The folks over at radicalcartography.net have just made available the Statistical Atlas of the 9th US Census (1870) as a bulk download. It's great that this amazing government publication is finding interest by the public -- and that the radical cartographers are doing lots of cool projects like Census Demographics.

However, it should be noted that it's been available online for a while from both the Library of Congress and the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER). And of course it's also available in paper from Federal Depository Libraries across the US. I'd recommend that all you radical cartographers, cartographer wanna be's, history buffs, data geeks etc get thee to your local Federal Depository Library to see what the Federal govt has published over the last 200+ years and also check out what your libraries are digitizing and putting online. You'll be glad you did.

Presented here are all of the maps and charts from the first statistical atlas of the US Census, widely praised in its time and still a wonderful example of sophisticated graphics, the out-of-date racial/psychological nomenclature notwithstanding. The atlas is available page-by-page from the Library of Congress, but you can download it in bulk here.

[Thanks BoingBoing!]

February 2010 marked the first month where the only documents posted to the Lost Docs Blog were receipts submitted during that month or during the last week of the preceeding month.

We also established a new blog category that we hope we will not need to use very much. That category is "Explanation Needed" and if you need an explanation, see my blog entry about it.

Now on to the February 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal

REPORT

In February 2010, we posted 27 "lost docs" e-mail receipts sent by GPO to the librarians who reported these missing documents. These civic minded librarians in turn e-mailed us their receipts. How many reports did GPO receive? Only they know, but the more people who send their fugitive docs e-mail receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, the more accurate our count will be.

Of these 27 reported items, two items have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with February 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, six of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with February 2010 dates.

In three of these "false positive" cases, it looks like GPO had received the tangible item near the published date of the item and cataloged an electronic equivalent, but did not distribute the tangible item to the Federal Depository Library Program. This may or may not be in accordance with GPO SOD 301 which states that budget permitting, tangible documents will be offered when both tangible and online formats are available.

With the available information in these three item CGP records, it is unclear whether GPO made a conscious, budget related decision to not offer these publication or just forgot to send them out. We encourage GPO to begin putting notes explaining why a given item was not distributed to the FDLP into the item's bibliographic record.

If you are interested in viewing this new category of publication, visit http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/explain/ and look for items with February 2010 dates.

As I stated in the post introducing the "Explanation Needed" category of the Lost Docs blog, we strongly encourage people with instances of CGP cataloged but non-distributed federal documents to use GPO Help and not GPO's Lost Docs form.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

According to Aliya Sternstein at NextGov there's a proposal in the draft federal broadband plan to create a .gov video archive called video.gov. It'll be similar to the government's data.gov initiative. Wonder when they'll create a documents.gov? Oh yeah, they already have that! It's called the FDLP and it's been around for almost 200 years!!

A proposal in the draft of the government's imminent broadband plan would create a YouTube-like online archive called Video.gov to preserve agencies' Web content and possibly information provided by the media, an official with the Federal Communications Commission said on Monday.

The planned national digital archives for the 21st century would expand upon the government's Data.gov Web site, a warehouse of downloadable federal statistics, and be maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of Congress and other agencies, said Eugene Huang, FCC's director of government performance and civic engagement for the national broadband plan.

[Thanks for the tweet Michael Riedyk at DotGov]

3/1/2010 - Updated to add criteria of non-distribution of tangible product to FDLP.

Thanks to some documents reported to FGI's Lost Docs Blog last month, the Lost Docs blog has a new category that needs explaining. The category is called "Explanation Needed."

GPO lost docs receipts submitted to lostdocs.freegovinfo.info will be assigned this category if:

1) Cataloging records exist for both tangible (Paper and/or microfiche) and online versions of the item submitted that were added to the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) earlier than the datestamp on the lost docs receipt.

2) The catalog record for the tangible version indicates that GPO cataloged the tangible version within five years of the publishing date of the item.

3) There is clear evidence from the bib record or depository librarian testimony that the tangible item was NOT offered to Federal Depository Libraries.

We have a five year limit because GPO Acquisitions staff have indicated they rarely have success in finding depository copies of tangible items more than five years old.

We at FGI don't insist that GPO distribute a tangible item when that item is solely available in an online format, but when a tangible item is available and fits the program, it should be distributed. GPO's policy on dissemination, SOD 301, states (emphasis mine), "When the product is available both online and in a tangible format, GPO will disseminate the online version to depository libraries. Tangible versions will be offered as well, budget permitting." Hopefully this means that most of the time the budget will permit this. If an item wasn't distributed for budget reasons, GPO should note this in the print record.

Until the non-distribution of these tangible items is explained and obviously noted in the cataloging record for a given item, it will keep the "Explanation Needed" tag. However, we will also continue to tag such items as "false positive" since we believe the primary focus of "lost docs" is documenting government publications that have escaped the National Bibliography GPO is required to maintain and because people do have access (at least for now) to the online version.

We encourage depositories to report non-distribution of CGP-Cataloged documents through GPO help and not through the Lost Docs form.

Open source intelligence -- not to be confused with Open-source software -- is "a form of intelligence collection management that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources (my emphasis) and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence." Libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program have since the early 1940s received output from this process in the form of Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) materials *for free*. FBIS materials offered translation of foreign news sources, and via the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) foreign language books, newspapers, journals, unclassified foreign documents and research reports. FBIS became the World News Connection in 1996, but it is a severely limited version (about half) of what's available for internal government use.

The Federal of American Scientists has more on FBIS. Check out FBIS and JPRS materials in library collections near you!

All that background as context to a very troublesome turn of events as described by a recent post on the govdoc-l list (see the email below stripped of personal information). This important piece of the govt information universe is now only available via a very expensive commercial database (World News Connection), depriving the academic and larger research communities of full access to all that is done by FBIS at taxpayer expense. Please help us by contacting the Open Source Center (OSCinfo@rccb.osis.gov 202-338-6735, or 1-800-205-8615) and Robert Tapella (PublicPrinter@gpo.gov) at the Government Printing Office and request that the Open Source Center offer free access of opensource.gov to depository libraries. Thanks!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:25:58 -0600
Subject: OpenSource.gov access

Has any library successfully gained access to OpenSource.gov?

For those who are unfamiliar with this resource, here is the what their web page says about them:

"OpenSource.gov provides timely and tailored translations, reporting and analysis on foreign policy and national security issues from the OpenSourceCenter and its partners. Featured are reports and translations from thousands of publications, television and radio stations, and Internet sources around the world. Also among the site's holdings are a foreign video archive and fee-based commercial databases for which OSC has negotiated licenses. OSC's reach extends from hard-to-find local publications and video to some of the most renowned thinkers on national security issues inside and outside the US Government. Accounts are available to US Government employees and contractors. Register today to see what OpenSource.gov has to offer."

When we tried to register, they informed that we would have to justify why we needed access to the information and that we could get the information through World News Connection (via Dialog) OR, and I quote:

"In addition to the World News Connection, individuals may be able to access OSC products through university libraries, or the Federal Depository Library Program. Many Depository Libraries received CDs from the US Government Printing Office that contain select Open Source Center products." [The CDs that they are referring to are the FBIS materials (PREX 7.10/3:)]

In our response, we informed them that WNC was an expensive database they we could not afford and that their information regarding OSC being distributed through the FDLP was sorely out of date since the CDs have NOT been distributed for over 5 years.

In their response, they say they are considering adding additional agencies such as the Federal Depository Library (FDL) as part of the approved list of agencies in OpenSource.gov., but such a review would take a considerable amount of time to do. (I took this to mean, when 'ell freezes over.) Now here is the strange part--they think the FDLP is under the Dept of Interior and we could sign up that way--but our email address would need to have .gov or .mil in it. I am not sure, but I think they are actually referring to the Natural Resource Library in the U.S. Dept of Interior, which is a federal depository library, with which we are not associated, so this is NOT an option.

At this point I am stymied as to how we can have access to information that was formerly available FOR FREE through depository but is now only available through commercial ($$$) means. I know that GPO is aware that the CDs are no longer being distributed because of the creation of the OpenSource database. The only message I could find about this situation via the GOVDOC-L archives was from 2007 when they said "FDLP is still working with the agency OSC to get an agreement with how we are going to access their database." It is now 3 years later and we still do not have access to this information.

In the meantime, we have a professor on campus doing research in Middle East affairs and would like to have access to more recent information than what we have in our library via microfiche and CDs. We can not afford WNC, so I don't know what else we can do--except get access to OpenSource.gov. If anyone has been successful, I would be happy to hear how you did it.

The Government Printing Office (GPO) has posted their recent session on reporting fugitive documents at their OPAL archive:

Helping GPO Identify Fugitive Publications presented in January 2010 by Joe McClane, Manager of Content Acquisitions, and Linda Nainis, Acquisitions Librarian, U.S. Government Printing Office.

• Streaming audio with slides (runtime 69:10)
• Downloadable MP3 audiorecording (22 MB; runtime 69:10)

If you have any interest in the fugitive document problem -- agencies publishing information that slips between the cracks -- I highly recommend this session. This is an informative and frank discussion about GPO's efforts to address this problem and how librarians and other interested govinfo types can help contribute to the solution. Or at least one solution among many.

[UPDATE: I added the slides for Tom Bruce's talk]

Shinjoung and I submitted a panel on the future of govt information for iConference 2010 in Champaign, IL. We had a good far-reaching discussion with Tom Bruce (Cornell Legal Information Institute), Daniel Schuman (Sunlight Foundation) and Cindy Etkin (GPO). Below are my slides and notes. I've also attached the notes and abstract as PDFs. As Tom tweeted, "World's problems: solved."

If the other panelists agree, I'll post their notes/slides as well. This is of course an ongoing conversation so please feel free to leave comments, questions, rants etc.

--that is all!

3:45 - 5:15 pm Thursday, February 4, 2010
Roundtable 4 : : Technology Room
"Gone today, Here tomorrow: assuring access to government information in the digital age." ShinJoung Yeo, University of Illinois; and James R. Jacobs, Stanford University

Panelists:

• Shinjoung Yeo, Moderator
• James Jacobs, Stanford University Library
• Thomas Bruce (Legal Information Institute, Cornell University)
• Daniel Schuman (Sunlight Foundation policy director)
• Cindy Etkin (Govt Printing Office)

[SLIDE 1: govt documents]

Right up front, I'm a librarian and a collaborator in the LOCKSS distributed digital preservation project (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). I've been in academia/education my whole life as a student, teacher, librarian and technologist. I've been a government information/FDLP librarian since 2002 and currently am serving a 3 year term on the Depository Library Council, the body which informs and advises the Govt Printing Office regarding issues of the Federal Depository Library Program (which Cindy talked about). So my mindset/perspective/bias is from one who assists in the scholarly communication process, one who believes that libraries have a place in the digital information landscape, and one who believes strongly in the idea that access to govt information is a fundamental right. As Ralph Nader has said, “There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.” And there can be no citizenship without access to government information.

[SLIDE 2: mmm documents]

With that in mind, I'd like to talk about the underlying historical ideals of the FDLP, discuss how those ideals have been under fire from both within and without the library community and argue that those ideals applied to today's information landscape give us the best chance at access to and long-term preservation and assurance of govt information.

[SLIDE 3: FDLP logo]

The federal depository library program (FDLP) has been around since 1813 in one form or another. The basis underlying the need for an FDLP is to give the public free access to government information. Depository libraries have long safeguarded the public's right to know by cooperating with and receiving for free the govt publications published by the Govt Printing Office (GPO), organizing, maintaining, and preserving those publications, assisting users in accessing said information in a geographically dispersed system and most importantly, assured that govt information is freely available and tamper-proof -- think Napster for govt information. Taken together, the collections of the 1238 depository libraries make up the historic corpus of govt information available for free to every citizen. Jessamyn West of librarian.net, recently called the FDLP the longest running open source project. I would add that it's the longest government-run public-centric open-source project to support the democratic ideal.

[SLIDE CHUCK QUOTE]

Over the last 20-30 years, developments in publishing and Internet technologies have affected the way government information is produced, disseminated, controlled, and preserved. These changes have affected the policies and procedures of the GPO and, in turn, have affected the depository library program. Despite the often-heard promises that Web technologies will bring more information to more people more quickly and easily, the actual effects have been decidedly mixed. The highly visible, short-term successes of rapid dissemination of single titles directly to citizens (e.g., the large number of downloads of the 9/11 report) mask the loss of a secure infrastructure (GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) notwithstanding) for long-term preservation of and access to government information as more and more agencies publish content on their own Web sites rather than using the GPO conduit (which librarians call "fugitive documents") and very few agencies publish to any standards or have policies in place that deal with archiving and preservation. As Chuck Humphrey, a data librarian friend of mine, once said, “there seems to be an inverse relationship between convenience of dissemination and preservation standards.”

In addition to this lack of a secure infrastructure, the growing din of the call for digitization of historic govt publications (most recently the Ithaka/ARL report "Documents for a Digital Democracy: A Model for the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st Century"), while no doubt a boon for access today, is somewhat of a red herring that makes library administrators believe that they will soon be able to dispose of their physical collections and use that space for today or tomorrow's buzz word. This call for digitization may instead have the deleterious affect of damaging the long-term preservation of govt publications.

Lastly, the growing trend toward privatization of govt information has actually caused a decrease in public access despite it's digital nature. This is not a new trend. Herbert Schiller noted this in 1986 in his book "Information and the Crisis Economy." Speaking of machine readable formats, he wrote that, "Library information capability is greatly enhanced. Yet this benefit is accompanied by the abandonment of libraries' historical free access policy. User charges are introduced. The public character of the library is weakening as its commercial connection deepens. No less important, the composition and character of its holdings change as the clientele shifts from general public to the ability-to-pay user."

[SLIDE: GAO contract]

We've seen over the last 30 years a disturbing rise in Federal Agencies entering into contracts with private companies whereby public domain govt documents are digitized and then taken out of the commons via licensing agreements. See for example, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)'s deal with Thomson-West whereby Thomson-West digitized the GAO's 20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995 and in return received exclusive license to sell access to the content. GAO received nothing in return but an account on Thomson's service while the public received nothing at all.

Rapid technological change and the misplaced assumption that "it's all in google" have caused some in the FDLP community to question the need for the FDLP and some others to drop out of the program altogether. I believe that the inherent nature of digital information actually increases the need for a distributed network of dedicated, legislatively authorized libraries. It would be prudent to draw upon the existing infrastructure of FDLP libraries and the almost 200 years of cumulative experience of these institutions in assuring preservation of and access to government information. We must reinforce FDLP’s traditional mission of selection, collection, free access, and preservation of government information in the digital era in order to assure free access to this information into the foreseeable future. Some in the depository community, like my library, are doing just that by participating in the LOCKSS-USDOCS network, harvesting digital govt information -- for example, harvesting openCRS that Daniel mentioned along with other sites that post CRS reports -- and yes digitizing parts of their collections. But we need more libraries not less.

[SLIDE: FDLP ecosystem]

Nobody knows for sure how to preserve digital content for the long-term. This means to me that a loosely coupled, independently administered, distributed ecosystem is the best way to assure long-term preservation -- many organizations with many funding models and a distributed technical infrastructure(s) have a better shot at preservation than 1 or 2 organizations -- especially if one of those organizations has a tenuous budget, or is a private corporation etc.

Imagine if you will 2 future govt information systems: on the one hand, the system where there are one or two digital collections (say for example GPO's Federal Digital System (fdsys) and Portico, the dark archive currently housing digital journals); and on the other hand, one with many digital collections in fdlp libraries. How would each of these deal with or react to different stress situations or threat models (e.g., reduced budgets, increased demand for privatization, increased demand for censorship or control or removal of information, media/hardware/software/network failure, natural disaster, organizational failure etc.)? It's easy to see that a highly replicated, distributed FDLP model of preservation would deal with these situations much better than a centralized model. A web is much stronger than a silo.

[SLIDE: Federal Register XML]

law.gov, Carl Malamud’s proposal for a registry and repository of all legal information -- from what I've seen and heard and read, is a compelling proposal for a significant piece of the federal (and state) legal information ecosystem. What we ought to be doing is a) figuring out how to make law.gov a reality; b) figuring out how to expand it beyond legal materials to include ALL federal information -- information from all 3 branches of government, federal agencies as well as the regional and local offices of those agencies, data and statistics, the entire Congressional/legislative process including the funding that goes into that process to grease the skids so to speak, and making sure public information stays in public control; and c) MOST IMPORTANTLY from my perspective as a librarian, figure out how to preserve that ecosystem for the long term so that the public can inform itself not just today or tomorrow but 100 years from now. Now the 4 of us on this panel are just 4 players with dogs in this fight. But if we agree on the goals, then we ought to work together to proceed toward them and mobilize our communities and the public to support this endeavor.

It's going to take the government (and not just GPO) being serious about transparency and funding the necessary changes in its own federal information distribution system to include open format standards with no DRM, bulk data channels, indexing, description, collection and authentication of information resources, multiple digital preservation strategies to not only assure preservation but also to insure against tampering and deletion of vital information (which, as I've stated earlier, the FDLP historically has done very well!). It's also going to take libraries being serious about and applying the ideals of the FDLP to build a distributed digital infrastructure that takes into account access to as well as preservation of digital govt information.

I agree with Tom and am absolutely convinced that the changes in the information ecosystem that are needed should not be left to the market because the information market leans heavily toward monopoly, proprietary standards, licensing restrictions, lack of access, "rights management" and the like.

If an evolving ecosystem that is free, open, standards-based, authenticated, and privacy-protecting is built and sustained correctly then citizens, libraries, non-profit watchdogs, hackers, activists, AND government will thrive.

[SLIDE 7: THANKS! lockss, archive-it]

digital changes a lot of things about information, but it doesn't change the need to fund it, collect it, share it, preserve it, and give access to it. As my friend and colleague Jim Jacobs recently stated, "lots of collections keep stuff safe!"

This month's depository spotlight shines on University of Maryland's Thurgood Marshall law Library. Congratulations to Bill Sleeman, Jeff Elliott and the rest of the staff at TMLL! The spotlight highlights 2 solid long-standing digital projects from TMLL:

• Historical Publications of the US Commission on Civil Rights
• Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports focusing on various aspects of law and foreign policy (for which I heavily rely both as a trusted information source and a source of harvesting for my CRS harvesting project

For those projects as well as their everyday work to support their community, TMLL deserves the spotlight!

But I also found another aspect of their work very interesting and worthy of highlighting. This aspect was mentioned in the post to the FDLP-l listserv announcing the spotlight:

Do you ever wonder how your library can contribute online content to the depository community when you do not have a large staff, extensive resources, or state-of-the-art digitization facilities? Read about the variety of projects that the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland School of Law manages. Despite being geared towards the Thurgood Marshall Law Library's own specific user group, every library can profit from their focused and high quality endeavors.

Many libraries are creating unique digital research collections that both support their own local user base as well as the larger public's information needs. Depository collections offer a vast and rich base from which to build these digital collections. Whether you work in a library that supports 900 or 90,000 information seekers, depository libraries can and DO assist in the larger collaborative work of giving access (digital or otherwise) to historic and current government documents. Whether your library is hosting 10 digital documents locally or involved in a collaborative digital project in partnership with GPO and/or a federal agency, please consider listing your collection in the FDLP Registry of U.S. Government Publication Digitization Projects

Congratulations once again to the staff at the Thurgood Marshall Law Library!

With the January 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal, we have come to the last of our "saved receipts" with which we first seeded the blog. This means that starting February 1, 2010, every single posting to the Lost Docs Blog will be a receipt submitted during that month or during the last week of the proceeding month. That means that if everyone who sent in a lost document report to GPO also sent to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, we would have an accurate report of the volume of document reports provided to GPO. We hope you will help make this happen.

Now on to the January 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal

REPORT

Thanks to the continued generosity of documents librarians, we posted 85 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. About two thirds of these items were reported during December 2009/January 2010.

Of these 85 reported items, 11 items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with January 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, three of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with January 2010 dates.

There were two items added to the "E-Version Needs Cataloging" category. You can view these items by visiting http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/catalog-eversion and looking for items with January 2010 dates. If your library has either of these documents, please consider adding an 856 field to the record(s) so your patrons will be able to link to the electronic version(s) through your catalog.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month. It is best if you can send us the receipt the same day you get it from GPO. Some e-mail programs will support auto-forwarding. If so, please consider autoforwarding items where the subject contains "lostdocs submission."
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

If you'd like to hone your skills at locating and reporting fugitive documents, check out this e-mail from GPO:

----------------------

From: Announcements from the Federal Depository Library Program
[mailto:GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV] On Behalf Of FDLP Listserv
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 12:40 PM
To: GPO-FDLP-L@LISTSERV.ACCESS.GPO.GOV
Subject: Chat with GPO: Helping GPO Identify Fugitive Publications

On Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 1:30PM EST, Joe McClane, Manager of
GPO's Content Acquisitions and Linda Nainis, GPO's Acquisitions
Librarian will discuss how documents librarians can help GPO identify
fugitive publications. 

The presentation will feature a 30-minute slideshow that explains how
GPO staff find fugitive documents and ways the community can help GPO
improve the researching and processing of new documents. Time will be
allocated at the end of the session for questions. 

Space is limited to the first 100 participants on a first come basis.
GPO recommends arriving at least 10 minutes early in order to reserve
your spot and test your connection.

Connect to the GPO OPAL Room:
<http://www.conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs38bb0e4b3a5a>.

For more information on GPO's OPAL implementation and OPAL requirements,
visit: <http://www.fdlp.gov/outreach/onlinelearning/68-opal>.

_________________________________

If you have questions or comments, please use the askGPO help service
at: <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/help>. When submitting a question,
please choose the category "Federal Depository Libraries" and the
appropriate subcategory, if any, in order to ensure that your question
is routed to the correct area.

-----------------------

If you have an interest in identifying fugitive publications, I strongly encourage you to attend this OPAL session. The better reports that GPO has, the faster any given item will be cataloged. This benefits everyone. Hope to see you there.

In September 2009 we at Free Government Information (FGI) started the "lost docs blog" at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info to collect your receipts from GPO about the fugitive documents you reported through GPO's lost docs form at www.fdlp.gov/lostdocs or through GPO's Help system at gpo.custhelp.com.

Here is the December 2009 Lost Docs Report and Appeal:

REPORT

Thanks to the continued generosity of documents librarians, we posted 93 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. More than two thirds of these items were reported during November/December 2009.

Of these 93 reported items, nine items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with December 2009 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, seven of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in December were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with December 2009 dates.

This month we added a new subcategory of fugitive document to the blog, that of "needs URL addded." These are reported documents where a record of the tangible version is in the CGP, but the record makes no reference to online availability. Since we feel that documenting online availability is important, we left them listed as fugitive documents because the electronic version are unknown to GPO. This month there were 20 items where the CGP knew about the tangible version but not the internet version. You can view these items by visiting http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/catalog-eversion and looking for items with December 2009 dates. If your library has any of this documents, please consider adding an 856 field to the record(s) so your patrons will be able to link to the electronic version(s) through your catalog.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month.
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.

UPDATE 1/5/2010

John Stevenson, my friend and distinguished government information librarian, reminded me that current GPO cataloging policy is to create multiple records for a given work based on format. This means that instead of adding a URL to an 856 field in an existing record, GPO would create a new record based on the electronic format of the document. I wonder how efficient that is, but that's another post for another time.

So we have renamed our new category "eVersion Needs Cataloging." You can get a feed for just these items by subscribing to http://lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/catalog-eversion/feed/.

Keep comments and your lostdocs receipts coming!

Hot off the presses and in time for the holidays, Ithaka S+R has just released its study on the FDLP in the 21st century: "Documents for a Digital Democracy: A Model for the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st Century". Look for our analysis soon. We'd love to hear what others think of the report, so please feel free to leave comments.

The Issues Identified

Participating libraries in the FDLP, like many libraries, contend with a rapidly changing environment for information dissemination, access, and usage. The Program, while building infrastructure to adapt to the digital environment, has not addressed the core strategic dilemmas associated with this new environment:

• Many federal depository libraries no longer have the right incentives to remain in the Program, which may threaten the preservation of and access to the historical print collections.
• The historical collections are dramatically underutilized in relation to their potential value.
• Newly released digital government information is not adequately preserved.
• Discovery systems do not effectively serve user needs for seamless and immediate access.

Without substantial structural change, the FDLP risks sliding further into irrelevance and the general public’s need for sustainable, no fee, permanent access to government information will be increasingly threatened.

Recommendations

Following a thorough examination of the Program’s current state, this report suggests a vision for the program: seamless, no fee access to government information for a range of potential users at their point of need and appropriate preservation of this material for future generations. To achieve such a vision, the FDLP community must address five key goals:

1. Newly issued government information must be made freely available in digital form and must be preserved for the long-term.
2. To provide this permanent public access for the historical collection, a significant program of retrospective digitization is required.
3. Print will play a significantly reduced role for access by users to the historical collections, so some original print copies must continue to be preserved even though fewer depository library collections overall will be required.
4. The print format will continue to have advantages for certain subsets of material types and user communities, so the Program must provide appropriate access to certain historical and new materials in print form, where appropriate via print on demand.
5. Depository libraries must reemphasize their commitment to serving user needs for outreach, discovery, and access.

We started the LostDocs blog back in September 2009 to collect e-mail receipts for items that were reported to GPO as "fugitive documents" -- agency documents that should have made it into the Federal Depository Library Program and/or the Catalog of Government Publications.

In the process of running this blog, we have identified 40 documents reported since April 2008 that were cataloged by GPO after being reported as "fugitive documents." These fall into the "found documents" category of our blog.

You can find our list of 40 (and counting) cataloged fugitives here. This spreadsheet will be updated whenever we identify new GPO cataloging for items that had been reported as fugitive documents.

The results are interesting and somewhat disturbing, but not definitive.

The 40 items were cataloged in times varying from three days to 524 days. The mean cataloging time was 213 days. The median cataloging time was 184 days or about six months.

If the cataloging times above were typical of all documents reported through the LostDocs process, we think this would be a major problem for GPO that would require some serious soul searching and dialog about how this result could be changed and what tradeoffs and/or extra community involvement would be required as a result.

We are NOT making the claim that these cataloging times are typical for reported fugitive documents. We honestly do not know what is typical. Jim Jacobs, FGI's resident data librarian, had this to say about our sample of cataloged documents:

As for sample size and relevance: the number of items in the sample can't tell us the significance or accuracy of the results. We'd have to know two other things: the size of the universe (of all reported lost docs), and the accuracy of the sample. Since the sample was self- selected (by those reporting) rather than random, and since we don't know if the sample is 1% or 85% of all submitted lostdocs, we can't claim that the findings necessarily reflect the status of the whole universe. (does that make sense? If only people w/ long waits reported to us, our sample does not accurately reflect all lostdocs.)

When we first thought about making lostdocs reports available to the community at large, we first approached GPO with a partnering opportunity. We would maintain the blog, and offer them the opportunity to comment on the blog whether something was out of scope for CGP or already in the catalog. In return, we asked them to modify their LostDocs form so that when they received a report, the blog would automatically get a copy. If this partnership had been accepted, then we would know the two facts Jim cited above that are needed to tell us whether we have typical results or not. GPO declined to accept our partnership agreement, citing their workload. We're not questioning that they are overworked.

We do feel that the results above deserve further investigation. Perhaps GPO could prepare a report on documents cataloged as a result of fugitive reports over the past few years. Unless they've discarded the e-mail receipts (which would be defensible), they have the dates of when documents were reported. The CGP lists when an item was first added to the CGP. They could have an intern make a semester project of putting the two together and then posting the results to fdlp.gov.

If they have tossed previous e-mail receipts, they could start saving them for a year starting in January 2010 and do the analysis we propose above in 2011. But in either case we feel the analysis should be done. If it confirms our results then it will be good ammunition in Congress to procure more cataloging staff or to start cataloging collaborations with FDLP members. If the GPO analysis concludes that items reported to lost docs are in fact cataloged in a timely manner, then that will help build trust with the documents community and motivate more people to report fugitive documents. Either way it is a win-win for GPO.

While poking around the Government Printing Office's (GPO)'s OPAL training site at http://www.opal-online.org/archivegpo.htm, I found a couple of online workshops that I think will be valuable to beginner and expert alike:

Searching for Free Government Full Text Docs Online: Where to Begin? presented in October 2009 by Holly Harper, GPO intern and MLIS student at the University of Washington.

* Streaming audio with slides

Geology Librarianship and Government Documents presented in August 2009 by Stephanie Earls, GPO intern and MLIS student at the University of Washington.

* Streaming audio with slides

They appear to run best in Internet Explorer. The recordings were made by two library school interns working with GPO's Robin Haun-Mohamed. The intention was to create programming that would be helpful to generalist librarian and new depository staff.

I think they've done well at this and created some videos that should be shared with non-librarians as well. I publicly thank Robin and the GPO staff that made these possible. You may wish to pause the videos in places to make notes of URLs.

One new thing I learned (or was reminded anew) by the "Full Text Docs" presentation was the ability to browse publications in FDSys by collection, congressional committee or by Date. Use the "last 24 hours" option to see just how much information government is pumping out these days. And that's just a fraction of what's available.

My highlighting these two OPAL presentations should not be interpreted as a slight on the other good material you can find there. Go, watch and explore.

In September 2009 we at Free Government Information (FGI) started the "lost docs blog" at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info to collect your receipts from GPO about the fugitive documents you reported through GPO's lost docs form at www.fdlp.gov/lostdocs or through GPO's Help system at gpo.custhelp.com.

Here is the November Lost Docs Report and Appeal:

REPORT

Thanks to the continued generosity of documents librarians, we posted 60 reports of fugitive documents submitted to GPO. These receipts were a mixture of old receipts and items actually reported in November 2009.

Of these 60 reported items, 17 items have been cataloged by GPO. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with November 2009 dates. We are appreciative of these new records.

In our view, only one of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in November were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications or were already in the catalog. You can view this item by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with November 2009 dates.

APPEAL

If you like the concept of a public listing of fugitive documents reported to GPO, there are a number of easy ways to help us:

1. If you report a fugitive document to GPO, send your e-mailed receipt to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info. We welcome any item reported to GPO in the past month.
2. Visit the blog at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info and comment on the listed items. Comments can include -- Did your library receive the item? Did you find it in the CGP? Do you think the item is out of scope for the CGP? Did you report the item as well and so on.
3. Post the blog link to your website or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
4. Subscribe to the blog feed at lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/feed/
   or better yet incorporate the feed into your website or blog.