April 20-22, 2009
Federal Depository Library Conference
April 20-22, 2009
GPO/DLC general news
Fiscally, GPO had some very good news: they are getting additional appropriations for data storage, education, upgrading of old hardware and software, and cataloging/indexing. In addition, they are getting a cool $1 million specifically for FDSys (Federal Digital System), which is the first direct appropriation for this important program. You can find more details on the funding in Ric Davis' speech (Acting SuDocs), as well as information on many other GPO news items.
Bob Tapella, the Public Printer, is staying on the job despite the change in administrations (his position is a Presidential appointment) at least for now. He's written a letter to President Obama outlining how GPO can help with the administration goals of greater transparency in government and he's pleased with the response from the White House.
GPO and Council are working on a strategic plan for the FDLP (Depository Program) and welcome continual feedback. Ric's email is in his remarks if you want to contact him with any concerns or ideas. Here is a draft of the plan as it now stands.
Some major discussion points and/or GPO trends:
Council didn't completely finalize their recommendations at the meeting, but these are the major issues they will address:
Training/Communications
GPO is working with a marketing firm to be able to more effectively target communication and training efforts. Here is Cindy Etkins' presentation on this effort. One of their main priorities is to figure out more granular categories of depository libraries, what they're calling "segmentation." Here is an explanation of this idea. What they plan to do is conduct a brief survey in the next month or two to identify library segments. Once these segments are identified, they will conduct a more detailed survey in conjunction with Biennial Survey in October to pinpoint specific needs.
Web Tech Notes will reappear with enhanced functionality in June. Administrative Notes & FDLP-L will cease at this point, with their content subsumed by the new Web Tech Notes and various FDLP Desktop features. You will be able to get email and/or RSS notice of additions and changes to replace the printed Admin Notes tables. (A suggestion was made to provide alerts to changes in the Handbook also.)
You should take a look at the promotional and informational videos that GPO has developed. They are linked from this page within the "Outreach" Desktop tab. Look for "GPO Takes to the Streets" for some sobering interviews with ordinary people about depositories and libraries; there is also an "Easy as FDL" promotional video you can use. They hope to develop PSA's later this year to run on college radio stations.
Some of the extra money they are getting will go to expanding their OPAL resources, which are already fairly substantial. Here is the OPAL resources page.
Karen Sieger's demonstration of the new features of the FDLP Desktop was very informative. I have an extra copy of the handout outlining these features, but can't find the online version of it. I'll be doing a demo of the things I noted about the site (including use of the Community section) at our meeting, and will be happy to answer any questions about it that I can by email as well. The most useful tips on using the Desktop were:
Unfortunately, Karen didn't have enough time to go into much detail in the use of the Community section. But she did make some compelling arguments for why it should be used either instead of, or in addition to, social networking sites like Facebook. For one thing, since it's a .gov domain, institutions that might block Facebook won't block the FDLP Desktop. And, we can be confident that it is stable and won't go away or suddenly start charging for the service, or start selling our personal information.
Operations
As usual, the major value of the conference, to me, is in the operational nitty-gritty hints, tips, and announcements that cover what GPO is doing, what they're changing, and when they anticipate major changes that affect our workflows.
They are continuing to migrate from old hardware platforms and old software. They particularly want to modernize the lighted bin distribution system. Since the legacy software system (DDIS) that runs this application is also tied into so many other functions, it's a complicated and time-consuming process. A related issue is obviously the item selection system, which they know needs to be overhauled. There are hopes that when DDIS is replaced it will be possible to handle selection and de-selection differently.
They also want to make disposals easier, both for us and for the Regionals. It was brought up several times in discussions about this issue that there are only vague guidelines from GPO on how to handle disposals; each Regional makes their own detailed rules for their Selectives. Some good ideas were tossed around at the meeting, including the Regionals making lists of categories of material, or series, that they don't need, so that Selectives wanting to dispose of these items could bypass the listing process. It was suggested that a repository of best practices for Regionals be created to share innovative ideas and processes. Someone noted in one of the discussions that some Regionals want to collect superceded editions of docs and so we should check with our Regional before disposing of these. [Note from Sue Troyan at the State Library: she confirmed that we do not need to list superceded docs before disposing of them.]
[Additional note on question I forgot to mention: disposing of material available in electronic format. As of now you can't just dispose of material with a PURL, but they are looking at addressing this question in the near future and perhaps modifying the rules to allow this.]
Public Access Assessments is the new name for inspections. Due to staffing shortages and a feeling that GPO manpower is more wisely spent elsewhere, these Assessments are still offered on an on-demand basis. If you feel you need GPO support with your administration, contact them for a phone consultation; if a visitation is warranted, that can happen, too. Here is more information on these Assessments. Council does plan to make some sort of recommendation on assessment since there is some concern about not having visitations at all.
With all the talk of digitization that's always in the air, of course we are still getting tangible materials and there were some questions about that. There is going to be a report analyzing the microfiche program due out in June. This might lead to some modifications. As to print distribution, I was curious about how GPO sees the continued print distribution of Congressional materials and asked about that in one of the forums. Robin Haun-Mohammed said that it is a Joint Committee on Printing order that Congressional materials remain in printed form and she doesn't see this process changing. Here is the outline of the information from Robin's department. And here is the one for the Planning department, which shared this forum with Robin.
There was some good news and progress on the cataloging front. Laurie Hall reported that they are going to continue with the "marc-ization" of their pre-1976 shelflist records and the first batch of these expanded records will be dumped into the CGP (Catalog of Government Publications) soon. Because of the new funds awarded by Congress, they should be able to complete this project. She didn't know if the records would be put in OCLC or not, since there seems to be a current administrative problem between OCLC and GPO, but they will be in the CGP (and therefore, presumably in Marcive loads). She will send out a notice telling us how to identify these records for pre-1976 materials in the CGP. Here is the complete information sheet from the Technical Services forum.
Applications
I also learned a lot of neat new tricks and tips dealing with particular programs and/or applications at the educational sessions I attended.
In addition, I attended an FDSys focus group that gave me a lot of insight into this wonderful new tool that's ramping up to full searching functionality soon. They are busily migrating collections of material from GPO Access to the new system, and plan to have this all migrated by the end of the fiscal year. You'll still be able to search on GPO Access until everything is migrated, but if you want to search any of the migrated collections, use the new system—it's really powerful! You can find a listing of what's there on its main page.
A very detailed session on cloud computing gave me some good ideas, but some of it was over my head. Here is the presentation, which includes a lot of detail. A couple of ideas that I did understand and am looking at implementing are:
Other sessions
I attended the sessions marked with an asterisk; if you have questions about them I can try to answer them. Links are to the files in GPO's proceedings.
