GPO Update
from the Spring 2003 FDLC
New Superintendent of Documents Judy Russell started off the update with some more detailed information on doings and plans at GPO than we had heard the previous day. One piece of really good news is that Sheila McGarr is coming back to GPO, from the National Education Library, although we don't know in what capacity yet.
GPO will be NARA's first "archival affiliate." What this means is that GPO Access' electronic laws, Congressional Record, etc., will have the status of official versions. Digital signature software, to authenticate electronic documents, is also coming soon. Public Printer James is looking for pilot projects, and partnerships, when applicable, in lots of areas: digitization, preservation, depository library rules (see below), information kiosks (see below).
Big changes to how depositories are regulated and inspected may be in the offing. Judy says that one model they are looking at is having GPO-hired consultants resident at some regionals to do training in the region, offer advice, keep tabs on selectives, etc. They want the rules pertaining to depository status to become more flexible, perhaps having different standards for different types of libraries (different technical standards, for example, or lists of core docs, etc.; the basic requirement of public access would not be tinkered with). One example project they are working on now is relaxation of some requirements for small libraries serving economically disadvantaged areas. These libraries would get special attention in the area of economic development, but would not have to meet some of the more stringent technical requirements, for example.
An information kiosk with full internet capability (and even optional printing and faxing), to serve as a sort of satellite to a particular library, was set up for demonstration at the conference. The hardware is provided by 3M. (Kathy has a handout from 3M.)
Gil Baldwin, Director of the Library Programs Service, spoke next and got even more detailed. GPO will finally be getting an Integrated Library System soon, hopefully by the end of the year. What this means to us is that the Catalog of Government Publications, Monthly Catalog and Serial Set Supplement will probably be replaced by the database that forms the heart of the ILS. It will immediately go back to 1976 (thus possibly replacing Marcive's WebDocs?). The other exciting news for GPO is that they are finally going to start creating an actual physical collection of docs. They hope that it will eventually become the library of record and a last resort source for government publications. Because of this, they will probably not be letting libraries that are dropping depository status just keep their documents, but will reclaim them for the collection. At any rate, they are starting now to keep copies of everything and may be able to get back some of the things they've recently sent to NARA.
A new partnership was announced with Case Western Reserve for Census material. CWRU is now the official mirror site for 2000 Census ASCII text data files, the official backup to the FTP files at census.gov. URL for the index page is census.cwru.edu. [NOTE: link no longer valid]
Rick Davis is the new Director of the Electronic Information Dissemination Service and he presented the GPO Access Update. His big news was the launch of the redesigned GPO Access with a different URL: www.gpoaccess.gov. They put in a lot of extra work to get it ready for the Conference and it really is much improved. Rick hopes to be able to replace GPO Access' WAIS platform with something that will allow items to be more directly searchable in the near future. They are planning to have the GPO Access mirror site up in Pueblo by summer; in addition to providing the security of a backup, they hope this will also result in quicker response times as the Pueblo site will take some of the load off the main GPO servers. Regulations.gov is another new project of GPO Access. This site facilitates public comments on proposed regulations.
GPO will also send you statistical reports on how many times their documents were accessed from your domain. Fill out the form at the bottom of the Depository Library profile page to order this service.
