Administrative Notes Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program Vol. 19, no. 03 GP 3.16/3-2:19/03 January 25, 1998 Recent Activities of the Electronic Transition Staff Remarks by Sandy Schwalb Electronic Transition Staff, Library Programs Service Before the Federal Documents Task Force Government Documents Round Table American Library Association Saturday, January 10, 1998 New Orleans, LA Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here in the land of etouffe and beignets. I appreciate this opportunity to report to you on the activities of the Electronic Transition Staff. As Gil has already mentioned, those of us in ETS, Lee Morey, Joe Paskoski, George Barnum and I, are involved in numerous projects and related activities that will ensure a more electronically-based Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). FDLP PARTNERS Since George came on board this past July, he has been concentrating on forging new partnerships and strengthening those already in existence between depository libraries and Federal agencies. I will briefly describe some of the recent partnerships that have been established. For more information and background on the partnership program, you will find a sheet in the back of the room detailing the different types of partnerships and requirements. [Also available in Administrative Notes, vol. 18, no. 16 (12/15/97) and on GPO Access at http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/depos/adnotes.html.] FDLP/ERIC Digital Library Pilot Project I am pleased to report that after months of negotiations, GPO, the National Library of Education (NLE) and OCLC will be working together to make public domain reports from the Education Resources Information Clearinghouse (ERIC) available online through the FDLP. The FDLP/ERIC Digital Library Pilot Project is initially scheduled to run through 1998 and will provide the participants with valuable information on managing a large, high demand collection in electronic format. Reports from January 1997 forward will be converted to TIFF image format and stored at OCLC, with access available through OCLC 's First Search. Up to 250 new reports are expected to be added each month. This project should help us to gain insights on user behavior, different interfaces, and possibly on the impact on sales of products when there is a no-fee electronic dissemination channel. Documents Data Miner Wichita State University is partnering with LPS to make the Documents Data Miner (DDM), a collection management tool, available for use by depositories. The DDM search engine features a field searchable current List of Classes and Discontinued List, complete depository profiles and union lists, an electronic rolodex for all depository libraries, and support for creation of in-house relational databases. When the testing of this site is complete, it will be linked off the FDLP Tools page. UIC/OTA George Barnum is currently working with the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) on a draft memorandum of understanding on a partnership arrangement to make the electronic Government information products from the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) legacy collection permanently accessible under the auspices of the FDLP. Although the OTA files have been available from various sites, GPO and UIC will now assure permanent accessibility under this agreement. Future Partnership ETS staff has other irons in the fire in the partnership arena, but at the moment most of them are in the preliminary stages. We are especially interested in one possible project in which a significant historical collection from a U.S. Government agency may be digitized and made available over the Web. We have also started very preliminary conversations with STAT-USA about permanent accessibility issues for some of the data in their product, and have a potential university partner waiting in the wings. We will certainly keep the depository community up-to-date on these and related activities. Web activities Joe Paskoski continues to work with other staff in LPS, including Robin Haun-Mohamed and Sheila McGarr, on a number of web-based projects, such as AskLPS, which Gil touched on briefly. Robin will be discussing AskLPS in greater detail tomorrow at the Federal Documents Task Force Work Groups meeting. The web projects, including the item selection update process, are designed to make life easier for the depository community as well as for the depository distribution and acquisitions staff at GPO. Another project on which Joe is working is an LPS Virtual Web tour. A rough prototype of the tour is ready, and the next step will be to load photos onto the site. An announcement will be made as soon as it is ready for public viewing. Browse Topics The Pathway Browse Topics service is being enhanced and expanded with the assistance of many of you. Currently, 33 topic areas have been developed and kept up-to-date by 29 volunteers. This project is being coordinated by Lee Morey. In order to keep this project viable, we ask that those individuals who adopt a topic provide quarterly reviews of that topic to Lee. If an individual is, for any reason, unable to contribute time to this effort, Lee would like to be notified. We would appreciate a long-term commitment, but understand that there are many factors that could prevent that. If you find, therefore, that you are unable to work on the project for a while, please let us know so we can make arrangements with other individuals to ensure that the topic continues to receive attention. The main Browse Topics page is now getting about 5000 visits per month. This number does not count individual bookmarked topics. You can visit this site at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/dpos/topics/invite.html. Foreign Affairs On-Line The U.S. Information Agency (USIA) is working with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) to provide access and authentication to online foreign affairs documents Governmentwide; currently referred to as the Foreign Affairs Documentation Center (FADC). Lee and George have been attending planning meetings and providing input and expertise while looking at ways in which this centralized registry could benefit the FDLP. We have been able to make some useful contributions to this discussion on the collection management and permanent public access fronts. NTIS/FDLP Interagency Agreement In December, an historic Interagency Agreement (IA) was signed between the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and GPO's Library Programs Service (LPS) to establish a pilot project through which NTIS will furnish U.S. Government information products in electronic image format to the FDLP. In order to assure free public access to these products, the GPO, as the administrator of the depository program, and NTIS have agreed that products delivered under this agreement will be subject to the rules surrounding the use and accessibility of material in the depository program. This pilot project should provide both GPO and NTIS with practical experience in the delivery of documents in electronic image format to depository libraries. Under the agreement, FDLP libraries and users will identify and request documents in image format using NTIS' OrderNow Online and NTIS' 10-year title file. The range of documents included in the project is expanding now that NTIS has begun to scan incoming documents or as documents in electronic image format are received by NTIS from the originating agencies. The additional products available through the project will be documents from a variety of agencies numbered in the "PB" series. As many of you know from previous update sessions, NTIS has been working with Linda Kennedy and her staff at the University of California - Davis on the initial phase of this pilot project. Now that an agreement has been officially struck, NTIS would like to work with one additional high-end library for the short term. Duncan Aldrich of the University of Nevada-Reno has graciously agreed to be the next test site for NTIS. This next phase should begin after we return from the ALA meeting. What we envision as the long-term pilot will eventually include up to 20 libraries, ranging from higher-end academic/research institutions to small libraries that have an interest in this material, but might not have high-tech equipment. This will help NTIS determine what technical specifications libraries should have in order to access these electronic image files. I am working with Kristin Vajs, of NTIS, to work out a timetable for adding more institutions this coming spring. We are aware that a number of you have informally volunteered to participate in this pilot. Now that we have a signed agreement with NTIS, I am sure that we will be choosing additional participants very soon. We certainly appreciate your continued interest in this project. Should you have any questions about the project, I would be pleased to discuss it with you here at the conference and when we return to our duty stations back home (I love that government-speak!) Department of Energy Last, but far from least, I am pleased to be able to announce that GPO has signed an Interagency Agreement (IA) with the Department of Energy (DOE) that will provide GPO, depository libraries and the public with access to DOE reports in electronic image format. Under this IA, FDLP libraries and users will enter the DOE electronic dissemination system, called, "Information Bridge," through GPO Access. This gateway will provide a public view to the DOE reports. My colleagues and I in ETS and LPS are very excited about this project. It has been in the works for most of the 16 months I have been with GPO. As many of you know, the DOE microfiche program was eliminated at the end of fiscal year 1996. There was much back and forth between us at GPO and the staff of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) on how we could get the massive amount of the DOE electronic image files into the depository program as easily and cost-effectively as possible. As it turned out, the new director of OSTI, Walter Warnick, who took the helm about a year ago, wanted to forge partnerships as well, so we had much common ground. As Fran mentioned, he had the opportunity to sign the IA with the director of OSTI about a month ago and now my colleagues in ETS and technical staff at OSTI are working together to ensure that the DOE/OSTI web site will be user-friendly for the depository community. A number of your colleagues from institutions that have selected the DOE material in microfiche were asked to informally examine the DOE site and provide feedback, which they all did, I might add, right before the holiday rush. We really appreciate the time they took to provide meaningful comments that we can share with the OSTI staff. We expect a roll-out of the depository library version of "Information Bridge" to occur during the April Federal Depository Library Conference to be held in Washington, DC. Thank you for this opportunity to share some recent ETS activities with you.