ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program Vol. 18, no. 08 GP 3.16/3-2:18/08 May 15, 1997 Depository Administration Branch Update Remarks by Robin Haun-Mohamed Chief, Depository Administration Branch Library Programs Service U.S. Government Printing Office Depository Library Council Federal Depository Conference Monday, April 14, 1997 Arlington, VA Good morning. Although I know from the calendar that it has been several months since we last met in Salt Lake City, it doesn't seem possible for us to be meeting again so soon. It has been a very busy and productive time for staff in LPS. In October I discussed several projects that I had hoped to have available by the end of the calendar year. At that time I was hoping to meet a very ambitious schedule we had developed for electronic shipping lists and the Item Lister. Thanks to staff located throughout GPO, but especially in the Electronic Transition Staff, EIDS, and Production, we were able to meet our goals for these two projects. Electronic Shipping Lists Effective January 2, 1997, shipping lists for all formats are routinely being posted to the Federal Bulletin Board (FBB) in dBase format. Shipping lists for paper, separates, electronic, and microfiche formats are loaded twice weekly into separate libraries on the FBB. Our partners, SUNY Buffalo and the University of Texas, Arlington, take this information and make it available via their Web page. They also offer an ingenious program that allows users to produce labels in their libraries from each shipping list. We are very pleased at the way this service partnership utilizes our basic products to provide additional value for those in the depository community. Online Item Lister In February, Item Lister became a reality. Item Lister is a service which allows users to view a library's item selection profile via the World Wide Web. Information from the Depository Distribution Information System (DDIS) is updated monthly for the Item Lister. This service is located off the FDLP Administration page under the Tools option. For those libraries wishing to have a complete printout of the depository item selection profile, you no longer need to wait until the spring update cycle. If you haven't seen this new service, take a look! CenStats Available at No Charge In March, LPS was advised by Census that the CenStats database was publicly available. Although the library registration site is not yet ready, Census has provided temporary passwords for depository libraries to access this service at no charge to the library. CenStats is a fee-based electronic subscription service that provides access to the contents of popular Census Bureau databases, including some CD-ROMs. On very short notice, the regional librarians provided invaluable assistance in notifying their selective libraries of the availability of this new service and also provided assistance in giving the passwords to these libraries. Census is still working on the development of a registration site on the Web where depository libraries can register and choose their own password to access the system. When this site is completed, depositories will be notified of the location by a fax broadcast via GPO's U.S. Fax Watch system. It could be as early as next week. Depository access to the CenStats database differs from STAT-USA in that multiple users are allowed to access the database at the same time. But Census has limited access to the database to one physical location. The user must be in the library to access the database. They cannot do research from home, their dorm rooms or faculty offices, or even another library on the same campus or in the same system. For library systems with more than one library, the depository may not provide access to the database in the Business Library and the Undergraduate Library. The depository librarian will have to choose which location. Council requested multi-user access to this new service without limitations to location. Census was advised of Council's request, but felt they could not meet the request because of the need to recover costs from users for this new service. During the time between the meeting in Salt Lake City and March when this service became active, LPS worked with a Council representative to keep Council informed of how the service was developing. And this information about the new service has also been included in GPO's responses to the Recommendations and Action Items of Depository Library Council to the Public Printer, Fall 1996. I'd like to thank all the parties involved in making no charge depository access to this new service a reality. BET (Browse Electronic Titles) There are several new projects we are working on in the Depository Administration Branch (DAB). We continue to focus on finding new electronic publications on the Internet and notifying the community via the Browse Electronic Titles (BET) page. One of the projects is the development of a permanent cumulative listing of all titles that have been placed on the BET page. Currently monographs are rotated off on a 90 day cycle. We continue to maintain the serial titles on the page, but when a monograph has been on the page for 90 days we take it off to keep the page to a more reasonable size. But for our own internal use, we have developed a page with all of the titles that have been listed on the BET. This allows us to have a way of quickly checking if we have pointed to a title before. And it is also a way to check for bad or broken URLs. I seek Council's advice on this issue. Does Council perceive a need for this page to be available for use by the depository community? And if it is perceived as a product that should be available to all, is there a problem with utilizing frame technology? The way we have designed this page for internal use requires the user to access the Internet with a browser such as Netscape 2.0 which supports frame technology. Digital Rastor Graphic Maps LPS is working with USGS to develop an on-demand service for replication of the Digital Rastor Graphic maps (DRGs) on CD-ROM. The DRGs have not been sent to GPO for replication and distribution since last fall. Because of budget limitations and low sales for the DRG's, staff at USGS made a decision to only produce DRGs on demand as requested, rather than acquiring them through GPO and storing copies in their warehouse for sale. GPO was notified of this decision and discussions began to determine a way to keep this information in the depository program. In our discussions with USGS, it was determined that the DRGs were essentially duplications of the topographic maps distributed to the libraries in paper format, and that USGS does not have plans to update the DRG database in the future. Because of the large number of discs that are expected to be produced in this series, over 900 CD-ROMs, LPS is working with USGS to develop an experimental, on-demand pilot project to distribute the DRGs to depository libraries that request the discs as they are needed, at no cost to the requesting library. We hope to be able to gain information about on-demand services from this project. We will keep Council informed of how this project progresses. Electronic Daily Treasury Statement GPO and the Department of Treasury have been working together to obtain an electronic file of the Daily Treasury Statement (DTS) on a daily basis. Several issues of DTS have been successfully loaded onto the Web and it will soon be available online on GPO Access. Depositories will continue to receive DTS in paper format until the end of this calendar year at which time only the electronic version will be available through the depository program. FBIS CD-ROM The FBIS CD-ROM, no. 14, has been distributed to depository libraries. This is another example of the shift from traditional format to an electronic format. The first CD-ROM, no. 13 was distributed to libraries in January and no. 14 was distributed in March. The April 15, 1997 issue of the Administrative Notes includes an article on the dissemination policy associated with the FBIS on CD-ROM "Official Use Only" product. Please review the article for your responsibilities as indicated by the FBIS. We have consulted with the agency on the availability of the first 12 CD-ROM's and they responded they were not able to make these available to the depository libraries. Staff at Brown University have generously offered to work with us to be sure there are no holes in the microfiche collection that libraries have to bring the FBIS publications up-to-date with the CD-ROM product. STAT-USA All users of the STAT-USA depository subscription need to be aware of a password change to take effect April 14, 1997. Information about this change was dropped in each depository box and also appeared in the March 31, 1997 issue of the Administrative Notes Technical Supplement. Essentially, only the password will change, your user ID remains the same. If you are unsure of your original password or have not yet registered for this valuable and highly useful service, please contact me by e-mail. While many of my staff have the nice new GPO e-mail addresses, for now I still have the old one which is, chiefdab@access.digex.net. Please do not post the password change to a listserv in any summary of this address. One further point on STAT-USA. Subscribers to the National Trade Data Bank have been advised they can continue to purchase the DOS version of the CD-ROM. Depository libraries have not been given this choice. The DOS version will only be available until the end of the calendar year. By the time LPS did a survey, assigned a new class and item number, and actually distributed the first issue of the DOS version, there would be little time left in the calendar year. Many of the resources on the NTDB are available in the libraries in alternate formats, paper, microfiche, and all are duplicated on the online STAT-USA free depository subscription. It has been decided to stay with the original decision to provide this product to the libraries only in the Windows format. Good News on Fugitive Documents I usually have examples of fugitive publications that we are attempting to obtain through the Program, but today I have good news about a title that has been a fugitive and seen a lot of discussion lately on GOVDOC- L. The 1995 edition of the Food Code will be distributed to libraries in the very near future. NTIS is sending paper copies for distribution to the depositories, and I expect them next week. We have also been advised by NTIS that the 1997 edition will be provided to the libraries. This is due sometime in early June. And to update you on another former fugitive, the 1997 Tide Tables CD-ROM was distributed to the libraries last week. Department of State Dispatch, Background Notes, CIA World Factbook I'd also like to bring you up-to-date on the Department of State Dispatch. We have had several inquiries on this title because it has not yet been distributed to libraries in 1997. Dispatch will no longer be a weekly product. The frequency is changing to 10 times a year with 2 supplements. And the first issue is just going to press for 1997. Also from the Department of State, the Background Notes will continue to be available in paper format, but they will not be updated as often as they have been in the past. The Background Notes are also included on the State Department's DOSFAN site and on the quarterly Foreign Affairs CD-ROM. We still await word on some products, such as the CIA World Factbook. We haven't seen the CD-ROM yet and have been told the 1996 will not be in print. And while I reported in February that the 1997 would also not be available in print, we heard this last week that GPO may still be given the electronic files to do a print run. We will advise the community when a definitive answer has been reached on this. Office Renovation On the operational issues for DAB, I would like to remind all that we are still in a state of transition. The work has been completed in one room, and we are all in that office while the other room is being recarpeted, rewired and rearranged. Thus, if you call old familiar numbers, you may get a different person. There is a listing of the current LPS telephone numbers and e-mail addresses in Council's packet and it also available as a handout to the conference attendees. We are pleased with our new computers and the access to the Internet via a server. This is very much a learning process at this stage, but instead of three people to help search for electronic documents, we now have 13 as all the Publication Management Specialists can now assist with searching for products. Online Item Selection I always try to save the best for last. Last fall I brought up the idea of allowing libraries to make their own changes for the update cycle via the WWW. This is going to be a reality, in time for this year's item selection update cycle. We will begin the cycle this year on June 2nd with an ending date of July 31. The update cycle packets with the annual item selection printouts will be mailed to the libraries, but this year they will not include the "green cards." Rather, they will include the library's password to allow the library to do their own changes on a form available on the Web. By automating this process LPS will save a great number of hours that are usually used for inputting the update cycle changes. And libraries will be able to make their own changes and see what changes they have requested in a timely manner. Because of the need to have as many libraries as possible do their own data entry, we are asking that no more green cards be submitted after June 2, 1997. For those few libraries that are not able to access the FDLP Administration page, they will need to contact DAB staff to get the traditional green card package. Please do not let us know now that you are unable to access the Internet to do these changes, wait until the update cycle package arrives in your library in mid- to late May. To summarize, I request Council's assistance in reviewing the need to have the LPS internal page listing all Browse Electronic Titles listings made available to the public and the advisability of maintaining this page with the frames format that is currently in use on this page. And I will keep Council advised of events associated with the USGS on-demand project we are attempting to develop for the DRG CD-ROMs. I thank you for your time this morning.