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Approved-By:  "(Duncan Aldrich)" <duncan@EQUINOX.UNR.EDU>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.govdoc-l
Date:         Tue, 10 Nov 1992 08:27:50 GMT
From:         "(Duncan Aldrich)" <duncan@equinox.unr.edu>
Subject:      GPO Budgetary Shortfall
Comments: To: govdoc-l@psuvm.bitnet
Comments: cc: "(Govt. Pub)" <gpd@equinox.unr.edu>

Forwarded message:

From LISTSERV@PSUVM.PSU.EDU  Tue Nov 10 05:43:03 1992
Message-Id: <9211101444.AA05183@hermes.oit.unc.edu>
From: KESSLER.DAVIS@mhs.unc.edu (KESSLER)
To: GOVDOC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (-)
Subject: GPO Budgetary Shortfall
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 08:23

FOCUS GROUP ON GPO BUDGETARY SHORTFALL REPORT            11/10/92

Dear Regional Depository Librarians and Other Depository Colleagues:

We are writing to ask for you assistance in communicating some important
information to the rest of the depositories in your region.  In recent
years the Government Printing Office and the Depository Library Program
have worked under severe budgetary and legal constraints in a federal
environment of decreasing funds and increasing service and product demands.
 On a number of occasions government appropriation shortfalls have forced
the Government Printing Office to make cuts, reduce services, and suffer
personnel shortages.  The present GPO administration has worked hard to
conduct efficiency and financial studies of the entire system in order to
insure that needed services matched available resources.  In particular,
they have done exhaustive and detailed accounting studies in order to build
better and more explicit needs into their appropriations requests.

Despite these efforts, the GPO is again faced with a major budgetary
shortfall which severely affects the Depository Library Program's
distribution services.  A detailed request to the Appropriations Committee
resulted in a supplementary budget increase of 2 million dollars to their
Sales and Expense Budget which includes the Depository Library Program.
However, this increase was specifically earmarked for prior year budget
shortfall so the GPO still finds itself with a 3.5 million dollar shortfall
for the current fiscal year (October, 1992-September, 1993).

During last month's meeting of the Depository Library Council (October
19-20, 1992) Gary Cornwell, Chair of the DLC, and Beth Duston, Chair/Elect,
met with Wayne Kelley, Superintendent of Document, to discuss the GPO's
financial difficulties along with many other issues.  Concerning the
budgetary shortfall, they identified several options that the GPO might
take:

1.Make no cuts and assume that Congress would bail them out.

2.If that was not possible or if no more money was forthcoming then the GPO
could make whatever cuts and conversions they thought were necessary to the
DLP budget
to bring the agency into budgetary compliance and the
Depositories would have to live with the decisions they made.

3.Appoint a small focus group of working depository librarians to react to
the options available to GPO and
to help identify any others that would be equitable for
the entire library community.

The Superintendent of Documents chose the focus group option and, with the
advice of the Chair of Council and Library Program Service staff, asked
five regional depository librarians with long service records to come to
Washington to help the GPO identify options to meet this emergency.  The
librarians were:

Ridley Kessler, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tom Andersen, California State Library
Sandra McAninch, University of Kentucky
Julia Wallace, University of Minnesota
Gary Cornwell, University of Florida

The focus group met at the GPO on November 5th and 6th with the Library
Programs Service staff.  The group received a very intense and detailed
briefing on the budget, the budget shortfall, and GPO's proposed solutions
to those problems.  The LPS staff were very cooperative and open and
willingly shared information and listened carefully to all the discussion.
The focus group then spent most of Thursday afternoon and night, all of
Friday, and part of Saturday in an exhaustive discussion of GPO's plan and
possible options and alternative solutions.

Early on it became readily apparent that there were no easy or painless
answers to the problems.  It was also clear that there would have to be
budget cuts and many conversions from paper product to microfiche to meet
the budget shortfall emergency.  During its discussion the focus group
tried to work within the following group of principles:

1.To preserve a choice of format wherever possible.

2.To comply with Title 44 by not eliminating titles from
the system.

3.To try and keep as many high use items in paper as we
could.

4.To encourage GPO to move toward electronic delivery of
government information more quickly.

5.To keep cuts and conversions as equitable and fair for
all kinds and sizes of libraries as we could.

6.To keep as much information in the system in as usable a
format as possible.

The focus group did provide feedback on GPO's specific options, and made
additional suggestions for dealing with the 3.5 million dollar budget
shortfall.  It is left to the discretion of the Government Printing Office
to accept any, all, or none of these options.  In general, the major broad
conceptual options are as follows:

1.To ask for more money and then make no cuts or
conversions or as few as possible.  However, the group
realized that this was probably not a viable option given
the immediacy of the time factor.

2.To spend the money until it was all gone and then close
up shop.  However, the group felt this would be
irresponsible and would probably do the program more harm
than good in the long run.

3.Wherever conversions were made from paper to microfiche,
the Superintendent of Documents should examine the
possibility of providing substantial discounts to
Depository Libraries to purchase other formats through
the GPO Sales Office.

4.In order to preserve choice of formats for selective
depositories Regional Depositories should also make
format choices in many cases.

5.To continue to split up item numbers containing multiple
class stems to facilitate selectivity by depositories and
reduce costs.

6.To insure that major high use items remain in the system
with a choice of format GPO should immediately survey
both selectives and regionals to voluntarily choose to
receive certain items in less expensive formats.

7.Preservation of access to government information in
whatever format should be the highest priority, i.e.,
reductions in Library Programs Service personnel,
operations, and infrastructure expenses should be taken
before making cuts in acquisitions and distribution.

8.Any cuts or format conversions be considered temporary
for the emergency period and efforts should be made
to restore them in the next fiscal year.

9.More accurate and financially detailed budget requests to
the proper Appropriations Committees in order to
strengthen, improve, and expand the Depository Library
Program should continue to be a high priority at GPO.

This is a very difficult and trying period for both the Government Printing
Office and the Depository Library Program.  The focus group sincerely hopes
that cuts and conversions will not be necessary but realize that there are
very little choices left for the GPO at this time.  Cost savings must be
found and depositories must help find them by examining their selections
policies carefully and choosing less expensive formats wherever possible.
We hope that the GPO and the depository library community can begin to work
more closely and cooperatively together to keep this situation from
happening again and to plan and work for a better future for the program.
If you have any specific suggestions for reducing GPO costs, please
communicate them immediately to Ms. Judy Russell at (202) 512-1114.

The focus group took this assignment very seriously and attempted to react
to the budget reduction options from the point of view of the entire
depository community.  We often voted against our own institution's best
interest if the option in question was for the good of the program as a
whole.  We hope you all will do the same.

Sincerely,

Ridley Kessler
Sandra McAninch
Tom Andersen
Julia Wallace
Gary Cornwell
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