ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES NEWSLETTER OF THE FEDERAL DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM Vol. 19, no. 07 GP 3.16/3-2:19/07 May 15, 1998 LPS PROGRESS REPORT REMARKS BY GIL BALDWIN Chief, Library Division, Library Programs Service Before the Depository Library Council and Federal Depository Conference Monday, April 20, 1998 Arlington, VA Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Library Programs Service portion of the morning program. It's great to have another terrific turnout for the spring Council and Conference. We're proud to be able to host what has become the annual premier event for the nation's Government information librarians. In my time this morning I'll address the status of the transition to a more electronic Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Then I'll tell you about some new developments and some works in progress. I'll touch on what should be a real enhancement to communications between LPS, depository libraries, and other program participants. But right now I'd like to have all of the LPS people who are here stand up and be recognized. I think this country is very fortunate to have such a dedicated group working on getting Government information out to the public. And when I say that I don't mean just these people here today, but also all of the team back in the red brick building, who are busy making sure you'll have a stack of boxes to process when you get home. I hope that many of you will take the opportunity to come downtown and take one of the tours of LPS. These are being offered Tuesday morning and both morning and afternoon on Wednesday. You can sign up at the registration desk. But if you can't find the time to get away and take the physical tour, we're pleased to announce that you can now take a virtual tour of LPS via the Web. Just a click on and you'll be able to "mouse through" our operation from receiving through shipping, from acquisitions through cataloging, from classification to microfiche conversion, from soup to nuts. I want to thank Joe Paskoski and Mike Clark for getting the virtual tour together, and if you drop by Joe's talk table Wednesday morning in the Rappahannock Room he'll give you a peek. Status of the Transition Concerning the transition to a more electronic FDLP, we are now about 21/2 years into the 5 to 7 years process. This is an evolutionary process, similar to replacing one computer system with another. Today we are in a parallel processing period, where you keep using the old system running while developing, installing, testing, and debugging the new. An example of this occurs in cases where we continue to distribute tangible copies of certain titles to depository libraries even when the originating agency also publishes the same content over the Internet. Let me revisit an issue from the October 1997 Council meeting to elaborate on this. Last year LPS developed and publicized criteria for identifying and evaluating candidate publications that are currently distributed to depository libraries in microfiche format, and that the originating agency also makes available to the public online. As part of the transition to a more electronic FDLP, LPS had proposed to discontinue distribution of the microfiche and point to the online version for use by depository libraries and the public. During the discussions at the fall meeting, concerns were raised about the provision of permanent access to such titles. This is a serious issue, and one that we had not yet fully addressed for this type of information. Inasmuch as we are still developing a comprehensive approach to ensuring permanent access to this category of electronic products it is premature to proceed at this time with eliminating related tangible information products from the FDLP. However, we are working to develop content partnerships, notification procedures, and other mechanisms to ensure permanent public access to agency electronic information products. Once these mechanisms are in place LPS will proceed with identifying and replacing candidate tangible products with reliable, official, and permanent electronic versions. The inclusion of electronic information in the FDLP is proceeding in a rational fashion, in tandem with developments in the publishing agencies. Early in the transition we looked into converting print publications to electronic formats. We determined that for us to outrun the publishing agencies was not only very expensive, but also did not adequately take into account the usability of the electronic products or the libraries' or the public's ability to access them. So our focus today is to improve our awareness of what agencies are doing, and to incorporate their electronic products into the FDLP Electronic Collection. Comparative figures for print and electronic distributions indicate that the electronic transition may be farther along than you think, even though we are following the more gradual, evolutionary path. In the nearly 4 years since GPO Access began back in June 1994 we have provided access to over 110,000 titles via the Internet. These FDLP Electronic Collection titles include resources available on GPO Access, at partner sites, and on agency sites, which we describe and link to. It does not include the over 160,000 Web objects or pages that we index for the Pathway indexer. Over the same 4-year period, we've distributed over 200,000 titles to depository libraries in paper, microfiche, and CD-ROM formats, so you can see that the FDLP is already running at more than 35% electronic. So, when will the FDLP be "all electronic?" I don't expect to ever see it. I believe that for many years to come this will be a mixed-format program, with an enduring print product component, including both paper and microfiche. Yes, the numbers of tangible products are probably going to continue to decline, but they're not going to disappear. The Government information environment is yet another example of a new technology augmenting the old, not eliminating it. Nevertheless, the direction of the trend line is clear--we know where the growth area is. Every one of us must balance the complex issues attending the transition to electronic information dissemination and our need to maintain ongoing traditional services. During the coming years we will continue the transition of the FDLP from paper to electronic formats, consistent with the needs of users and the intended usage. And we will further develop the suite of locator services and cataloging initiatives to enable the public to locate Government information regardless of format. Finding Tools and Bibliographic Control This leads me to a very exciting development; one which holds a great deal of promise for depository librarians and our users. I'm talking about a significant improvement in our cataloging and locator services. We now have an integrated process for providing bibliographic control to Internet resources. We have our different tools working together in a seamless fashion, in a consistent manner, which should improve the utility of these services while taking a maintenance burden off of you. When we learn about a new Government product on the Internet, either from an announcement, an inquiry, or from our Web mining efforts, we assign that resource a PURL, a Permanent Uniform Resource Locator, and we announce it in our Browse Electronic Titles Pathway service. Then we catalog it and we include the PURL in the cataloging record. That means that wherever that GPO cataloging record is used, whether in our own Web catalog, or in your local OPACS, the user can move directly from the description to the content. And when the URL changes, we can fix the problem for everybody by updating our PURL resolver table. This is a key development, and provides a critical element to our ability to manage the products in the FDLP Electronic Collection. It's the kind of "behind the scenes" work that is not too glamorous but which can make a real difference in people's ability to locate and use electronic information. This effort involved people in our Cataloging and Depository Administration Branches, our Electronic Transition Staff, as well as in GPO's Production area. I particularly want to thank Tad Downing and Robin Haun-Mohamed for their leadership on this complicated business. Both of them will be covering more of the details in their remarks. FDLP Collection Plan One of last year's key developments was the "collection management" concept. When we began working on this we said that GPO will manage the various electronic Government information products made permanently accessible via GPO Access as a library-like collection. Since then the concept has expanded, resulting in a more global view of our role in the electronic information arena. You have already heard me refer to the FDLP Electronic Collection, and this is another area where a lot of work and thought has been going on behind the scenes. In our planning we recognize that GPO is building the FDLP Electronic Collection using GPO resources, and is coordinating permanent access through a distributed networked system. We see the whole body of electronic Government information that is in scope for the FDLP is part of our public access mission. And we refer to that body of products as the FDLP Electronic Collection. This is a more expansive view of the Collection than you have heard from us before. The FDLP Electronic Collection consists of four elements: 1) core legislative and regulatory GPO Access products which will reside permanently on Government Printing Office (GPO) servers; 2) other remotely accessible products managed by GPO or other institutions with which GPO has established formal agreements; 3) the tangible electronic Government information products distributed to Federal depository libraries; and 4) remotely accessible electronic Government information products that GPO identifies, describes, and links to but which remain under the control of the originating agencies. Portions of the Collection, other than the core legislative and regulatory GPO Access products, may be maintained at partner institutions, including other Federal agencies, depository libraries, consortia, or other institutions, such as OCLC. But the FDLP Electronic Collection is also a way to visualize what we must address to ensure permanent, future public access to electronic Government information products, whether those products are shipped to depository libraries or made accessible via the Web. In our policy and planning discussions we have taken the position that GPO's permanent access responsibility extends to electronic Government information products that we bring under bibliographic control through our cataloging and locator services, but which remain on their originating agencies' servers. This commitment demonstrates how important the PURL/Pathways/Cataloging continuum is to managing these products. I'm not going to dwell on the Collection concept too much right now, because George Barnum and I will be a doing a full presentation on this topic tomorrow morning in this same room. We hope you'll be there to join in on the discussion of the collection issues and how they can assist in fulfilling our goal of providing current and permanent access to Government information. Collections Web Page As you know, one of the early manifestations of the collection concept is a digital collection on GPO Access known as the "Core Documents of U.S. Democracy: An Electronic Collection" which we created almost a year ago. But now we're taking this to the next level. Thanks to former Council member and now library inspector Cindy Etkin, we're developing a set of "FDLP Electronic Collections" Web pages for GPO Access. These pages will provide links to a variety of electronic collection resources, both inside and beyond GPO. We will link to full-text content and a complete array of finding tools. We hope to have this application up for comment soon, and will welcome Council's feedback when the service is available for review. Biennial Survey Highlights Let's turn for a moment to a few highlights from the 1997 Biennial Survey. As you no doubt recall that was our first Biennial Survey conducted via the Web, and overall we were really pleased with the experience. We hope it was an improvement from your perspective as well. There were some interesting things in the responses, and they serve as a kind of barometer for the state of the program. * Over 89% of the libraries report having Internet available at public access work stations. 10.7% lack Internet at public access work stations. * Over 90% provide GPO Access to the public through the Web, but 6.7% do not provide it at all. * 51% of you have an adequate budget for computer hardware and software replacement. Another 38% report an inadequate budget and almost 11% report no such budget at all. * Almost 95% of the depositories have CD-ROM capability and select CDs. Another 3.1% have CD-ROM capability but do not select CDs. For any of you who may want to perform some additional research using the 1997 Biennial Survey, the raw data is available from the Federal Bulletin Board on GPO Access. The files include the text of the Biennial Survey, data conversion table, and the answers from each depository in comma-delimited format. Depository librarians can use the data to compare their depository operations with others in their peer group or within their state or region. NCLIS Assessment A critical component of our transition to a more electronic FDLP is information about the standards and mediums being used or which agencies plan to use for electronic dissemination. GPO and the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) have entered into an interagency agreement to conduct an "assessment of electronic government information products." The assessment will: * identify medium and format standards that are the most appropriate for permanent public access; * assess the cost-effectiveness and usefulness of various alternative medium and format standards; and * identify public and private medium and format standards that are, or could be used for products throughout their entire information life cycle, not just at the dissemination or permanent public access stage. NCLIS, working through the Department of Education, will contract to undertake research and data collection from a select number of Federal agencies in all three branches as well as solicit opinions from selected knowledgeable experts. The contractor will complete an analysis of the data and opinions and produce a final report that will be available from GPO. Mr. Woody Horton from NCLIS will provide you with a complete update on the project on Wednesday afternoon at 3:45 p.m. But in the meantime, I want to invite you to participate in the process. As some of you know, we have asked agencies, library associations, and other interested parties to recommend agency information products to be included in the data gathering phase of this project. You may have already been contacted about this by GODORT or through another channel. Depository librarians have a critical role in the success of the assessment, because of the unique knowledge you possess about agencies' products and your users' needs. There is a handout here on the project, and it includes an explanation of the criteria for suggesting products for the study. I've also included an early version of LPS' working list of suggestions, so you can see what's already been covered. askLPS Last fall I announced that we were beginning work on a Web-based inquiries and announcements module that should improve your ability to ask us questions, find news from LPS, and determine what problems have already been resolved. Just this month LPS began accepting inquiries and questions from depository librarians and the public via our new askLPS service. LPS appreciates the advice and active participation of Council member Julia Wallace in the testing and development of this new service. askLPS is available by e-mail or via the Web. We have a handout here with the addresses and we welcome your use of this new service. askLPS is an automated inquiry service that makes filing inquiries and directing e-mail to the appropriate LPS contact easier for those in the depository community. There are five components to askLPS: 1) An electronic inquiry form; 2) WEBTech Notes, a searchable database for postings made in the Administrative Notes and Administrative Notes Technical Supplement, dating back to 1991; 3) FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and News; 4) FDLP Contacts; and 5) The Federal Depository Library Directory. This service is important to us, and we hope that you will use it. Last month, LPS received over 2200 inquiries from outside the walls of GPO; about 75% of them by e-mail and nearly another 20% by phone. So everything that you channel through this service should help you and it will help us. All askLPS inquiries originating from the Web page will receive an immediate response acknowledging the receipt of the inquiry. We are still working on the automatic acknowledgement for the pure e-mails. LPS' goal is to respond to each inquiry sent to askLPS within 10 working days. Occasionally the first response may be an interim answer when responding to the question requires information from another agency. Inquiries received via askLPS are being given priority over inquiries submitted via fax, telephone, or regular mail. Focusing on this one channel for inquiries should help LPS to track the inquiries as they arrive, and should also minimize the duplication of effort to research inquiries by staff throughout LPS. If an inquiry submitted via fax, telephone, or regular mail is on a matter of general concern to the depository community the response will be incorporated into one of the askLPS applications. Depending upon the subject matter of the inquiry, in addition to a direct reply to the person making the inquiry, the response may appear in the WEBTech Notes, the FAQs, or the News area of askLPS. Although LPS is giving priority to inquiries sent electronically, fax inquiry forms will continue to be a useful mechanism when additional information, such as photocopies of titles, must accompany the inquiry. I want to especially thank Robin Haun-Mohamed and her team for making askLPS happen. And with that I'm going to turn the microphone over to Robin. We'll all be around later and throughout the week. So if you have any questions, or if there's any way we can help--just look for one of us with the red GPO ribbon on our badge.