Visioning at the FDLP Conference
October 2005
The first visioning session began with an overview of the electronic formatting of government information
1986 ARL created a taskforce on electronic formats in which government depositories would provide 3 levels of service:
A basic level where patrons would be provided referral to government documents.
An intermediate level where there would be some added value to services such as a physical collection, indepth reference, online access.
A full service level where all software packages would be included, a heavy web presence, large physical collection, expert reference and instructional services, and outreach.
In 1991 there was a new public printer and a reorganization of DLC. A strategic plan was developed on the future of electronic information and the FDLP. That report came out in 1992.
In 1993 Government Document Librarians met to discuss the problems and issues affecting GPO and the Superintendent of Documents. That report was the Chicago Manifesto.
Also in 1993 in conjunction with the manifesto the DuPont Circle Group was formed to come up with a plan for the future of government document depositories.
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The first issue brought up was that of fugitive documents. In the new environment they are considered a threat to GPO and the FDLP. We now capture less than one half of all government documents. It was always a problem, but now it has become more serious.
There are some scattered attempts to capture fugitive documents. One example is fema.deepwebtech.com, which captures FEMA fugitive documents. This is one person’s effort and users are asked to send fugitive URLs to the author. However, this type of activity needs to be expanded to where GPO would be the aggregator and users would be able to search these documents with a single query.
How do the radical shifts to an electronic environment affect our future and how do we continue to supply information to our patrons?
User expectations
Collection management and stewardship
What are our new roles
How do we react to and/or influence federal information policy
What is the role of our institution
How do we add value to our positions?
We utilize our expertise in our specialty (we search only 1 time, we know our collections, we can
do deep searching)
Adding bibliographic data to our catalogs (it has been proven that adding data increases usage, ILL
requests)
We must increase visibility
We use our expertise to create web pages, guides, and indexes
We must make public information more public
Although the web has become the preferred medium for research, people seek and if they don’t find, they think it’s not there. There is a big difference between using and finding.
How will federal depository libraries continue to be necessary in the preferred Internet environment?
Expertise*
Preservation
Authentication
Education
Discreet Collections
Location – Reference Use
Depositing electronic resources and making them available
Training
Ability to do deep research
Neutrality (we are a safe nonjudgemental place to come to seek information.)
How might the depositing of digital electronic resources work?
LOCKSS (for "Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe") is open source software that provides librarians
with an easy and inexpensive way to collect, store, preserve, and provide access to
their own, local copy of authorized content they purchase.
Pulling and/or Pushing technology
Managing Collections and Delivering Content
What we want, not how we do it is important
1. Light Archives - Collecting some information based on use, clientele, profile
There would be a few light archives (20?) geographically distributed throughout the country
from which other libraries could borrow. This would allow for some redundancy of titles.
What would the ILL costs be?
Would there be free access?
How would we decide what would be required of an electronic archive?
It would be a challenge to keep up with new technologies.
2. Level of Local Collecting?
This is an essential part of a new program.
There is a need for both physical and electronic collections
We need in depth cataloging to make collections accessible
Develop collection development policies.
Who is responsible for developing metadata
Who is responsible for pushing data
Harvesting electronic documents is vital, but who will be responsible for the cost?
Visioning for Large Academic Libraries
What kind of participation in the new program should be expected of large academic libraries
We need flexibility
We need cooperation with private and public libraries/depositories
We must be open to all options
If you want to drop out of the depository program, should you pay for your legacy collection?
(Harvard suggested this, because they are a private institution with security issues they don’t want
to be required to allow the general public into their buildings)
Should your collection go to a regional or GPO dark archive?
Libraries might hold small, but complete portions of the whole collection instead of a whole light
archive.
Perhaps only 3 categories (basic, intermediate, full) categories aren’t enough - we need
flexibility.
Would your library be open to receiving digital content? (Yes). If so how would it be done?
Would we collect only certain agencies, collect only older materials, be selective of what
documents we would receive?
How do we handle retention of digital documents? Would we need larger servers and more
capacity to handle large digital
documents? We need answers and help to convince management to make these commitments.
The Directors concern is always cost. They will spend the money where there is the most payoff.
We owe it to our constituency to have redundancy, but that is often a hard sell for directors.
Should we create document depository consortia? Especially state documents consortia that
would take just state documents.
How can we best determine and serve the needs of our university and local communities.
Use cold fusion software to track usage of databases.
Integrate government information with all other things:
Classes, web pages, catalog, physical collections.
Library print collections:
Statistics have shown a very dramatic increase in how documents are used after they appear in
the catalog. ILL also increases.
University of Washington is involved in a project of recon cataloging of documents one truck
at a time. Slow but steady progress.
Use OCLC Collection Analysis Package (Do we have this?).
II. Vision Reports from Breakouts
A. Deploying Expertise
Many already have a vision at work, and people are already deploying expertise by doing things
at their institutions.
Outreach is going on even though going outside the university community can be a problem
when directors must be educated.
1. Training of documents librarians and users
Agencies
Online tutorials
GPO
Expert librarians
Creating a knowledge base for all
2. How to get government information out to people who don’t use libraries
3. Integrate documents into regular reference and literacy courses
4. Chat reference
5. Discussion of Google Uncle Sam – make it more robust, make it more visible, how to use it, merge it into Google
6. What’s up with FirstGov?
There is a plan to upgrade – update information, improve navigation, update look and
search capabilities
B. Enhancing (Adding) Value
1. We are committed to the public good.
2. It is the responsibility of federal depository libraries to “add value” to federal government information.
How?
Expertise
Sharing knowledge, collaboration, “creative stealing”
We are filters between the public and the information
Local expertise
Capturing fugitive documents
Combine several levels of information knowledge: local, state, federal
How can smaller libraries add value?
Contribute to shared projects
Local knowledge
Web presence
Referral to experts
Advocacy
Mentor others
3. Should FDLP partner with memory organizations? GPO or libraries directly. Yes.
Experiment with, exploit, learn from
Partner, but depend on ourselves for permanent access
Visit sites to raise profile
Push cataloging records
Submit guides
Create registries
Develop digitization projects, make sure we don’t have to pay for digital content we
already have
4. What are the important vision concepts
Training, training, training
Digitized Monthly Catalog
Make the deep web accessible – today
24/7 partnerships
Market ourselves
Cooperate, collaborate – don’t reinvent the wheel
Digitize legacy collections
Government information is much too important to leave in the hands of the government
III. Visioning Report of Breakout Sessions (other than Large Academic)
Public Libraries:
Pressure to justify existence
Needs are different from academic libraries
Lots of mergers and consolidations of departments
Users make us unique – many not computer literate
What we need from GPO
User friendly web documents
Training
Catalog records and pre 1976 cataloging
Agency handouts
What do directors want from us?
Publicity and usage for the Library
Displaying expertise in-house
Training – share and learn from colleagues; train the public; GPO Access training;
grants.gov
Law Libraries:
Concern about pushing documents
Concern about withdrawing documents
Need for catalog records
We add value from what we do for the public
GPO should be a clearinghouse for training by other agencies
Print Collections
The physical artifact is useful
Catalog it and they will come (and check it out)
Space restrictions
Develop shared, tiered print archives
Other Issues
Posting holdings in World Cat
OCLC Collection Analysis Software Project
FDL’s withdrawing from the FDLP.
Keep hearings in print
Small Academic Libraries:
Government Documents person has multiple responsibilities
There is a need for more collaboration
Don’t need incentives to stay in the program
Participate in LOCKSS
Digitize unique parts of collections
Catalog pre1976 documents