Administrative Notes 

Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program

Vol. 24, no. 08 GP 3.16/3-2:24/08 July 1, 2003 

HIGHLIGHTS

Summary, 

2003 Spring 

Council 1 

Summary, 

Regional 

Meeting 

2003 Spring 9 

Summary, 2003 Spring Meeting 

Depository Library Council 

April 6-9, 2003 

Reno, NV 

Council Members present: 

Paul Arrigo, Pennsylvania State University, Shenango; 

Daniel C. Barkley, University of New Mexico; 

Charlene C. Cain, Louisiana State University, Paul M. Hebert Law Center 

Library; 

Cathy Nelson Hartman (Chair), University of North Texas Libraries; 

Doris Small Hefner, California State University, Northridge; 

Dena Hutto, Reed College, Portland, OR; 

Barbara J. Ford, C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson Center for 

International Library Programs, University of Illinois at Urbana – 

Champaign 

Greta E. Marlatt (Secretary), Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA; 

Michele T. McKnelly, University of Wisconsin, River Falls; 

John Phillips, Oklahoma State University; 

Mary W. Prophet, Denison University; 

Laura Saurs, Newark Public Library; 

Lynn Siemers, Washington Hospital Center; 

John A. Stevenson, University of Delaware Library 

John C. Kavaliunas, U.S. Census Bureau was excused due to a conflict. 

Sunday, April 6, 2003, Afternoon and Evening Council Working 

Sessions 

Committee Chairs gave brief reports of the work of each committee. 

Council reviewed GPO’s responses to the Fall Recommendations and 

were pleased with the responses and the progress being made. 
AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

Some discussion was held regarding the letter 

from Tad Downing requesting Council’s 

input on GPO’s proposal to discontinue the 

printed version of the Monthly Catalog of 

U.S. Government Publications and the Serials 

Supplement. GPO indicated they do intend, 

however, to continue printing the U.S. 

Congressional Serial Set Catalog: Numerical 

Lists and Schedule of Volumes. Council was 

basically in favor of this but Dena Hutto 

wanted to seek some input from others before 

Council wrote it up as a recommendation. 

The majority of the two sessions was spent 

working with facilitator Fynnette Eaton, 

Change Management Officer, Electronic 

Records Archives Program, National 

Archives and Records Administration 

(NARA). She worked with Council to 

brainstorm on the question of “wouldn’t it be 

nice if FDLP * * *”. Council was asked to 

keep the discussion at a “50,000 foot level” 

since the purpose of the discussion was to 

begin to try to visualize the depository library 

of the future. A variety of ideas were 

proposed and considerable discussion took 

place. See the Envisioning the Future of 

Federal Government Information

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/co

uncil/EnvisioningtheFuture.html> document 

for more details of this and subsequent 

discussion during the meeting. 

Monday, April 7, 2003, Plenary Session, 

8:30 a.m. 

Council Members present:

Paul Arrigo, Dan Barkley, Charlene C. Cain, 

Cathy Nelson Hartman, Doris Small Helfer, 

Dena Hutto, Barbara J. Ford, Greta E.

Marlatt, Michele T. McKnelly, John Phillips, 

Mary W. Prophet, Laura Saurs, Lynn Siemers 

and John A. Stevenson. 

Opening Remarks 

Robin Haun-Mohamed, Chief, Depository 

Services, welcomed everyone and informed 

them that the session was being video-taped 

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/co

uncil/sp03dlc_videos.html>. She gave the 

usual logistics and announced that this was 

the largest registered number of attendees for 

a meeting outside the DC area. Chair 

Hartman called the session to order. She 

introduced Martha Gould from NCLIS 

(National Commission on Libraries and 

Information Science) who welcomed 

everyone to Reno and acknowledged the 

efforts of the staff of the Washoe County 

Library. 

Chair Hartman welcomed everyone, and 

thanked the GPO staff, Willie Thompson, 

Robin Haun-Mohamed and Nick Ellis in 

particular, for all their hard work with the 

meeting arrangements. After Council 

introductions, Chair Hartman conducted the 

usual Council aerobics to see how many 

attendees came from each area of the country. 

Students currently enrolled in library schools 

were also acknowledged since library school 

deans were specifically asked by GPO to 

send student representatives. She also asked 

how many attendees planned to gamble while 

in Reno. 

Chair Hartman then introduced the format of 

the session and the visioning process that was 

to follow. She also gave a brief introduction 

of Fynnette Eaton who would be facilitating 

the process. Chair Hartman then introduced 

the Honorable Bruce R. James, Public Printer 

of the United States. 

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AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

Welcome and Remarks by the Honorable 

Bruce R. James, Public Printer 

Mr. James began his remarks by talking about 

what an important time this is and that GPO 

is at the crossroads. He has talked with the 

over 3,000 GPO employees about the need to 

face the reality of the trend toward an 

increasingly electronic world and the need to 

change and “leap over the 20th Century into 

the 21st Century.” He commented that 

depository libraries and librarians also need 

to think about what their future will be. As 

he outlined in his Senate hearings, he is 

proceeding with a 3-step plan, the first part 

beginning with fact finding. It is necessary to 

determine strengths and weaknesses as well 

as problems and opportunities and to get 

everyone to agree on them so they can then 

proceed to build a strategic plan to present a 

new vision of the GPO. He expects this to be 

done by the end of the year and said it won’t 

be done in a vacuum. He wants to build the 

best strategic plan possible and then take it to 

Congress. The plan will include what we 

would like Title 44 to look like in the 21st

Century. 

He has been visiting libraries to see first hand 

what’s going on and how things are done. He 

knows a lot about printing but didn’t know 

much about depository libraries so wants to 

learn. He believes in the NCLIS (U.S. 

National Commission on Libraries and 

Information Science) Principles of Public 

Information, especially the first and second 

ones: 

1. The public has the right of access to 

public information; and

2. The Federal Government should 

guarantee the integrity and 

preservation of public information, 

regardless of its format. 

http://www.nclis.gov/info/pripubin.html

He indicated he doesn’t have an end in mind, 

only a beginning. 

Visualizing the Depository Library of the 

Future 

Fynnette Eaton described to the audience the 

process she was going to use and gave a little 

of her background in facilitating workshops 

within NARA to move their records 

management process forward. As well as 

setting the ground rules, she indicated the 

morning discussions were going to be kept at 

a high level, that is, at the 50,000 foot level, 

not at the daily or operational level. She read 

to the audience the information that had been 

compiled from Council’s discussions from

the previous day. See the Envisioning the 

Future of Federal Government Information 

document 

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/co

uncil/EnvisioningtheFuture.html> and the 

video 

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/co

uncil/sp03dlc_videos.html> for more details 

of this discussion. 

Monday, April 7, 2003, Plenary Session, 

2:00 p.m.

The visioning process continued and 

audience participation was encouraged during 

this session.

Tuesday, April 8, 2003 Plenary Session 

8:40 a.m. 

Chair Hartman introduced the various GPO 

staff members who gave updates in their 

respective areas. 

Judy Russell, Superintendent of 

Documents 

See remarks, Administrative Notes, May 1, 

2003 (v. 24, no. 5) 

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AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs

/adnotes/ad050103.html#2

Gil Baldwin, Director, Library Programs 

Service 

See remarks, Administrative Notes, May 1, 

2003 (v. 24, no. 5) 

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs

/adnotes/ad050103.html#3

Ric Davis, Director, Office of Electronic 

Information Dissemination Services 

See remarks, Administrative Notes, May 1, 

2003 (v. 24, no. 5) 

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs

/adnotes/ad050103.html#4

Information Exchange

Charlene Cain asked about the restructuring 

at GPO and for clarification about the 

merging of activities. 

Judy Russell briefly described what was 

currently being envisioned and commented 

that the new organization was still in rough 

draft outline form. This plan will include 

groups that will do things such as 

management, marketing, web harvesting, 

agency outreach, cataloging, management of 

GPO Access, tangible collections, storage 

and shipment, etc. 

Dan Barkley asked Gil Baldwin to expand on 

his comments about the “building the 

collection of last resort.” How is GPO going 

to acquire it?

Gil Baldwin responded that GPO has a 

number of ideas under consideration and 

several things already planned. There are 

also several things already in motion, i.e., for 

the past several months they have been 

capturing a copy of everything that has been 

sent to depositories. They regularly transfer 

information/publications to the National 

Archives but are now holding discussions 

with NARA and GPO may take those 

publications that are waiting to be transferred 

and keep them instead of transferring them. 

Other ideas include: as depositories weed 

their collections, GPO make take some titles; 

GPO can use the Congressional Sales 

program and work with needs and offers lists; 

and as libraries leave the program GPO can 

take some of those collections back. GPO is 

also considering scanning some publications. 

These are just a few of the ideas GPO is 

exploring. GPO will also consult with 

Council on these and other ideas. 

Paul Arrigo asked about the search engine 

results: are the documents themselves being 

made accessible or just the web pages? 

Ric Davis responded that the HTML web 

pages are being indexed. Static PDF – those 

not resident in a database – are also being 

indexed. 

Judy Russell indicated that the Department of 

Energy is working with Google to load its 

indexes and abstracts so that database 

information will also be searchable. 

John Stevenson asked about the problem of 

large files. Many files are too big to 

download easily. 

Ric Davis responded that anything over 750K 

poses potential problems and they will break 

them up and “akamize” them. (Akamai 

<http://www.akamai.com/> is a company that 

provides a service to make heavily used 

documents more quickly available. The 

document is saved in many places and the 

system knows to take the user to the 

quickest/closest site for downloading the 

document.) 

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AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

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John Phillips asked if GPO had collected 

statistics on the new regulations.gov site 

<http://www.regulations.gov/>. 

Ric Davis said they are gathering them and 

they are getting a lot of hits. He will share 

the statistics. 

Greta Marlatt expressed disappointment in 

the lack of fanfare regarding the launch of the 

new GPO Access website. It seemed like 

they would have wanted to really make a big 

deal about it and hoped that they would do 

more sooner for future releases. 

Judy Russell indicated they didn’t know if 

they were even going to be able to get the 

URL <http://www.gpoaccess.gov> until the 

week prior but wanted to go ahead and make 

it accessible as soon as possible. They do 

plan a formal rollout sometime in May and 

appreciated the comments. 

Julie Wallace, University of Minnesota, 

expressed her excitement about the expansion 

of the Monthly Catalog. It is a big challenge 

and a good direction. She asked if it would 

be possible to add a visual representation 

(e.g., something like the black dot) for the 

existence of a physical document. She also 

thought the proposition of a GPO collection 

was exciting and cataloging of the pre-1976 

documents would be great. 

Bill Sudduth, University of South Carolina, 

asked how GPO would be identifying 

libraries to participate in the economic 

development pilot. 

Judy Russell responded that GPO was still 

working on it and they were still trying to 

refine the process. 

Susan Tulis, Southern Illinois University, 

asked about the rules and regulations and 

GPO’s discussion of doing different things 

for different types of libraries. Since we’ve 

always been told before that GPO couldn’t 

do, how is it they can now? 

Judy Russell responded that since GPO wrote 

the rules/instructions, they can change them. 

The process needs to be thought out and 

examined to see where there are excessive or 

unnecessary burdens. 

Linda Fredericks, King County Library 

Systems, Seattle, WA, asked about the 

organization chart and where public services 

belonged. 

Judy Russell responded that the existing 

nomenclature pushed them into specific 

directions that weren’t necessarily what they 

wanted so they looked at making some 

changes that would be more suitable. They 

were trying to get away from historical titles 

so this will fall into the area of Managing 

Director for Public Products and Services 

(Judy’s position) which will be responsible 

for taking government information out to the 

public. 

Barbie Selby, University of Virginia Law 

School, wanted to reiterate Julie Wallace’s 

comments about MOCAT and to ask that 

libraries and vendors be given adequate 

advance notice before large numbers of 

records for tangible formats are added into 

MOCAT which in turn will be added to 

library ILS’s through vendor record loads. 

Ridley Kessler, University of North Carolina, 

Chapel Hill, asked who he should talk to 

regarding giving input related to the FDLP 

Desktop website. 

Gil Baldwin responded that it would be him. 

Dan Veach, Atlanta University Center, 

suggested that the GPO web address should 
AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

6

be something people can remember or guess 

at and GPO isn’t it. 

Judy Russell said GPO would look into 

acquiring relevant aliases. 

Barbie Selby, University of Virginia Law 

School, asked if GPO can participate with the 

Library of Congress and the National Digital 

Information Infrastructure and Preservation 

Program. See 

<http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndiipp/> 

for more information about this program. 

Judy Russell indicated GPO is looking into it 

and that they had recently joined CENDI, an 

interagency working group of senior 

scientific and technical information managers 

from nine U.S. Federal Agencies. See 

<http://www.dtic.mil/cendi/> for more 

information. 

Bernadine Abbott-Hoduski, Government 

Information Advisor, commented about the 

enhanced cataloging and that GPO should 

consider using the expertise of Federal 

libraries. She applauded GPO for taking back 

publications from the National Archives. 

Gil Baldwin indicated it was a good idea to 

work with the Federal libraries and they 

would look into working with FLICC 

(Federal Library and Information Center 

<http://www.loc.gov/flicc/>. 

Judy Russell said she was already talking 

with FLICC. 

Tuesday, April 8, 2003, Council Working 

Session, 7 p.m. 

Council continued discussions about the 

visioning process and the issues that were 

identified. These issues included: 

• The need to change some of the 

existing regulations 

• The need to develop partnerships with 

the private sector 

• The concerns related to bibliographic 

control and cataloging 

• The idea of a “library of last resort” 

(U.S. Library of Public Information 

was suggested as a name by Gil 

Baldwin.) 

Committees then reported back to Council on 

their various meetings and on the status of 

draft recommendations. 

Questions were developed for Wednesday’s 

Breakout group sessions and Council 

members were assigned to each group to 

facilitate and take notes. 

Wednesday, April 9, 2003, Breakout 

Groups by Library Type, 8:30 a.m. 

Attendees were encouraged to participate in 

the breakout group that most closely fit their 

area of interest and/or employment. The 

groups were: Large Academic, 

Small/Medium Academic, Regionals, Public 

and Law/State/Special libraries. 

Wednesday, April 9, 2003 Council 

Working Sessions, 10:30 a.m. and 1:00 

p.m. 

Council members reported back the results of 

the various breakout group discussions. 

Council then worked through the draft 

recommendations and commendations. 

Michele McKnelly nominated and Lynne 

Siemers seconded Mary Prophet as incoming 

Council Secretary. She was approved by 

acclamation. 
AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

7

Committee assignments were reviewed and 

updated. Incoming members will be 

incorporated at the Fall 2003 meetings. 

Assignments are as follows: 

Cataloging 

Doris Helfer (Chair) 

Paul Arrigo 

John Kavaliunas 

Michele McKnelly 

Barbie Selby 

Communications 

Laura Saurs (Chair) 

Barbara Ford 

John Kavaliunas 

Cheryl Malone 

Lynne Siemers 

Electronic Preservation 

Paul Arrigo (Chair) 

Chuck Eckman 

John Kavaliunas 

Laura Saurs 

Operations 

John Phillips (Chair) 

Duncan Aldrich 

John Kavaliunas 

Michele McKnelly 

Mary Prophet 

Laura Saurs 

Subcommittee on Attrition and Retention 

(SOAR) 

Michele McKnelly (Chair) 

Duncan Aldrich 

Paul Arrigo 

Barbara Ford 

John Kavaliunas 

Mary Prophet 

Laura Saurs 

John Phillips 

Wednesday, April 9, 2003, Plenary Session, 

2:30 p.m. 

Chair Hartman thanked everyone for coming 

and participating. She thanked Secretary 

Marlatt for doing secretary duties for two 

years and announced that Mary Prophet 

would be the new secretary. 

Dan Barkley summarized the meeting and the 

Operations committee discussions and 

encouraged everyone to communicate both 

with Council and the Government Printing 

Office regarding operations issues. 

Council read the draft recommendations and 

commendations, (for final text see 

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/co

uncil/rsp03.html>) then opened the floor to 

the audience for comments. 

Elaine Winske, Florida International 

University, asked if the holdings of the U.S. 

Library of Public Information would be 

reflected in the online Monthly Catalog. 

Tad Downing responded that they expected 

the ILS to be fully supportive of library 

operations and will include their holdings. 

Julie Wallace, University of Minnesota, 

asked for clarification about the seemingly 

contradictory statements in Recommendation 

#2, (the U.S. Library of Public Information). 

If something is widely accessible and 

therefore circulating then isn’t this contrary to 

being permanently archived? 

Dan Barkley commented that widely 

accessible means this library as a “place of 

last resort” will make requested information 

available in whatever manner possible (e.g., 

electronic file, fax, photocopy or Interlibrary 

Loan). Permanently archived means there 

will always be a copy there and available. 
AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

Superintendent of Documents Judy Russell 

presented the outgoing members with 

certificates and thanked Chair Hartman for all 

her efforts as Chair and for moving Council 

and the meeting forward. She also 

commented on the value of the meeting and 

acknowledged the efforts of the depository 

community. She looks forward to helping to 

move the program forward into the 21st

Century. 

Chair Hartman thanked all of Council. She 

commented that this was a particularly 

challenging meeting and she appreciated that 

everyone helped to keep the conversations 

going and stayed focused. She thanked her 

class and recognized each member with a gift 

and then turned the meeting over to Chair 

Elect Dan Barkley. 

Chair Barkley thanked Willie Thompson, 

Nick Ellis, Robin Haun-Mohamed and the 

GPO staff for all their efforts. He also 

thanked Chair Hartman and Secretary Marlatt 

and presented them and the rest of the outgoing class with gifts. 

The meeting was adjourned at 3:10 p.m. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Greta E. Marlatt 

Council Secretary 

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AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

Summary, Regional Meeting 

2003 Federal Depository Library Conference 

April 9, 2003 

Reno, NV

Maureen Olle, Louisiana State University, 

conducted the meeting. 

There were approximately 45 people in 

attendance during the first session. 

Maureen asked everyone to introduce 

him/herself and give a brief overview of 

activities in his/her regional. The following 

topics were reported on: 

• Budgets and budget cuts 

• Staffing 

• Retirements

Carolyn Kohler (University of 

Iowa) in June 2003 

Ridley Kessler (University of 

North Carolina) in August 2003 

• Reorganizations of documents 

departments 

• Moving documents collections 

• Merging of documents reference 

responsibilities with other 

departments 

• State plans 

Minnesota had 100% support for 

its plan 

• Cataloging projects 

Pre-1976 cataloging 

• Flooding disaster 

• State association meetings for 

documents 

• Storage (remote climate controlled)

• Digitizing projects 

• Processing changes 

• Working with state documents 

• MIKEL machine (microfiche to PDF 

format) (CA) 

• Chat reference not working

Program: Shared Regional Models 

• Kathryn A. Thomas (North Dakota 

State University) 

Shared Regional in North Dakota 

North Dakota State University and University 

of North Dakota have been a shared regional 

since 1968. 

Kathryn presented the history of this 

program, outlined the responsibilities of each 

institution, discussed the pros/cons of this 

arrangement, and the problems that they have 

encountered. 

She would recommend a shared regional for 

other states since it has worked well in North 

Dakota for 35 years. 

• William Sudduth (University of South 

Carolina): 

Shared Regional in South Carolina 

University of South Carolina and Clemson 

University have been a shared regional since 

1986. The South Carolina model is based on 

the one in North Dakota. 

Bill presented the history of this program,

outlined the responsibilities of each 

institution, and discussed the model’s 

strengths and weaknesses, as well as the 

issues involved in the process and 

procedures. 

He concluded that this model has been 

successful in South Carolina. 

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AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

Second Session Regionals need to begin a dialogue of 

what would be helpful. This needs to 

be done more often than just in the 

twice yearly meetings. Can this be 

done via e-mail, phone calls, etc.? 

Maureen Olle conducted the second session 

of the meeting that was intended for 

discussion purposes. 

There were approximately 32 in attendance 

during this session. 

• Regionals can look at selective housing 

arrangements. 

• Super regional or super regionals: • Is there a need to conduct meetings of 

regionals in areas of the county to discuss 

shared responsibilities?

What is this—need definition. 

1 super regional?

2 or 3 states working together? 

Subject based? • Many regional librarians do not attend or 

Format based ? are unable to attend meetings. 

GPO’s proposed national collection—

to begin with this collection would not 

be in-depth. It may be in the future. 

• Self Studies/Inspections/Consultants 

(Robin) 

Need to look at previous discussions: 

Chicago Conference Libraries/librarians have problem with 

word “inspector.” However, if this is not 

used, the process is often not given the 

respect it requires. 

1993 (?) Council report by Bob 

Oakley 

• Disposal lists 

Value of doing? GPO is proposing the use of consultants 

as part of the inspection process. A 

consultant would be assigned to a state or 

region. He/she would be stationed in a 

depository library and would make 

regular visits to all depositories in the 

area. The consultant would make 

recommendations, do training session, 

and work with the regional librarians. 

GPO would like to do a pilot project and 

is encouraging regionals to submit 

proposals for this. 

All regionals do not follow same

procedures—some regionals do not 

want fiche on lists, others only look at 

documents published before a certain 

date, etc. 

How do library administrators see this 

responsibility?

Are services more important than 

disposal lists?

• Administrators need to understand the 

responsibilities of a regional and what 

staff is needed to fulfill those 

responsibilities. 

Self-study process is not working as 

planned. It takes too much staff time to 

do a complete and thorough report on 

each depository’s self-study. GPO may 

have to go back to inspecting all 

depositories. Changes are coming. 

• Regionals need more flexibility in order 

to fulfill their responsibilities. 

This can be accomplished by changes 

and updates to Instructions (Robin). The self-study report is a valuable 

evaluation tool for the depositories to use 

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AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

to assess their performance and 

procedures. There is a need to keep this 

tool or provide another one for 

depositories to use. 

Do you need a librarian as an inspector?

GPO believes it can use the biennial 

surveys and comments from regionals to 

identify “at risk depositories.” 

SOAR (Subcommittee on Attrition and 

Retention of the Operations Committee of 

the Depository Library Council) is 

continuing to identify reasons 

depositories are leaving the program and 

is examining procedures for identifying 

those libraries that are at risk. New 

procedure for relinquishing depository 

status will be made. John Phillips 

(Oklahoma State University) will be the 

new chair of the Council’s Operations 

Committee and the chair of SOAR. 

• Marianne Ryan (University of Maryland) 

is working with GPO to arrange for a 

regional meeting to be held during the 

summer of 2003. 

• Marianne volunteered to be the moderator 

for the fall regional librarians meeting. 

Submitted by: 

Susan Field 

University of Georgia 

23 April 2003

Reviewed by: 

Maureen Olle, Dan Barkley, John Phillips 

and Robin Haun-Mohamed

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AN-v24-#08-7/1/03 

Table of Contents 

Summary, 2003 Spring Council Meeting ..................................................................................... 1 

Summary, Regional Meeting, 2003 Federal Depository Library Conference .............................. 9 

Administrative Notes Cumulative Table of Contents 

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs/adnotes/adnotes_toc.pdf 

Updated with each issue 

Searchable by keyword 

Administrative Notes is published in Washington, DC by the Superintendent of Documents, 

Library Programs Service, Government Printing Office, for the staffs of U.S. Federal 

Depository Libraries. 

It is published on the 15th day of each month; some months have additional issues. 

Postmaster send address changes to: The Editor, Administrative Notes 

U.S. Government Printing Office

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Washington, DC 20401 

Internet access at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs/adnotes/index.html 

Editor: Marian W. MacGilvray (202) 512-1119 mmacgilvray@gpo.gov

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