ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program Vol. 18, no. 04 GP 3.16/3-2:18/04 February 28, 1997 MICHAEL F. DIMARIO PUBLIC PRINTER PREPARED STATEMENT BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON APPROPRIATIONS ESTIMATES FOR FISCAL YEAR 1998 February 11, 1997 AGENCY COOPERATION WITH THE ELECTRONIC FDLP Agency cooperation to include their electronic products and services in the FDLP can be described as sporadic at best. The following examples characterize the range of issues we are confronting with publishing agencies as we transition the FDLP to a more electronic basis. Many agencies have not included their electronic products in the Program, including the Defense Mapping Agency and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Others include some products, an improvement over what was provided in past years. NASA, the Library of Congress, and Transportation products have been brought into the program for the first time. Education, Energy, and Census in general cooperate with GPO on making their products available to the FDLP. The Department of Treasury has been working with GPO to develop a mechanism to load the Daily Treasury Statements onto the GPO server on a daily basis. Staff from Treasury, GPO, and Treasury's commercial contractor have succeeded in loading several days worth of Daily Treasury Statements onto the GPO server. At this point, the project is in a developmental mode, and we hope to provide this resource in an online format by October 1, 1997. Lack of cooperation can be caused by an agency's lack of funding. Some agencies claim they can no longer afford to provide the necessary copies of a CD-ROM product for the FDLP. They are only willing or able to provide one copy of a CD-ROM product to us. We view this situation as unacceptable. In order to keep the content in the Program, GPO would then have to master the CD-ROM and replicate it in order to provide the copies needed for distribution to the FDLP. In our view, this is not the intent of existing legislation regarding information products that belong in the FDLP that are produced elsewhere than GPO. Agency failure to provide the necessary number of copies of CD-ROMs can impair the amount of information made available through the FDLP. For example, the School District Databook is a set of over 40 CD-ROMs that originally were supposed to be sent through GPO for mastering and replication as a set for the sales program and for depository copies. Because of budget limitations, the Department of Education did not submit any of the CD-ROMs in this set through GPO. They did give GPO one copy, believing that they had fulfilled their obligation to the FDLP. GPO has been unsuccessful in locating the complete product content online at any site, and has been unsuccessful in finding a partner interested in making this material available on their server. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently contacted GPO to inform us that the Digital Raster Graphics CD-ROMs would no longer be submitted to GPO for replication. Therefore this information will not be distributed to the FDLP. The agency has also declined to provide sufficient copies for distribution. The information is being maintained in a database and customers can query the database and request specific information products. The customers will then be mailed a CD-ROM and charged accordingly. The agency expects to produce 945 distinct CD-ROM titles for this series. GPO and USGS staff are discussing methods of distributing this material that will be workable for both agencies. STAT-USA, a unit of the Commerce Department, continues to provide depository access to its online resource. It has recently changed software vendors for the CD-ROM version of the National Trade Data Bank (NTDB) and libraries are now limited to one workstation for both the online and CD-ROM versions. STAT-USA continues to master and replicate the NTDB through GPO, thus allowing us to obtain the depository copies at the rider rate. The Census Bureau is moving forward with a paid subscription database for all users, but depository libraries are able to use first tier of the service at no charge. For customized products such as the Census Tract Street Index and the Foreign Trade Data, which were distributed to libraries in a CD-ROM format, all users will now be charged for using the online service. However, Census continues to master and replicate CD-ROM products through GPO which allows us to obtain depository copies at rider rates. We continue to find out about print products that are being folded into private database services. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute is being privatized in accordance with a cooperative research and development agreement with Oxford University Press. The Journal is now going to be part of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Information Associates Program. This service offers online access to the NCI's PDQ database and printed copies of the Journal to paid subscribers. We were informed by the NCI that depository libraries were specifically excluded from this agreement. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, publisher of Environmental Health Perspectives, advised us the print edition would no longer be made available to GPO for sales or depository copies because they were changing to a private publisher. When contacted about depository copies, staff agreed they wished to provide copies for the depository libraries in paper format. They also agreed to advise us when the new database will be available and to provide depositories access to the database.