From lpsmail@access.digex.net Thu Nov 14 11:36:04 1996 Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 07:55:18 -0600 From: Shipment Reply-To: Discussion of Government Document Issues To: Multiple recipients of list GOVDOC-L Subject: ADNOTES: BRINGING ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS INTO THE FDLP THE MESSAGE BELOW IS FROM ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES, VOL. 17, #16 (Nov. 15, 1996) Interagency Cooperation to Bring Electronic Information Products into the FDLP Remarks by Sandy Schwalb 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 Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here in Salt Lake City. I'll try not to use too many baseball analogies, since I am not rooting for either of the teams playing in the World Series, but I will say that I am the rookie of this "team" batting last. As you have been told, I am working with Duncan Aldrich on a one year assignment as an Electronic Transition Specialist. Our mission is to work with other staff in GPO to plan and implement a successful transition of the Federal Depository Library Program to one firmly rooted in the electronic age. But before I talk about the activities in which I am currently involved... Who, me? I thought I would provide a brief overview of my background and how I came to GPO. The neat thing about my current position with GPO is that I am combining the experience I gained working within the library community with the time I spent in the legislative branch of the Federal Government. I worked for Senator Charles McC. Mathias for 10 years--he, by the way, chaired the Joint Committee on Printing in the early to mid-80's. Those 10 years on Capitol Hill helped me to understand the many roads that have to be taken for some things to get accomplished in the Federal Government. I also learned how a bill REALLY becomes a law, but that is for another talk. After leaving the Hill I became the Director of Government Relations for the Special Libraries Association (SLA) in Washington, DC. and stayed there for 10 years working on information-related public policy issues. During my time with SLA I became involved with the workings of the depository program. I was chosen to serve on the Depository Library Council from 1990-93. It turned out to be a very interesting time for the depository community, experiencing changes as more and more government publications were beginning to be produced in electronic formats. This past July, when Jay Young asked me if I would be interested in working for GPO on a one-year assignment, he said that I would be involved in continuing and/or initiating partnerships and cooperative efforts with other Federal agencies, to ensure that Government information products would get into the depository library program. Jay said that I would be working with some of the "nationals" such as the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) on a proposed assessment of standards. The other national he mentioned (and at this point I believe Jay mumbled) was the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). I asked if I would be getting hazardous duty pay, although I'm not sure I ever got an answer to that one. Now let me briefly tell you about some of the projects on which I am currently working. NCLIS GPO and NCLIS have developed a proposed Interagency Agreement--which in my short time back in the government I have learned is called an IA-- to conduct an Assessment of Standards for Creation and Dissemination of Electronic Government Information Products. Under the terms of this IA and using their independent contracting authority, NCLIS will develop a Statement of Work--that is outline what their responsibilities will be (with input from GPO) in terms of performing the tasks for this assessment of standards. NCLIS will then be responsible for conducting the assessment and producing comprehensive reports, detailing results and recommendations. We feel that the utilization of standards for the creation and dissemination of electronic Government information products will: 1. Facilitate access to and use of electronic Government information products by the Government, depository libraries and the public; 2. Decrease costs to depository libraries and the public for equipment and services; 3. Simplify training for end user access to Government information; and 4. Improve the ability of the Government and depository library partners to maintain permanent access to Government information products and facilitate the goal of collecting and analyzing Government information life cycle costs. The information gathered from this assessment will be used to improve public access to Government information that is available through the Federal Depository Library Program and the general public. NCLIS is the perfect candidate for conducting this assessment since it is mandated (under Public Law 91-345) to advise the President, Congress, State and local governments and others on policies and plans for library and information services. There was certainly a meeting of the minds as this project began to take shape. In GPO's Study Report, released this past June, it was stated that there was a need for an evaluation of the use of standards during the life cycle of Federal Government information products and to document the current or emerging use of standards by both the Government and the private sector. Indeed, the report identified NCLIS as an appropriate partner in such an endeavor. In July, the NCLIS commissioners passed a resolution that directed the agency to "proceed with a study which will facilitate improved public access to government information." Staff from GPO and NCLIS began working on the proposed IA later in the summer. We are now at the point where the IA will be transmitted to the Joint Committee on Printing in order to get an official go-ahead on the assessment. We are pleased that NCLIS is represented here at this Council meeting. There will be a break-out session tomorrow morning at 10:30 a.m. in the Imperial Room with Jeanne Simon, Chair of the Commission, Martha Gould, Vice Chair and Peter Young, the NCLIS Executive Director who will be soliciting input from you about this assessment. If you would like more information, please pick up the brief summary of the proposed IA that we have prepared. Copies are available here this morning. While a number of changes in the FDLP are already underway, we would like to see this assessment of standards proceed as rapidly as possible in order to assure a successful and cost-effective transition to a more electronic FDLP. NTIS As I noted earlier, another project on which I am working is exploring options to determine how NTIS and GPO can cooperate in order to ensure that electronic Government information products available through NTIS can be accessed through the FDLP. Having worn a different hat as a representative of S nson. A few weeks after starting to work at GPO, I attended an NTIS Advisory Board meeting at their headquarters in Springfield, VA. While at that September meeting, I talked to Don Johnson about having some members of the GPO staff get a tour of the NTIS facilities. A little over a week ago, a number of us, including myself, Duncan Aldrich, Gil Baldwin, and Robin Haun-Mohamed from LPS, Ric Davis representing EIDS and Joel Reeves from GPO's production staff, did get out to NTIS. We wanted to see what their shop looked like as well as get a handle on how they were making their information (both free and fee) available as we pursued plans to work with them to ensure that the material NTIS receives from agencies would get into the depository program. Don Johnson gave us an overview of some of NTIS' current activities, and then we had a tour of their facilities with members of the technical and managerial staff, including the NTIS deputy director, Don Corrigan, Keren Cummins, who manages Fedworld and their new technology manager, Barry West. We saw their CD-ROM and microfiche production facilities. This may or may not be a big revelation, but it was noted by an NTIS staff person that there is still a big market for microfiche. We were told that whereas in 1993 NTIS' revenue was derived from 2/3 print and 1/3 electronic products, it came as no surprise to us that there has been a change. Today the money comes into NTIS from a combination of 1/3 print, 1/3 electronic (such as online and CD-ROM) and 1/3 providing support services for other Federal agencies. That is getting to be a big part of the agency's business. NTIS is becoming a "conversion house," as they get material from Federal agencies in many formats and send them out in different formats as well. Currently all of the reports and related materials from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) and Department of Energy (DOE) are sent to NTIS as image files. As you are no doubt aware, the biggest part of their business is providing print on demand. During the meeting, Don Corrigan, NTIS deputy director, told us that NTIS is planning to work with the University of California-Davis Library and Linda Kennedy (former council member) on a pilot project with the FDLP. He said that UC-Davis was the only "volunteer." The project would provide depositories with online access to electronic images of Federally funded scientific, technical and engineering publications in the NTIS collection. Each library would be asked not to use the files for commercial purposes. NTIS sees this as a way for the FDLP to obtain "fugitive documents" that are available through NTIS. Following the meeting, I called Linda to find out more about the project from her and in fact, she said that she did volunteer her library to participate in a pilot project, but had not gotten any firm commitment from NTIS. Perhaps our meeting with NTIS will help them to move forward in their planning process on the project with UC-Davis. Their proposal calls for a pilot with 20 depositories, so perhaps more institutions will express their interest and willingness to participate. I will certainly be following up on this after the council meeting and will continue to work with NTIS staff to develop better communications and represent the interests of the FDLP. DOE One of my more interesting sagas since I came on board at GPO has been a project with the DOE. In late August, LPS was informed by DOE that its microfiche program from its Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) would be discontinued at the end of fiscal year 1996, which was September 30. We were advised by DOE/OSTI staff that the depository program would, however, be receiving the reports in an electronic format. That began a month-long adventure for me and others at GPO that made us even more concerned about the lack of standards for electronic Government information products. DOE supplied GPO with a test 8mm tape that we were unable to read due to an incompatibility of formats. We requested that the reports be sent via FTP, which was done. Once the files were open and read, staff at GPO discovered how messy this process would be. We had been advised by OSTI staff that the reports they would be sending to us would be in a TIFF image format and, according to my colleagues at GPO, this would not be easy material to search and also lengthy to download. We are engaged in a number of discussions with DOE staff about making these reports accessible through the FDLP. What we have been told is that GPO will be receiving, on a weekly basis, approximately 250 reports in a UNIX TAR format via FTP. Each report averages 132 pages at about 65K per page, so this should average 2 to 2 + gigabytes per week. Over the course of a year that is a great deal of material. In order to ensure that GPO can provide users of the DOE reports the best possible access to this material, we have proposed that DOE provide a "dynamic link" from their Reports Bibliographic Database (which can be found on their World Wide Web site) to GPO Access. The reason we asked DOE for this, is because the test material they sent us had no abstract attached to it and their staff told us they would not be providing such information. Without an abstract or other similar information, searching this material will be very difficult. We told DOE that GPO would provide them with a pre-determined URL for each report. They could include that address in their database and this would enable users to connect directly to the TIFF image file at GPO from the DOE search engine. We see this as a win-win situation for both DOE and GPO and it would greatly help DOE information users move from the DOE bibliographic database to the full-text material at GPO by having such a link. We see this as a significant improvement to customers of DOE information and depositories in obtaining DOE material. What this project points out to us is the difficulty of working with data put together for one purpose, such as on-demand printing (which is what NTIS is doing with this material) and then trying to work with it in another format, for example, accessing it from the Web. We are moving forward, however, and there have been many discussions among GPO staff to ensure that the 12-15,000 reports that come into the depository program each year from DOE/OSTI will be accessible and usable by energy information users and the depository community. The first electronic shipment from DOE arrived at GPO right before we left for Salt Lake City. We will be examining the options available, including working with OCLC as Duncan noted, to get this material into depositories. The bottom line of all of this is that GPO wants to ensure that DOE information currently available to the FDLP in microfiche will be accessible to the program now that microfiche distribution ceased. Conclusion These are just a few examples of the partnering activities on which I have been working with GPO colleagues in LPS/ETS/EIDS and Production. As Federal agencies continue to migrate toward producing materials in electronic formats, GPO will move forward in its efforts to ensure that the FDLP gets these Government information products so that users have access to the fruits of the Federal Government's labor.