From lpsmail@access.digex.netMon Jul 22 18:05:10 1996 Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 11:35:00 -0700 From: Shipment Reply to: Discussion of Government Document Issues To: Multiple recipients of list GOVDOC-L Subject: ADNOTES: LPS ACTIONS TO IMPLEMENT THE STRATEGIC PLAN: J.D. YOUNG THE MESSAGE BELOW IS FROM ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES, VOL. 17, #10 (July 25, 1996) LPS ACTIONS TO IMPLEMENT THE STRATEGIC PLAN REMARKS BEFORE THE FEDERAL DOCUMENTS TASK FORCE BY J.D. YOUNG Director, Library Programs Service 1996 Annual ALA Conference New York, NY July 6, 1996 Good morning, everyone. My thanks to Anne Watts and GODORT for inviting us here to update the Federal Documents Task Force on recent events which concern the FDLP. Now you've heard Judy tell you about the study and describe its findings and conclusions. The whole study process required a tremendous investment of time, but we got a lot of value out of the experience. Compared to just a year ago, we now have a good idea of where this program is going, how long it's going to take, and what we need to do to get there. I'm going to give you an overview of LPS' implementation activities; how we see the electronic transition shaping up within LPS, and who will be leading these various projects and tasks. But first, I want to recognize the contributions made by Maggie Parhamovich Farrell and Raeann Dossett. Their time is nearly over at GPO; this is Maggie's last event as a GPO representative, and Raeann will only be with us another month. I thank you both for what you've done, and I want to say it's been a real pleasure to have you with us. Last week we got together for a little farewell luncheon for them, and I remarked on how amazingly well they had fit into the organization. Well, it took them a few minutes to get over that, but they're good sports and they don't hold it against me. Seriously, we've all benefited from their advice and knowledge, and hopefully they have also benefitted from their time with us. Later on you'll be seeing the most visible evidence of their work: the Pathway Services, including the Web indexer prototype. Maggie and Raeann's contributions have confirmed that the FDLP has a lot to gain from the outsider's point of view and expertise. So we will be continuing this approach in the coming year. I'm happy to announce here what many of you probably already know - that Duncan Aldrich from the University of Nevada - Reno has joined us for the next year. Duncan's here today in his official capacity: employed as an expert at GPO. We've been giving him the total immersion treatment to get up to speed on the various projects we have underway. One of the areas we've identified for him to concentrate on is permanent public access, and beginning to develop the alliances which will keep electronic FDLP information available to libraries and the public. The Public Printer has also approved bringing on a second person from the library community, and we're looking for another person with the library and Internet skills and standing in the community as an expert. FY 1997 Budget Appropriation I want to give you a little more detail about where our FY 1997 appropriation stands. In our budget request last December, we requested $30.8 million for the FY 1997 Superintendent of Documents Salaries and Expenses (S&E) appropriation. This was an increase of $520,000, or 1.65 percent, over FY 1996, and included about $27.2 million for the FDLP; $2.6 million for cataloging and indexing; and about $0.5 million each for the International Exchange System (IES) program and the By-law Distribution Program. So far, we've had the House appropriations hearing. The House has recommended funding the S&E programs at $29,077,000, or a reduction of $1.75 million from what we requested. The House language approved our request, with these three exceptions: - The $500,000 for the technology grants was not approved. - The House cut $1.2 million by directing that most Serial Sets be provided in CD-ROM. Regional depositories, plus one library in each state without a regional, and the International Exchange Program will continue to receive paper copies of the Serial Set. - Finally, another $50,000 was cut from the S&E request by directing the conversion of the bound Congressional Record to CD-ROM. This saving is apparently based on the current cost of providing the bound CR to regionals plus one library in each state without a regional, compared to the estimated cost of furnishing them with a CD-ROM edition only. The Senate Legislative Branch appropriations hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday, July 10. It remains to be seen whether the Senate will go along with all of the House recommendations, or what amendments may be introduced from the floor. As a major shift, the House language did recognize the validity of the more deliberate 5-7 year timetable for the transition to a more electronic FDLP, even though that timetable is referred to as "somewhat lengthy." So again, it seems your collective voices carried the day, and convinced the Congress of the wisdom of permitting a longer period to adjust the Program and accommodate the new technologies. LPS Activities Supporting the Strategic Plan Now, I'll shift to our LPS activities which support the transition. As part of our internal tactical planning to carry out the Strategic Plan, we defined a number of key transition tasks, assigned responsible individuals to oversee them, and developed specific steps and milestones toward their completion. Two of our LPS staff who are not here today are key players in the implementation process: Gil Baldwin, Chief of our Library Division, and Ric Davis, head of our Electronic Transition Staff in LPS. Gil, and especially Ric, put in a lot of work on the study, and now they are taking the lead in overseeing our transition tasks. Briefly, we have identified four major areas for LPS electronic transition activities: Acquisitions Acquiring content for the FDLP is Robin Haun-Mohamed's major responsibility, and she will be giving you some detail next about individual products and negotiations with agencies. I just want to touch on two content-related issues. Both of these came up in our study discussions of possible revisions to Title 44. The first concerns the scope of the FDLP. We want to expand the content of the program to make it more comprehensive, and we believe that the rapid expansion of agency electronic publishing offers opportunities to make the FDLP more inclusive. However, we are all concerned about information that is leaving the program, either because the agency now chooses to publish only over the Internet, because of funding problems, or because they are avoiding GPO altogether. So one of our highest priorities is the retention of information content that historically has been in the program but may now be leaving it. The second issue concerns notification and compliance. Historically, the FDLP has relied heavily on the ability of the program to automatically obtain material as it was printed or procured through GPO. With the growing emphasis on electronic dissemination, and decreasing compliance with statutory requirements for agencies to print through GPO, identifying and obtaining information for the FDLP is becoming increasingly difficult. This problem has escalated significantly within the past few months with a legal memorandum from the Department of Justice, which takes the position that there are constitutional separation of powers issues with the legislative branch establishing requirements for the executive branch with respect to printing. This memo appears to have the effect of encouraging executive agencies to bypass GPO for their printing services, although this seems to contradict a White House memorandum signed by Leon Panetta in April directing the executive agencies to utilize GPO's printing services for the remainder of the fiscal year. Beyond the obvious impact of the Justice Department position on fugitive Government information, it also potentially has a very serious impact on GPO's financial situation. I believe that any revision to Title 44 must address this issue, and include new means to inform agencies of their responsibilities and to ensure agency compliance with FDLP obligations. In addition, there must be effective means for all three branches of Government to notify GPO of the intent to initiate or publish a new information product, substantially modify an existing product, or eliminate products and services. Compliance is an area where we will be looking to our oversight committees, House Oversight and Senate Rules, to take the lead. Cataloging and Locator Services We are referring to our second implementation project area as cataloging and locator services. This is the way in which GPO can assist depository libraries and the public to identify and obtain access to the full range of Federal Government information. This project falls to Tad Downing, Chief of our Cataloging Branch, and he will fill you in on developments later on in the program. In this area we feel that we offer significant services to depository libraries and public users: not only the Pathway Services, but also our Monthly Catalog Web service. In one place, you find information on both the latest Government electronic products available via the Internet and the traditional print products in depository libraries. Services to Depository Libraries Sheila McGarr is in charge of our third project, which we call services to depository libraries. Since Sheila isn't here, I will very briefly touch upon some of activities which this task grouping includes. As you know we have again issued the updated technical specifications for computer work stations in depository libraries, most recently with the supplemental specifications to support spatial data, or online maps, applications. Sheila's area is responsible for these specifications, and we will update them periodically. LPS is currently finalizing the depository library self-study, which will become a very important tool in the modified inspection process. Based on the voluntary use of the self-study, we are making some changes to make it simpler and more easily understood. I thank those of you who have taken the time to use the self-study; your comments and experiences are helping to improve it for everyone. In the Strategic Plan we indicated that we intend to change the inspection program to an "as needed" basis, and this will be phased in beginning this fall. Sheila's people are working with our Electronic Transition Staff to develop an FDLP administrative information Web page. This will form the basis of an electronic channel for official program communications. We plan to include such content as Administrative Notes, the Federal Depository Library Manual, and more, as we get them HTML coded for presentation. We are also looking into a Web "forms" interface to our legacy mainframe systems so we can collect information from you, such as surveys, selection updates, conference registrations, etc., and then update our databases on the fly. As always, Sheila is involved in the planning cycle for the 1997 Federal Depository Conference. It will be tough to top this year's conference, but we'll try. She would welcome your suggestions for topics and speakers for next spring's conference, so if you have an idea about a topic or a person, please let her know [(202) 512-1119]. Permanent Public Access to Official and Authentic Information Perhaps the fourth project area is the most challenging. This is to ensure permanent public access to official and authentic information. The FDLP has always had the responsibility for providing permanent access to the official Government information disseminated through the program. Historically this has been the role of the regional depository libraries, and this has been a cost-effective means of ensuring that Government information remained available to the public indefinitely. Permanent access also is an essential element of the more electronic depository library program, but it will be more difficult to attain. To ensure permanent public access to official electronic Government information, all of the institutional program stakeholders (information producing agencies, GPO, participating depository libraries and the National Archives) must cooperate to establish the authenticity of official information, provide persistent identification and description of Government information products, and establish appropriate arrangements for their continued accessibility. In this regard, we have a meeting set up with the Deputy Archivist next Friday. We have received feelers from the University of California-San Diego and Galileo, which stands for "Georgia Library Learning Online," about becoming partners in providing electronic Government information or full or partial mirror sites for GPO Access. Of course there are a huge number of issues to be worked out, but we think it's encouraging that some libraries are already approaching us to get involved in developing a permanent public access solution. We are assigning this critical task to Duncan Aldrich and Ric Davis. If your library may be interested, please speak with Duncan. We expect to update you in more detail by the fall Council meeting. LPS is taking opportunities to meet with information publishing agencies about getting more of their products into the FDLP. To that end we've developed the handout about how to Improve Public Access to Your Agency's Information. We plan to make use of this in face-to-face meetings with agencies, and we can use it for basic talking points about what agencies get out of participating in the FDLP. You'll see that the main areas highlighted on the handout correspond with the task areas I've just described. We're also working to prepare a similar message for agency printing officials and another version to communicate with agency Web masters. Now I would like to introduce Robin Haun-Mohamed, Chief of our Depository Administration Branch, who will fill you in on the details of her operation and the efforts to obtain electronic products for the FDLP.