As you have likely heard by now, we have a goal of digitizing all retrospective federal publications back to the earliest days of the Federal Government. A Request for Proposal (RFP) for Mass Digitization Opportunities has now been released via Federal Business Opportunities. Here's a link to this proposal and additional information on GPO's digitization initiatives. Proposals are due by September 19, 2008.

We are in search of a cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship with a private or public sector participants where the uncompressed, unaltered files created as a result of the conversion process are delivered to GPO at no cost to the Government. These files will serve as the digital master copies that will be preserved and used for the creation of access derivatives within GPO's Federal Digital System. In exchange, the contractor will be able to maintain a collection of files produced in the process for inclusion in their collections (e.g., search indices, book search sites). This content will be made available online, free of charge from GPO.

Also, if you haven't yet seen it, we have re-launched the Registry of U.S. Government Publication Digitization Projects, which contains records for projects that include digitized copies of publications originating from the U.S. Government.

The Registry...

• serves as a locator tool for publicly accessible collections of digitized U.S. Government publications;
• increases awareness of U.S. Government publication digitization projects that are planned, in progress, or completed;
• fosters collaboration for digitization projects;

GPO is actively soliciting all interested parties who plan to digitize federal publications within the scope of the FDLP to contribute to the
registry of digitization projects.

I am very interested in hearing what you think about GPO's direction regarding digitization and where you would like to see us go.