CIC Government Publications Task Force

Report for November, 1999 CIC Library Directors Meeting

During the past year, the CIC Government Publications Task Force has met in formal session twice and in informal session four times, the latter being shorter meetings scheduled during conferences attended by a number of librarians within the CIC who have government publications responsibilities. The year has seen significant progress made on several projects relating to the charge of the Task Force.

Before reviewing the Task Force accomplishments, however, it should be noted that the CIC Library Directors will be receiving a proposal from the Task Force to transform itself into a standing group of the Center for Library Initiatives. The new group would be composed of a representative from each of the CIC libraries with a document collection or staff associated with government publications. This group would provide the infrastructure for continuing the work of the Task Force, including the pieces in progress reported below.

The Task Force has had a full plate of projects upon which it has been working this year. In some ways the issues it has addressed demonstrate how government publications are a microcosm, albeit a large microcosm, of the parent libraries. Thus, pilot projects and issues addressed can provide guidance in handling similar issues in the larger library context, just as government publications units model their services and processes upon the best practices drawn from the more general library environment.

The Task Force has made a serious effort to identify materials from federal government agencies originally provided on floppy discs, either 3.5 inch or 5.25 inch formats, and to move the contents of these floppies into a "safe harbor." Indiana University has now successfully loaded data from 230 discs to an FTP site from whence the information can be downloaded upon demand. A follow-on project will identify and provide a similar site for supplementary software provided by government agencies in these formats. An official partnership between Indiana University and the Government Printing Office (GPO) is in progress and, if accepted, will provide an opportunity for other depository libraries to point to this site as their resource for this information rather than keeping and supporting the older physical formats. This project can been seen at: http://www.indiana.edu/~libgpd/mforms/floppy/floppy.html

This pilot project is a good example of demonstrating shared access to information derived from a dying physical format. As such, it could be expanded to other areas where floppy discs are an access issue, such as the floppy discs originally provided as parts of books or as international government publications. CIC could serve as a place to provide access to information in these formats and also be a focal point for getting copyright permission to share and preserve/archive information held in a variety of physical formats. The project also demonstrates how providing access at one site to information held in common at multiple sites can affect positively workflow and the resources needed for support for access to information.

Another physical format of concern is DOS-based CD-ROMs containing data from the federal government of historical and research interest. The Task Force has decided to focus on the Census Bureau publications and raw data to implement a pilot projects that will address issues in this area. The project actually has three parts:

The three parts to this project demonstrate a possible partnership with a government agency (Census Bureau); a deeper partnership with another consortium (ICPSR); and a cooperative venture within the CIC libraries. It is envisioned, however, that use of all three parts will be integrated to provide full access to historical Census Bureau information.

Another focus of work relating to CD-ROMs has been the creation of all federal depository CD-ROMs which also tracks the existence and availability of the documentation relating to them. The work on this database is being done in cooperation with the ALA Government Documents Round Table’s Government Information Technology Committee (GITCO) and GPO. Eventually the work will be expanded to create a comprehensive database for every CD-ROM issued by any level of government, except local governments. This project will enhance access to this documentation and create a checklist for its preservation in the future, as well as provide a resource that can be used by government publications librarians nationally.

One of the original charges to the Task Force was to address the issue of providing cataloging for the pre-1976 GPO materials. While many of the records are in OCLC, there is no easy way to locate them and often they are missing critical information such as SuDoc numbers. After some exploration, the Department of State was chosen as a pilot agency for this work. OCLC has agreed to work with the CIC to select from their database the records associated with the Department of State once the CIC provided a database to be used as a matching device for selection of the records. Once selected, the records would be mounted on a local system and work would proceed to complete the missing information. (The Task Force has a member who would be willing to assign this work to a group of students as a summer project.) The end result would be a record set available from OCLC for the pre-1976 records which could be loaded into local OPAC databases, just as many libraries load MARCIVE records for the post-1976 records. Work has progressed on creating the initial database, but has stalled due to the lack of resources and time of a person to manage this portion of the project. A proposal for help in completion of this work is in the process of being developed for consideration by the Center for Library Initiatives.

The Task Force is also pursuing initiatives relating to providing electronic reference services. Members will be proposing and then, if accepted, coordinating a session on this theme at the Federal Depository Library Program Conference in the fall of 2000. The Task Force would also like to have a conference for all CIC government publications staff on this issue, focusing on future directions of reference services for government publications. A conference of this nature would provide the many new staff within the CIC an opportunity to meet each other and build the relationships necessary for cooperative ventures.

With regard to digitization of resources, Northwestern University has received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services agency to digitize a large set of their League of Nations materials. In addition, the U.S. Government Manuals, over time, provide a very valuable resource in understanding how the organization and functions of the federal government have changed. As a pilot project for making this history available electronically, one of the first of these manuals (1912) will be scanned for public use. The Task Force is also interested in digitizing the Foreign Relations of the U.S., which are primary materials in U.S. diplomatic history and would like to determine if they could become a part of J-STOR.

Over the three years the Task Force has worked on large and ambitious number of projects and issues. If the proposal to become a standing group of the CIC Center for Library Initiatives is approved, there is no doubt that their work will become an exciting and important part of the growing CIC Virtual Electronic Library and will contribute significantly to the objectives expressed in the paper, "Extending the CIC VEL to Encompass Digital Collections."