From lpsmail@access.digex.net Thu Nov 14 11:35:17 1996 Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 07:55:07 -0600 From: Shipment Reply-To: Discussion of Government Document Issues To: Multiple recipients of list GOVDOC-L Subject: ADNOTES: PERMANENT ACCESS TO FDLP ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS THE MESSAGE BELOW IS FROM ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES, VOL. 17, #16 (Nov. 15, 1996) Providing Permanent Access to Electronic FDLP Information Products Remarks by Duncan Aldrich Internet Specialist Library Programs Service U.S. Government Printing Office Depository Library Council to the Public Printer Monday, October 21, 1996 Salt Lake City, Utah Introduction Good morning. I would like to say at the outset that the three months I have worked at GPO have been both challenging and rewarding. How I've been dealing with the challenges is the substance of my comments, which I'll get to in a moment. As to the reward, I have found it rewarding to work first hand at GPO on problems related to access to Government information that in the past I have dealt with only at second hand in a documents department. In working with GPO staff members, I have come to appreciate their high energy and dedication, particularly those with whom I work on a daily basis as a member of the Electronic Transition Staff, and those with whom I work in the Library Programs and Electronic Information Dissemination Services. Like librarians, GPO employees are faced almost daily with new and unexpected problems, and of course many of these problems ultimately devolve to become challenges to you as depository librarians. As to the challenges: when I accepted the one-year appointment on the Electronic Transition Staff, I knew that I would be working on the implementation of some aspect of the Strategic Plan outlined in the Study to Identify Measures for the Transition to a More Electronic Federal Depository Library Program. It wasn't until I arrived at GPO, however, that I learned that I would be spearheading transition tasks associated with providing permanent access to electronic FDLP information products. I'll have to admit that my stomach turned momentarily when I learned that my assignment was permanent access because I had just completed an article for the Journal of Government Information (JGI) in which I had included several paragraphs on preservation and archiving of electronic information in the FDLP. I confess that in that article I used every fuzzy word and piece of double talk I know because I couldn't think of any clear answers to the permanent access issue in the time frame I had to write the article. So in a sense my assignment here at GPO is providing me the opportunity to write the second installment of that JGI article. Fortunately for me, the GPO staff who compiled the Strategic Plan to implement the transition did include some basics from which to launch into work on permanent access. These can be divided into three general categories of tasks: * First--establishing interagency relations with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to identify where GPO efforts to provide permanent access to electronic Government information products complement, supplement, or overlap with NARA efforts to preserve electronic Federal information; * Second--to establish criteria and guidelines for electronic FDLP information products that qualify for permanent access status; * Third-- coordinate the development of a distributed system of permanent access to FDLP information products in electronic formats. I will loosely organize my discussion of the various permanent access projects currently in progress under these three categories. Background: Permanent Access and Preservation Before I speak to the actual tasks being carried out to implement permanent access, however, it may be helpful to take a few minutes to explain how GPO is using the term permanent access. The concept of permanent access to electronic Government information products is clearly established in the Strategic Plan. The most simple and obvious reason for planning to provide permanent access to electronic information products in the FDLP is that the FDLP, by statute, has provided permanent access to all information distributed through the program for years. In Section 1911 of Title 44, United States Code, it is stated that: Depository libraries not served by a regional depository library, or that are regional depository libraries themselves, shall retain Government publications permanently in either printed form or in microfacsimile form... Projecting this requirement of permanency into a future of remotely accessed electronic FDLP information products, GPO defines "Permanent Access" to mean that "Government information products within the scope of the FDLP remain available for continuous, no fee public access through the program." Government information products are defined to include electronic products both in tangible formats and those that are accessed over the Internet. These definitions are included in proposed revisions to Title 44 that GPO recently submitted to Congress. Assuming that permanent access will be provided, how is FDLP access different than access to digital information preserved through NARA? The key is that the FDLP is more concerned with preserving ready "access" and NARA is more concerned with the preserving of the actual materials in the context in which they were created as historical records of the activities of Government agencies. NARA is concerned with access, but the access NARA provides has traditionally been less immediate than access through FDLP libraries. This is not meant in any way to criticize NARA. To NARA, Government information products are records first to be preserved and secondarily to be made available. To depository libraries these products are elements of working library collections for which preservation is usually a secondary question. I note that both GPO and NARA are feeling much pressure on their ability to accomplish their missions as information moves into the electronic era. GPO has published its Strategic Plan to adapt to the transition. This past August NARA published its Strategic Plan, Ready Access to Essential Evidence: the Strategic Plan of the National Archives and Records Administration 1997-2007, which is available on NARA's Internet home page (http://www.nara.gov/nara/vision /naraplan.html). What is striking in reading NARA's plan is that many of the concerns expressed are very similar to those GPO has expressed in its own Strategic Plan. Relations With NARA These similar concerns have been discussed in an ongoing dialog that GPO and NARA have held over the past year. Last spring, Tom Brown and Fynette Eaton of NARA's Electronic Records Center were involved in the Transition Study process. More recently, GPO has met twice with NARA administrators. The first meeting was held at GPO on July 12, 1996, with Dr. Lewis Bellardo, Deputy Archivist of the United States. The second meeting was held at Archives II in College Park, MD, on August 16. Following this meeting, NARA appointed Dr. Ken Thibodeau, Director of NARA's Electronic Records Center, to serve as liaison with GPO and Superintendent of Documents Wayne Kelley in turn appointed Gil Baldwin to serve as liaison to NARA. During my time at GPO I will serve as project coordinator in interactions with NARA. In a letter to Dr. Thibodeau dated October 4, Mr. Kelley suggested that a joint GPO/NARA work group be established to focus on a number of issues, including: 1) clarification of how GPO and NARA define the terms permanent access to and preservation of electronic Government information products; 2) discussion of the requirements which GPO and NARA place upon Federal agencies, toward the end of minimizing the differences in those requirements; 3) assessment of electronic information format standards used by Federal agencies in the production of agency records and information products; 4) assessment of how GPO might partner with NARA on preservation and access issues related to electronic Government information products in GPO's custody. We hope to put this group together later this fall. Criteria and Guidelines for Electronic FDLP Information Products The second general category of tasks associated with permanent access is to establish criteria with which to identify which Government information resources produced in electronic formats actually qualify for permanent access through the FDLP. Joe Paskoski, who many of you knew when he was on the Inspection team, and who is now a member of the Electronic Transition Staff, will be coordinating with me efforts to establish these criteria. To date we have held only preliminary discussions on how to proceed with this task. It is a rather slippery task, especially when our discussions turn to questions like, are agency WWW sites in fact agency information products? I expect to have something more concrete on this topic out for review before Council meets in Washington this coming April. Partnering for Permanent Access The final set of tasks pertain to the creation of a distributed partnership involving the GPO, Federal agencies, and FDLP libraries to provide access to electronic FDLP information products that are on the Internet. The distributed partnership model is discussed in the Strategic Plan, which stipulates that GPO: ...will coordinate a distributed system that provides continuous, permanent public access, involving the publishing agencies, the National Archives and Records Administration, and regional and other depository libraries. The major reason that GPO has concluded that partnerships will be required is that the sheer volume of electronic materials soon to enter the program speaks against centralizing the information under a single agency. Likewise, the fluid nature of remotely accessed electronic information products undermines the need for centralization at a single site. Housed at the producing agency or at a partner FDLP library Internet site, Government information products can be accessed by all members of the Program. Though GPO will continue to house much electronic FDLP information, as it currently houses the Federal Register and Congressional Record, GPO will increasingly assume a role of program coordinator or broker, creating metadata and other locator tools to help users identify and locate FDLP information products wherever they reside in the FDLP partnership rather than physically distributing those products to program libraries. Much of my time to date at GPO has focused on this part of the permanent access equation. I have drafted a model Memorandum of Understanding which outlines the responsibilities GPO and its partners will have as they enter into partnership arrangements. The draft memorandum will be discussed at tomorrow's focus session on "Partnering for Permanent Access." Major questions the memorandum attempts to address include: * the extent and quality of access available through partner institutions; * the security of information at partner institutions; and * an escape clause in the event a partner can no longer support its side of the partnership. I encourage those of you who have constructive comments or criticisms on the draft memo to attend tomorrow's session. To provide a practical assessment of how partnerships will work, the GPO is establishing several pilot partnership projects. As yet no specific number of pilots has been determined, but several libraries and library consortia have approached us tentatively to serve as pilot sites and have even suggested possible FDLP information products on which to form partnerships. Four potential partnerships currently under consideration involve Princeton University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, OCLC, and a joint effort with the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Texas at Arlington. Our negotiation with Princeton involves Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) publications. As most of you know, the OTA was abolished in the Congressional budget cuts last year. Fortunately, Princeton University rescued the OTA WWW site from demise by setting up a mirror OTA WWW site at Princeton. The Superintendent of Documents has sent a letter to Princeton indicating that GPO is interested in partnering with Princeton on the OTA WWW site. GPO's reason for asking Princeton to partner with GPO on this product is that we believe the materials are Government information products that fall within the scope of the program and to which permanent access should be provided. To bring the OTA WWW site under the auspice of the FDLP and to assure permanent access, a formal arrangement will be required. One element in our proposal to Princeton is the escape clause that GPO will be entitled to a copy of the OTA materials if Princeton is no longer able to participate as an FDLP partner. GPO, in turn, will provide enhanced bibliographic access to materials housed on the site, though the nature of that enhancement has not yet been decided. The potential partnership with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is in VERY preliminary stages. I have been in contact with John Shuler at UIC who has worked with the Department of State the past three years to develop the Department of State Internet site, commonly know as DOSFAN. I will meet next week with Colleen Hope, Chief of Public Affairs at the Department of State (DOS), who is interested in working with the GPO to discuss how electronic Department of State information fits into the FDLP. Hopefully a three way partnership between GPO, UIC, and DOS will be established over the next several months. Robin Haun-Mohamed has already discussed the potential partnership with SUNY at Buffalo and the University of Texas at Arlington. I would just like to reiterate that partnerships of this sort represent a great opportunity to enhance FDLP services by pooling the skills of all players within the FDLP. The potential for a partnership with OCLC is especially intriguing. OCLC has recently initiated a pilot project to test mass storage of and access to archived digital information. OCLC representatives visited GPO in September, and one issue discussed was the possibility of setting up an FDLP information product as one of several pilot projects OCLC is using to test its new archival facility. At this time I am in contact with John Hearty of OCLC in hopes of identifying an FDLP product for this pilot project. One product that has been discussed as a possible pilot product is the Department of Energy (DOE) Reports in TIFF image format--the ones we are accustomed to receiving as microfiche. OCLC has invited GPO to send several representatives to visit OCLC in the near future to tour their archival facilities and to discuss future possibilities for OCLC providing permanent access to FDLP information resources. I am particularly interested in any depository library community feedback on the implications of GPO partnering with OCLC to provide access to electronic FDLP products. As I work on the partnership issue a complicating factor has been that various departments within the GPO are as eager to explore GPO's capacity to provide access to various electronic products as am I to establish pilot projects to explore the potentials of partnering. While this eagerness is an obvious plus, it has impacted my ability to identify information products for potential partnerships. A case in point is the 1937 through 1975 Supreme Court decisions that were obtained from the Air Force FLITE database. My immediate impression was that these would be perfect material upon which to form a partnership. However, GPO's Production Department, who are the folks who support the GPO Access databases, have put the Court decisions up on a trial basis as a WAIS database which should soon be publicly available. My first reaction was, well, they've done a good job here, but there goes a great partnership opportunity. After some reflection, however, I have concluded that the Supreme Court decisions may be an ideal product on which to provide redundant access through a library partner. I know that redundancy, particularly on major information resources, is of concern to the community. Two sites are under consideration for such a partnership. Regarding the Supreme Court decisions, which should be coming online in the WAIS database format soon, GPO has some interesting plans to make it even better. GPO is tentatively planning to convert Supreme Court slip decisions currently available on the GPO's Federal Bulletin Board into a WAIS database. Those files begin in 1992 and continue through the present. We are also trying to locate electronic source files for Supreme Court decisions that fill the gap between 1975 and 1992. We have determined that GPO no longer has the electronic files from which the cases were originally printed. We have asked the Supreme Court if they have electronic versions of these cases and are awaiting a reply. If not we will initiate a dialog with the Air Force for these materials. The ultimate objective, assuming we can pull all these pieces together, is to create an ongoing Supreme Court decisions finding aid running from 1937 to the present. My final topic is that the GPO has become one of several cosponsors for a conference on the Preservation of Digitized Department of Agriculture Publications. The primary reason GPO is interested in cosponsoring the conference is that this conference represents one of the first major efforts to sort through the problems associated with preserving and providing wide scale public permanent access to digital Federal information products. As a cosponsor, GPO will be at the table as the conference is planned, held, and as a final plan for preserving USDA digital information products is written. I attended a meeting in Ithaca, New York, last week to work with the conference planning committee to draft the conference agenda. The conference is scheduled to meet in Smithsonian facilities in Washington, D.C., March 3 and 4, 1997. I gleaned both good news and bad news at the planning session in Ithaca. The good news, at least to my sense of place in the digital universe, is that some of the best minds in America dealing with preserving digital information seem as puzzled by digital preservation as I am. The bad news, of course, is that they are as puzzled as I am. Hopefully the March conference will help clarify many of the basic issues and provide a framework that GPO can borrow from and expand upon as it plans to face the challenges involved in providing permanent access to digital FDLP information products generally.