When I was in Government Documents class in library school, the first thing I was told was that the federal government had no central information policy, and that upwards of 50% of the documents that should be available to the public were not. These are referred to as "fugitive" documents. By law all unclassified material is supposed to pass through the Government Printing Office (GPO), but this agency has no enforcement power, and can only beg and plead with other agencies (as they often do) for compliance. It appears that things may get worse before they get better.

In 1995 the 104th Congress swept into Washington with the intention of slashing government spending and dismantling what they saw as excessively big government. A year earlier the World Wide Web had started to grow and its potential for quick and easy access to all kinds of information was beginning to become clear. The politicians quickly perceived this as an avenue for improved and inexpensive dissemination; they mandated a two-year transition to electronic dissemination. Efforts have been made by GPO and information experts since then to advise Congress of the problematic nature of electronic only dissemination of government information. For the most part these efforts have fallen on deaf ears. This year the House of Representatives passed a budget that would slash GPO spending by 25%. The Senate numbers called for a .4% increase. Presently a bill passed by the Conference Committee and awaiting President Clinton's signature provides for a 6% decrease in funding for the GPO. As a result, spending for dissemination of information by GPO to the members of the Federal Depository Library Program will go from 30 to 28 million dollars in this next fiscal year.

Furthermore, the House of Representatives has rejected 2 previous studies which gave high ratings to the Library Programs Service (LPS), the division of GPO which administers the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). These studies had recommended increased funding for staffing, training and processing. They also recommended that progressive changes be made to title 44 of the U.S. Code, the law that instituted the FDLP system. A bill calling for such modernization was worked up but was not introduced. The House has commissioned a third study by the General Accounting Office to look into the process of transferring LPS functions to the Library of Congress.

The reaction to these events by the Federal Depository Library community over the last few months has been one of shock and dismay. The FDLP has been regarded for decades as a bastion of the people's right to know, which is a cornerstone of a free and democratic society. No one in the community is against electronic dissemination of government information, but rather believes that such a transition needs to be done thoughtfully and slowly as there are many exceptionally complex problems associated with electronic access to information. Some of the questions raised here are:

1. How will the authenticity of these documents be guaranteed? How will we know that these copies are the "Official" ones?

2. How will the integrity of these documents be guaranteed when they are in a format which can easily be altered, and in a system which would no doubt be more centralized than the current distributed system of 1350 FDLP libraries?

3. Electronic only access, at this time, actually inhibits use by a significant % of the population who are not computer savvy.

4. To date there is no standard means of preserving digital documents into the future. It is a complex problem and one which will no doubt plague our society for some time to come. Short of heroic and costly efforts, how will we preserve these documents for future use if they are in electronic only format?

5. Keeping track of these documents can be a cataloger's nightmare. How will these documents be saved from the transitory and migratory nature of Web URLs and PURLs? Will we have to go look for these documents on the Web, or will they be "pushed" to us in a certain and orderly way as tangible products are now?

6. GPO currently operates with several "legacy" systems which must be upgraded, at some expense, in order for electronic dissemination to increase further. How can this be done with further budget cuts?

In conjunction with these radical changes and monumental budget restrictions at GPO, the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), an agency in the Department of Commerce which makes more scientific government documents available, is also being considered for closure and its functions transferred. For more information on this see Barbara Quint's article in INFORMATION TODAY17 no.9. (www.infotoday.com/it/oct00/quint.htm)

Along with the political passion for reduced government spending in Washington is a move to privatize many government services. Information dissemination is not immune to this trend, and evidence suggests that private entrepreneurial interests are lining up to fill the void that would exist with the closure of NTIS and the dismantling of FDLP. The new FirstGov Web Portal is possibly an example of private interests looking to get a foothold in the area. Starting with an agreement between President Clinton and the founder of Inktomi, the largest search engine software company, for 3 years of free access to their product, and supported by the involvement of other private companies, FirstGov was hurriedly put together with little regard for the investment that has been made by GPO in creating GPO Access, a current Web Portal transferring 29 million downloads per month and having been painstakingly built over the last few years into a highly sophisticated Web portal.

Private interests in Washington are seeking to legislate:

1. The prohibition of government involvement in areas where private interests are active
2. The prohibition of government agencies adding specialized value to public data
3. The prohibition of government services online unless private companies are inefficient.

Currently there are several private companies which digest government information and package it in more user friendly and value added ways, and the system works well for those who can afford these products. But mandating the use of such services would end up requiring the public to pay once again for access to the information that they already have paid to create with their tax dollars.

Congress has spoken both verbally, and with its power of the purse. So how is GPO responding to these circumstances?

The gratitude of the depository library community was lent to GPO and its staff for accomplishing what they have over the last few years in light of such hostile circumstances. It was generally agreed that they have provided good service and advocacy for the program with a minimal staff and serious budget constraints.

The main points of GPO's response have been:

1. Issuing a draft of new guidelines for its dissemination/distribution policy for the Federal Depository Library Program. Basically this involves distribution of information products only in electronic form where such a copy is available. Only key titles, and those without an electronic equivalent will be produced in print. For more details on this draft dissemination policy see: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/draftsod.html, and the Superintendent of Documents letter to depository library directors at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/coll-dev/sdltr8-25-00.html.

2. A few years ago, when the drive for these changes began, most depository libraries were not capable of acting as an archive for the large source files for various government documents. The National Archives and Records Administration is still not set to accept all of these items. As a result, GPO has been actively seeking contractual agreements with various government agencies and others to take responsibility for archiving electronic records of current documents. Current agreements have been negotiated with the National Library of Medicine and the Energy Department. OCLC is also involved with a program to provide digital archiving of government documents. They are working with well known library agencies like the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and the American Research Libraries (ARL) to study what it means to be an archive. OCLC is a non-profit private organization. Their product will be sold to FDLP who will in turn provide it at no charge to depository libraries. For more information on this plan to provide Permanent Public Access to electronic only materials see: http://www.gpo.gov/ppa.

Since the sophistication of most library computer systems and the amount of memory available to them has increased in recent years, there was a push at the conference for including depositories as an integral part of these partnerships for preservation. Indeed some institutions are already participating. For example, North Texas University is hosting a site featuring what is affectionately referred to as the Cyber Cemetery (formerly The Dead Agencies Archive, and, officially, the Research Collections). As the name implies it is responsible for maintaining access to information from agencies no longer in existence.

3. GPO has developed the GPO ACCESS Web Portal for access to electronic products from the government. As I mentioned earlier, roughly 29 million downloads are being made each month from this Portal.

Conclusion

While it is clear that the gradual shift to a primarily electronic depository will be accelerated, Superintendent of Documents Francis Buckley assures us that the FDLP will maintain at least one foot in the world of tangible information products for some time to come. Public Printer Michael F. DiMario expressed a more pessimistic view suggesting that the very existence of the FDLP as we know it today may be in doubt.

Various participants told us that the letter from the constituent still carries a lot of weight with political leaders, and so I encourage those who want to take a stance on the issues facing the depository library system to write their Congressman and Senators. It was hoped that the 107th Congress would be more sympathetic to the intricacies of the system and the value of more than one format for many items for the foreseeable future.

Web access has certainly been a boon to information seekers, and the government documents area is no exception. Provided the FDLP survives this period of transition, I tend to think that government depository status will be even more helpful and exciting as more people make use of the materials. While the demand for technical processing of tangible products will continue to slow, there should be a continued call for reference expertise, as the mountains of information available will test the abilities of even experienced searchers.

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