F e d e r a l D e p o s i t o r y L i b r a r y P r o g r a m ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program [ PDF version ] [ Back Issues ] --------------------------------------------------------------------- May 1, 2001 GP 3.16/3-2:22/07 (Vol. 22, no. 07) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Recent Developments Impacting the SuDocs Programs Remarks by Francis J. Buckley, Jr. Superintendent of Documents Depository Library Council Meeting San Antonio, TX April 2, 2001 Good morning and welcome to San Antonio. Customarily the Public Printer has opened the Council meeting and extended his appreciation for everyone's attendance and participation. Unfortunately, Mr. DiMario's travel schedule will not permit him to arrive until later this afternoon, so he will address you tomorrow. In the meantime, I have the pleasure of welcoming you all to San Antonio. "I like the story, doubtless antique, that I heard comes from near San Antonio. A child asks a stranger where he comes from, whereupon his father rebukes him gently, "Never do that, son. If a man's from Texas, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him by asking?" John Gunther, Inside U.S.A., 1947 I am pleased that you made it here to San Antonio, airline strikes and threatened strikes notwithstanding AND that you followed us on our journey from one hotel to another. We appreciate your patience and understanding. As usual we have an ambitious program with updates from GPO staff and presentations from NCLIS and the Census Bureau as well as many of your depository colleagues to address current government information policy issues and the operation of the FDLP. I'd like to discuss some of the general issues and recent developments impacting the SuDocs programs. Gil Baldwin, T.C. Evans and George Barnum will be discussing a number of specific operational issues that affect you in your libraries and I don't want to (well, I have been asked not to) steal their thunder. I had the pleasure of speaking at the annual Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) forum last week, which had the theme of "Preserving our Federal Heritage in the Digital Era." The keynote speaker was Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. Senator Stevens began by reading from a prepared speech about the topic. But then he said he would deviate from the prepared text (a staff person's worst nightmare!) and went on to say how important it was to preserve digital and printed words. He said that libraries have an enormous responsibility to preserve our history and that important information should be stored and preserved. He said that the issue of preserving digital information hit home when he made a note on his computer about a particular incident, but kept a paper copy. He was unable to find the hard copy when he needed it and has yet to track down the information on his computer. I was on a panel addressing the roles of central Federal agencies in creating the Government's digital archive with Lew Bellardo, Deputy Archivist from the National Archives and Records Administration, and Laura Campbell, Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives, who is responsible for the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. We all agreed on the importance, and indeed necessity, of preservation of digital information. I even quoted Patrick Henry who said, "I know of no way of judging the future but by the past" - in a speech in the Virginia Convention, March 1775. And George Santayana's comment: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (The Life of Reason, 1905-1906.) Both NARA and LC are involved in research and pilot projects to model and test concepts for archival programs. GPO on the other hand, has instituted a program to begin to systemically capture records for depository electronic publications, that are, at least potentially, at risk. George Barnum will shortly discuss our operations in more detail. And you may be aware of GPO's efforts in the area of permanent public access initiating meetings with other Federal agencies, national libraries, Congressional staff, public interest groups and other organizations outside of the government that are concerned with the preservation of, and access to, government information produced electronically. These permanent public access working group meetings have, we hope, engendered an environment of cooperation among those engaged in related activities. In fact, I saw a number of meeting participants at the FLICC Forum and was asked by them when the next meeting will be. Since John Stevenson is the Council liaison to this working group and has attended the last two meetings, I will say here that staff will be arranging another meeting for later this spring. We also anticipate being involved in the planning effort of the Library of Congress to develop the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program I mentioned earlier. LC is to develop the plan in collaboration with other national libraries, Federal agencies, and other public and private organizations involved in efforts to preserve, collect, and disseminate information in digital formats. The plan is to "set forth a strategy for the Library of Congress, in collaboration with other Federal and non-Federal entities, to identify a national network of libraries and other organizations with responsibilities for collecting digital materials that will provide access to and maintain those materials. In addition to developing this strategy, the plan shall set forth, in concert with the Copyright Office, the policies, protocols, and strategies for the long-term preservation of such materials, including the technological infrastructure required at the Library of Congress. In developing the plan, the Library should be mindful of the conclusions drawn in a recent National Academy of Sciences report concerning the Library's trend toward insularity and isolation from its clients and peers in the transition toward digital content." In the consolidated Appropriations Act for 2001, LC was authorized up to $100 million for this program; $75 million must be matched by non-Federal funds. LC is just beginning to plan how to set up the planning process. GAO Report Also as you may be aware, the General Accounting Office (GAO) was directed in our FY 2001 funding bill to conduct a comprehensive study on the impact of providing documents to the public solely in electronic format and to assess how to transfer the depository library program to the Library of Congress and measures necessary to ensure the success of such a transfer. We had invited a representative to report on their study, which was due to Congress last Friday, but she withdrew last week due to the press of business, and as of 5:30 pm last Friday we had not received a copy of their report. I will therefore only make a few comments about the process and our reactions to the draft of the report. GPO staff had many meetings with GAO -- indeed I know that a number of you in the audience today also met with the GAO staff. We had an opportunity to review a draft of the report and had only one week to respond with questions, comments or corrections. But respond we did -- and the letter from Mr. DiMario to GAO is included in your packets. We were very concerned about the scant attention to all the issues involved in an assessment of the impact of all-electronic dissemination, the draft did not address how public access to Federal government information would be improved by transferring the FDLP to LC, or really examine the congruence of missions, operations and the costs involved. There were unclear and confusing comments about GPO Access, but apparently they intended splitting up GPO Access and transferring responsibilities for the FDLP/EC only to LC, closing the integrated aspects of GPO Access production and maintenance. I encourage you to read Mr. DiMario's letter to GAO. In addition, we analyzed the draft and found 109 instances where there were factual errors, misinterpretations, etc., and we communicated them to the GAO staff. When we have the opportunity to review the final report we will see what they have accepted from our comments, as well as their response to the questions and issues raised by Mr. DiMario. From what we understand, the Library of Congress had minimal discussions with GAO as to their ability to undertake the responsibility of running the FDLP or the cost or operational concerns. GAO only met with LC staff twice for brief periods and based their report on studies done in 1993 and 1994. LC feels the whole idea should be deferred pending the strategic planning initiative for digital information they will be undertaking. They also questioned the absence of any quantifiable or substantive benefit to users that would be achieved by consolidation. We have asked for sufficient copies to make distribution to all depositories. NCLIS Report At this conference Judy Russell, Deputy Director of NCLIS, will be reporting on the issuance of the Commission report: A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination. Volume 1 of their study was issued more than a month ago, and sent to all depository libraries. Volume 2 with legislative and regulatory proposals was just released last Friday and is in the process of being printed for all depositories. As you are probably aware, the Commission is recommending restructuring all government information dissemination into Public Information Resource Administrations (PIRA) in each branch of government, with the Executive Branch PIRA responsible for all dissemination and sales programs (including NTIS). Mr. DiMario has officially responded that he does not think such a sweeping reorganization or the transfer of the SuDocs information dissemination programs into the Executive Branch is necessary or appropriate. Private Sector Issues I am sure that many of you who read GOVDOC-L recently saw some messages that raised concerns about statements put forth by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) calling for a "diversity of information sources in the digital age, " in their White Paper, "Challenges and Opportunities for 2001." In their proposals for government information policy they stated: "As we progress further into the digital age, advancements in information technology promise to dramatically increase the ease of public access to government information, both directly and through private sector disseminators. However, when considering new models for dissemination of public information, the government must continue to uphold the greatest commitment to the free flow of information through a diversity of information sources. The public is not served when the government, or some other provider, is the only source of public information." I have to suggest, however, that the public is not served when a fee-based private or non-profit sector products is the only source of public information. The SIIA policy on preventing government competition with the private sector went on to say that, "Government initiatives to disseminate public information electronically should not result in expanding the role of government in providing commercial information services. Rather, government efforts to disseminate information should take full advantage of public-private partnerships or independent private services and products to efficiently and effectively provide the desired added value for the public." As Dan Barkley correctly pointed out on GOVDOC-L: "This issue strikes me as very reminiscent of the privatization issues librarians faced in the late 1980's." We understand a number of private sector information aggregators are attempting to call into question government information indexing and abstracting (and even full-text) products, which are mission-related, subject-oriented products incorporating government publications, and contributed private-sector information. Suggestions have been made that they should not produce such products or if they do, the products should be kept within the agency and not provided to the public. In a related development, in October of last year, a report commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry Association was released. Titled, "The Role of Government in a Digital Age," the authors laid out principals for government action and labeled them with a green, yellow or red light. A green light was given to "providing public data and information is a government role." Good so far, but then came the yellow light: "the government should exercise caution in adding specialized value to public data and information." And the topper -- the red light: "the government should exercise substantial [emphasis added] caution in entering markets in which private-sector firms are active." So, not only is the future of PubMed Central (produced by the National Institutes of Health) at risk, as noted in Michele McNelly's recent posting to GOVDOC-L, but so is the fate of PubScience, produced by one of our stalwart partners, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) at the Department of Energy, as well as ERIC, produced by the National Library of Education. I find this push from elements of the private sector ironic in light of comments last week by Steven Emmert, Director of Government and Industry Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, at the same FLICC Forum I mentioned earlier. He was frank and honest about the private sector's interest in and ability to preserve proprietary value-added databases of Federal information. Essentially he said there's little room for altruism in the private sector. They must make money to stay in business and reward stockholders. If a product is not generating funds to support itself or to provide a sufficient return on investment it will be cut--even a sympathetic CEO cannot carry products that do not contribute to the bottom line. Thus the role of the private sector in the preservation of government and non-government digital information would only last as long as there was a market for the information and someone was paying for it. This is one of the issues concerning LC and research libraries for government and non-government information. Other issues in SuDocs There has been much talk recently about the issue of Internet filtering in libraries engendered by restrictions on the use of Federal LSTA, ESEA, or e-rate funds that require Internet safety policies and the use of technology that blocks or filters certain materials. Of course many of the libraries in the depository system are affected by the Federal mandate. When this question comes up, we refer to our filtering policy, which was enunciated in the FDLP Internet Use Policy Guidelines, published in the January 15, 1999 Administrative Notes (v. 20, # 2). The section on filtering states: "Since the use of filtering software may restrict access to official FDLP information, for example in the health or biological sciences fields, depository libraries must allow users the option to use workstations without filtering software or to turn off the filter while searching FDLP information." Use or access may be mediated or unmediated. The availability of one or more of these options in library policies would seem to comport with the requirements of the legislation and our public access concerns. Conclusion These are interesting times for the FDLP, GPO and for you in the depository community. We appreciate your continued support for our efforts. Enjoy San Antonio!