ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES NEWSLETTER OF THE FEDERAL DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM Vol. 19, no. 07 GP 3.16/3-2:19/07 May 15, 1998 THE TRANSITION: REAL AND VIRTUAL REMARKS BY SANDY SCHWALB Management Analyst, Library Programs Service Before the Depository Library Council and Federal Depository Conference Monday, April 1998 Arlington, VA Good morning. And yes, it is a pleasure to be here. Seems like only 5 years ago, well, it was actually, that I received my certificate of appreciation from GPO for my three long years of service on the Depository Library Council. Ah, they thought they were rid of me then. It didn't work. I came back to haunt GPO in August 1996, when I came on board as a member of the Electronic Transition Staff (ETS) to work as, I love this title, an "Expert Consultant." Then last August I was reappointed for another year and lo and behold a little over a month ago--on the Ides of March--I crossed the "t's" and dotted the "i's" and signed on as a permanent staffer in the Library Programs Service. Phew. Who said, "what a long strange trip it was?" And although this is not an awards show, I would like to thank the folks I have been working with for these 18 months for all of their help in getting me settled into ETS, LPS and GPO, especially Jay Young, who brought me on board and Gil Baldwin, who worked to keep me on board. Despite the fact I am no longer an official member of ETS, it will always be in my heart and for the next few minutes, up here as well. As you probably know, ETS is comprised of seasoned GPO veterans, Lee Morey and Joe Paskoski and those pesky expert consultants, who come from the "outside" and work on making the electronic transition of the depository program a reality. Lee continues to fine-tune the many facets of the suite of Pathway services available on GPO Access. Joe has been an integral part of ETS from its inception in the fall of 1995 and is the ETS and LPS "Web-meister." Currently George Barnum from Case Western Reserve University is the ETS expert consultant. George, who has been part of ETS since last July, has worked on forging new partnerships (acting oftentimes as a marriage broker) as well as managing the FDLP Electronic Collection and issues relating to Gateways. Many of the topics I will be discussing here are summarized on a real piece of paper found in the back of this room. This update will also appear in an upcoming paper and electronic issue of Administrative Notes. The paper and electronic versions include Web addresses for most of the sites I will be mentioning. LPS Virtual Tour As Gil mentioned earlier, for those who have never had an opportunity to visit GPO or would like to learn more about the operations of LPS, you can now "visit" a new Web site linked from the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) Administration Page. This virtual tour, in words and photos, follows the order in which tangible government information products are processed in preparation for dissemination to depository libraries: depository distribution area; lighted bins--yes, photos of the infamous lighted bins; mail manifest; acquisitions and classification; micrographics; cataloging; and depository services. In addition, there is information--everything you could possibly want to know or not--about the mission and operations of ETS. You can take a look at the site while here, but if you can't, we hope you have a chance to "visit" it when you get back home! Or even if you actually take the physical tour, you could look at it virtually and see how it compares! Just as Gil stole some of Robin's thunder, so she did the same to me! As I was preparing my remarks last week I noticed that we were being upstaged by the White House! As already noted, Mrs. Clinton unveiled, at the main branch of the DC Public Library no less, a CD-ROM White House tour. I was wondering when I saw the newspaper article, whether it is in fact a government document. You just heard that the answer is no, or at least it is not being distributed as such. But, ah, do THEY have lighted bins? Recommended Specifications Lee, with input from other GPO colleagues has put together DRAFT recommended specifications to assist you and others in the depository community who are planning purchases of new personal computers for public use in the libraries. A hard copy of these specs can be found with the other handouts. It will be available electronically following this conference, incorporating any comments/ideas put forth here. The deadline for final comments is May 15. These specifications are intended to "assist" depository staff in making informed purchases that will best achieve the goal of providing public access to Federal government information products in a variety of electronic formats. Given the large variation in the sizes of the depositories and the numbers of users served, LPS cannot recommend one universal standard for the number of public access workstations in any given library. Other related issues and considerations can be found on the draft we have available here. We look forward to your comments and suggestions. Browse Topics The initial collection of sites for almost all 160 Topics in the Subject Bibliography-based Browse Topic list is now complete. Currently there are 33 topics being maintained by volunteers in the depository and information communities. Links have been created from Topics to relevant Subject Bibliographies. Our goal is to update all Topics on at least a quarterly basis. Lee wanted me to mention that more volunteers will be needed for Browse Topics. There will be announcement on GOVDOC-L in the next few weeks describing the work to be done by volunteers. And for those of you who have participated in the project and provided GPO with information, we want to thank you for your time and interest. Pathway Indexer We are currently maintaining our Pathway Indexer search engine of online government information using the freeware product Harvest and will continue this effort until the Advanced Search Facility is online. This service indexes well over 160,000 Web pages from over 1380 different servers with new sites added to the list daily. Gateways Several institutions have expressed interest in Gateway status. An article in the April 15 Administrative Notes outlines GPO's objectives for the Gateways initiative and gives a step-by-step view of how to proceed. Input from the existing Gateways assisted in developing this document and redefining the Gateways initiative. George wanted to be sure that I expressed the gratitude of the staff to those who provided input and spent considerable time and effort on formulating this information. Web Activities ETS, in the guise of Joe Paskoski, continues to work with other staff from LPS, Electronic Information Dissemination Service (EIDS) and GPO's Production Department on a number of Web projects. They include both the recently-completed Web Biennial Survey, and Web item selection survey. Another team project about which you have heard a great deal is askLPS, the Web-based inquiry and answer module for the depository community to communicate with LPS staff that was rolled out just last week. FDLP Electronic Collections The Department of Energy (DOE)/Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) will roll out a depository library version of its electronic dissemination system, "Information Bridge," this week. This gateway will provide a public view to the more than 25,000 reports that have been produced by DOE/OSTI since January 1996. As many of you know, this project has been in the works since DOE ceased its distribution of microfiche to depositories in October, 1996. When the announcement about the microfiche program appeared in the September 15, 1996 Administrative Notes, it said that "LPS' Electronic Transition Staff is investigating how this electronic information can most effectively be used and incorporated into the FDLP. OSTI has assured us that no lapse in coverage will occur..." It is ironic that on the same page on which that announcement appeared there was also a blurb about my then-new position with ETS. So my career at GPO has been closely intertwined with the DOE/OSTI project. We are quite pleased with the cooperation we have had with the folks down in OSTI as they worked to ensure that the Information Bridge would be both depository and public friendly. Many of my ETS colleagues were communicating in every possible form with the OSTI staff to make sure Information Bridge was up and running and could be ready to showcase here this week. As an another facet of LPS' outreach efforts, George will be speaking at an upcoming OSTI-sponsored conference, Inforum, to be held in Oak Ridge, TN in early May. He will be discussing "Libraries, Partnership, and Access to Government Information: GPO's Electronic Collection Model." The FDLP/ERIC Digital Library Pilot Project will be rolled out this summer and make public domain reports available from ERIC to depositories. Previously provided to the FDLP in microfiche, reports from January 1997 forward will be converted to TIFF image format and stored at OCLC. This pilot will provide the project participants with useful information on managing a large, high-demand electronic collection. The full pilot group of 300 libraries should have access to the products by July and access for all depositories by late 1998. Gil discussed GPO's Core Documents of U.S. Democracy: An Electronic Collection. There is a recent addition to the collection that we wanted to mention, titled, "A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873." It is from the Library of Congress Web site and the URL can be found on the ETS handout. Another project with which I have been closely involved for many months is now officially underway as a pilot with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). I hope that you have seen the announcement we recently posted to GOVDOC-L asking for volunteers to participate in this pilot project. At the moment, we have 24 institutions that have offered to be part of this pilot. We hope that those of you with questions or who are interested in participating will be able to attend the session on the project to be held on Wednesday from 2:00-3:15 p.m. in the James Room. I, along with Kris Vajs from NTIS, Linda Kennedy, University of California-Davis and Duncan Aldrich, University of Nevada at Reno will be on the panel. LPS continues to monitor and provide feedback on an effort by the U.S. Information Agency and the Corporation for National Research Initiatives to create a Foreign Affairs Documentation Center that would collect online foreign affairs documents on a government-wide basis and provide both access and authentication to those documents. Partnerships Discussions continue with several agencies and institutions for new content partnerships. Staff from LPS will be meeting with representatives from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Cartographic Users Advisory Council during this conference with an eye toward possible partnerships. Your suggestions for new partnerships are always welcome. George is the point person on the partnership activities, but feel free to contact any members of ETS with your ideas. You are the experts out there in the libraries, knowing what information you and your users need and we can certainly help to act as the conduit or marriage broker in seeing that all the parts can work together to ensure permanent public access to government information products. Conclusion So, in conclusion, that is a very brief overview of the what ETS has been working on. As you can see there is much collaboration between ETS and the other units within LPS--all of which is focused on moving the FDLP to a more electronically based program. As I mentioned, the current members of ETS will be here this week. We all look forward to hearing from you.