to do things differently, so that every library could choose any and all of the formats offered. But that's not what's happening, and we have to manage this Program within the real-world boundaries that we are given. New Titles in the FDLP After four years of transitioning, online information is already the predominant dissemination medium in the FDLP, amounting to about 55% of new titles added this year. At the same time, the distribution of tangible products continues to decline compared to FY 1999. Paper makes up about 20% of the program titles, while microfiche has declined to 24%. Tangible electronics, CD-ROM and the as-yet few DVDs, are hanging in at about 1%. Our analysis indicates that about 40% of the titles that we distributed in a tangible format may also have an online version available. We are actively searching out these online versions to bring them into the FDLP Electronic Collection, and in most of these cases distribution of the print version will be discontinued. This is why we put a caveat in the instructions for the annual item selection update. We pointed out that the dissemination format for some Government publications will change from the physical distribution of tangible products (paper, microfiche, or CD-ROM) to online access only. In the coming months these changes will affect FDLP products currently available in multiple formats, particularly those available in both paper and online versions. In some cases the discontinuation of physical distribution will affect titles that you may wish to add during this update cycle, or even titles that you currently select. Changes in distribution format will be announced in WEBTech Notes as they occur . Announcing "New Electronic Titles" At the recent Council meeting in Rhode Island we presented the results of our extensive review of our cataloging and locator services and made several proposals for adjusting and enhancing these services. One of those proposals involved reinventing the Browse Electronic Titles service into a current awareness tool for new electronic products in the FDLP. Named New Electronic Titles (NET), this tool has replaced the Browse Electronic Titles (BET) locator service. Each week the NET contains a list of online U.S. Government information products. The entries are linked to information products on GPO Access, Federal agency websites, FDLP partnerships and the FDLP/EC archive. As part of this service, LPS will announce the availability of all new congressional hearings that are being placed on GPO servers and made available through GPO Access. NET entries appear in a true title arrangement, instead of BET's current arrangement by agency. After four weeks the oldest NET list will be moved to a NET archive. Full bibliographic information for the new titles will be available in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP). Through this arrangement, users are encouraged to search the CGP as the prime resource for identifying, locating, and accessing both tangible and online U.S. Government information products. FDLP Desktop I hope that most of you are regular users of the FDLP Administration Web pages on GPO Access. As you know there's a lot of content there, in fact about 700 pages' worth, and we've heard that sometimes it was hard find the article, product, or service that you wanted. An LPS team has redone all of these pages and reorganized the content. We demonstrated the prototype design for the new FDLP Desktop at the spring Council meeting, and we've done some additional fine-tuning based on your feedback. Now we are nearly ready for prime time and by the middle of July the site will be ready for you to use. You can find the URL in the LPS handout, and I hope you'll take the URL home and try it out. We've particularly tried to bring together the cataloging and locator services and to showcase the elements of the Electronic Collection. We hope that the FDLP Desktop will make your lives easier, and we welcome your feedback for continuous improvement. Lessons from the NPR One of our permanent public access initiatives is to preserve the electronic products of agencies that are being sunsetted out of existence. With all due respect to Cathy Hartman, several of these dead agency websites are being preserved through a partnership with the University of North Texas (UNT). GPO has been talking with the NPR, the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, which is scheduled to go out of business on December 31, 2000. Since we might end up hosting the NPR site on GPO Access or at the UNT "cyber cemetery", I decided to spend some time checking it out. According to the NPR site "This [Government reinvention] is all about doing more with less." I think all librarians can relate to that! Apparently we in the Government information business, having done so much with so little for so long, are now qualified to take it to the next level, and do everything with nothing. But we're not just passively feeling sorry for ourselves. We are actively looking around for ways to stretch our funding. And we've found some new "best practices" in other parts of Government that may be applicable. For example, this idea comes from the President's Management Council as a funding mechanism for the WebGov portal, a "one-stop shopping" website under development for nearly two years. As reported in the May 15 issue of Federal Computer Week, "the Council has said it will fund WebGov with several million dollars through a "pass-the-hat" method." Invitation While that's happening, I want to mention that in October, barring a Government shutdown, we will once again host the Federal Depository Conference, which will run in parallel with the fall meeting of the Depository Library Council. The Conference and Council will be in the Holiday Inn Rosslyn Westpark, in Arlington, Virginia, from October 22 through 25, and we look forward to seeing you there. As usual, Sheila McGarr has planned a great program, and you'll also get to enjoy Washington in October, our best weather month. By then we should know where our FY 2001 funding stands, and we can discuss proposals for future changes with you and the Depository Library Council in greater detail. Thank you all for coming today, and I want you all to know how much we at GPO appreciate your active support for the FDLP.