ANv24-#12-10/15/03 

Administrative Notes 

Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program

Vol. 24, no. 12 GP 3.16/3-2:24/12 October 15, 2003 

HIGHLIGHTS

New Help

Service 1 

Biennial 

Survey 2

Invitation 2 

Annual 

Report 3

Readers 

Exchange: 

Raffle 10 

New Customer Help Service 

Now Available from GPO 

As part of our ongoing efforts to provide users with the highest quality 

service, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is pleased to 

announce the launch of a new customer help service, which can be 

accessed at <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/help>. This service includes a 

knowledge base that has been populated with answers to frequently asked 

questions related to the following services: GPO Access, the U.S. 

Government Online Bookstore, and the Federal Depository Library 

Program. As GPO continues its reorganization efforts, more services may 

be added. 

Users can search or browse the knowledge base as a whole or by 

category/subcategory. Questions that cannot be answered by the 

knowledge base can be sent to GPO using the “Ask a Question” tab, and 

questions will be routed to the appropriate subject specialists within GPO. 

The knowledge base is constantly being updated and expanded based on 

user inquiries. Phone assistance for the service is also available Monday 

through Friday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. eastern standard time at 888-293-6498 

(toll-free) and 202-512-1530 (DC Metro area). 

As part of this effort, any messages sent to askLPS@gpo.gov or

gpoaccess@gpo.gov as of October 1st will flow through the “Ask A

Question” service and then be propagated into the knowledge base. Any 

askLPS e-mail messages sent in prior to the launch of this new service are 

still being processed. In addition, the askLPS Web form at 

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/tools/asklpsin.html> is being 

redirected to the new service. Finally, WEBTech Notes is still available at 

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/tools/webtech.html>. Lostdocs

submissions may be made via the “Ask a Question” service or at 

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/tools/lostdocs.html>. 

We hope you find this new service valuable and, as always, we value your 

comments and suggestions. 

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AN-v24-#12-10/15/03 

2003 Biennial Survey of Depository Libraries 

Scheduled for November 

The 2003 Biennial Survey of Depository 

Libraries will be conducted online at

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

/bisurvey/03survey.html> from

November 1 through November 30, 2003. 

The purpose of the Biennial Survey is to 

report on conditions in the depository 

libraries. Required by law (44 U.S.C. 

§1909), the Biennial Survey gathers data 

from all the depository libraries every 2 

years, supplementing the more in-depth 

inspections or self-studies that are 

performed every 6 or 7 years. 

The survey period will be November 1-

30, 2003; however, to avoid the rush, 

depositories are advised to submit their 

survey responses early in November. 

Additional information will be posted at 

the Biennial Survey web page <http:// 

www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/ 

bisurvey/index.html> in late October. 

Your internal Federal Depository Library 

Program password will be needed to 

access the survey. If you do not have

your depository library password, please 

contact the help service at

<http://www.gpoaccess.gov/help>.

Invitation to Depository Library of the Year 

Award Presentation 

The Public Printer of the United States, 

Bruce R. James 

requests the honor of your presence 

at the presentation of the first 

Depository Library of the Year Award 

recognizing superior Federal Government 

information service to the American public 

through the Federal Depository Library Program. 

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

7:30 to 9:00 p.m. 

at the 

Doubletree Hotel Crystal City National Airport 

300 Army Navy Drive 

Arlington, VA 22202 

RSVP: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/tools/rsvp.html 

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Information Dissemination Annual Report 

Fiscal Year 2003 

INTRODUCTION

The Information Dissemination 

(Superintendent of Documents) organization 

participated in a wide range of new initiatives 

and made many exciting changes during FY 

2003. These efforts have all served to 

improve our ability to carry out our mission 

and to better position the organization to help 

the agency in keeping America informed. 

This report divides FY 2003 Information 

Dissemination activities into the following 

major themes: Reorganization, Outside 

Participation, New Initiatives and Pilot 

Projects, Transformation Activities, and Cost 

Saving Efforts. 

Reorganization 

Senior managers from the Superintendent of 

Documents organization participated with 

senior managers from the other areas in GPO 

in a process that resulted in a reorganization 

of the agency’s structure, including changing 

the organization’s name to Information 

Dissemination. Information Dissemination 

then took the lead in carrying out instructions 

to duplicate this process in each of the new 

organizational areas that evolved from the 

reorganization effort. 

This effort consisted of tearing down 

traditional stovepipes and creating a lean, 

functionally based, Information 

Dissemination organization that can most 

effectively carry out GPO’s information 

dissemination needs as we move forward into 

the future. The Public Printer approved the 

reorganization plan for Information 

Dissemination in June and work immediately 

began on the implementation process, with 

completion targeted for April 2004. By the 

end of the year, substantial progress was 

being made on this implementation and 

efforts to prepare employees for the transition 

were well underway. 

The plan aligns the Information 

Dissemination organization into the following 

four functional areas: 

• Program Development Service: This 

organization is responsible for planning 

and coordinating the execution of any 

new information dissemination program

initiatives for GPO. 

• Program Planning and Coordination 

Service: This organization is responsible 

for all aspects of planning the strategic 

direction of GPO’s established 

information dissemination programs and 

working in collaboration with the 

operational areas to establish the policies 

necessary to reach those goals and 

objectives. 

• Library and Customer Relations Service:

This organization is responsible for all 

aspects carrying out the day-to-day 

contacts that Documents has with its 

library partners and various customers. 

• Collections Management Service: This 

organization is responsible for the day-today acquisition, bibliographic control, 

collection management, and 

dissemination of tangible and electronic 

Federal information from GPO’s 

information dissemination collections. 

Each of these functional areas has been 

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divided into functional offices to carry out 

their responsibilities and work was well 

underway to create position descriptions to 

staff these areas by the close of the fiscal year 

as illustrated below: 

A cross-organizational team was charged 

with arranging assistance for employees in 

preparing resumes, addressing knowledge, 

skills and abilities (KSAs), and interviewing 

skills to successfully apply for positions as 

GPO reorganizes. The team’s initial efforts 

focused on preparing personnel from the 

existing Superintendent of Documents 

organization prepare for the transition to the 

functionally aligned Information 

Dissemination organization. These efforts 

included conducting an employee survey so 

that management could address employee 

questions and concerns, conducting 

orientation sessions for employees, bringing 

in an expert to discuss resume building and 

KSA development, and hosting career 

development workshops for staff. In 

addition, a career development expo was held 

to provide an opportunity for individualized 

attention to employees, based on the types of 

information discussed in the workshops. 

Transformation Activities 

In addition to the reorganization effort, 

Information Dissemination played a key role 

in a number of efforts to transform GPO’s 

information programs to meet the future 

needs of users and our partners. Most 

significant among these were the following: 

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• New Vision for the Federal Depository 

Library Program - The spring 2003 

meeting of the Depository Library 

Council to the Public Printer was held 

April 6-9, 2003 in Reno, Nevada, with a 

focus on discussing a vision for the 

Federal Depository Library Program of 

the future. Several days of intense 

discussion between GPO and its library 

partners established a firm foundation for 

creating a vision of the new GPO and 

FDLP in the 21st Century. Efforts to 

build on this foundation continued during 

the rest of the year and will continue into 

the future. Some of the important 

elements of that foundation were: 

- The Government Printing Office, in 

partnership with Federal depository 

libraries, meets the needs of the public 

for no-fee access to official 

Government information. 

- The new era of partnership between 

GPO and Federal depository libraries 

should retain the best aspects of the 

existing system while incorporating 

new technologies and services to 

provide a higher degree of dispersion 

of government information to the 

public. 

- A new more flexible FDLP must be 

developed to meet institutional 

missions of partner libraries. 

- GPO should become an aggregator for 

Federal information. 

- Partner libraries should become

facilitators in the Federal information 

dissemination process rather than 

repositories of printed government 

publications. 

- Libraries should also maintain their 

role of facilitator to no-fee public 

access to Federal information. 

• Transition to a More Electronic Federal 

Depository Library Program - The 

transition to a more electronic Federal 

Depository Library Program (FDLP) 

continued to progress during FY 2003. 

The percentage of online titles in the 

FDLP increased to 65% in FY 2003. This 

Congressionally mandated transition 

should continue, with the percentage of 

online information expected to approach 

95% by 2005. Through its commitment 

to ensuring permanent public access to 

the FDLP Electronic Collection, GPO is 

transforming the FDLP into a program 

that can continue to provide public access 

in the 21st century and beyond. 

• FDLP Training and Consultation Pilot 

Project - A significant amount of 

collaborative effort took place in FY 2003 

between GPO and its library partners to 

look for ways to transform the inspection 

process through which GPO works with 

depositories to ensure that they provide 

the best possible service to depository 

users. The regional depository libraries 

were encouraged to develop proposals for 

pilot projects to test a new consultation 

concept to augment the traditional 

inspection process. GPO established 

plans to develop locally based 

"consultants," who would be assigned 

responsibility for approximately 40 to 60 

depository libraries in a geographic area. 

They would visit each of those libraries at 

least once per quarter, some for only a 

few hours and others for a day or more, 

depending on the need. They would offer 

training and attend local, state and 

regional documents meetings to speak 

and answer questions. They could assist 

with self-studies, help train new 

documents librarians, and advise on 

problems related to item selection, 

collection development policies, etc. 

GPO intends to recruit people from the 

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AN-v24-#12-10/15/03 

library community who would serve for a 

year or two and then return to work in a 

depository library. Several regional 

depositories have been contacted to 

discuss the appropriate role for regional 

support and participation in this project. 

• Closure of U.S. Government Bookstores 

- In recognition of the changing way in 

which sales customers are choosing to do 

business, GPO closed the remaining U.S. 

Government Bookstores located outside 

of Washington D.C. during this Fiscal 

Year. A concerted effort was made to 

ensure that customers were kept informed 

of the process and provided with 

information on other channels available 

for purchasing publications, including the 

U.S. Government Online Bookstore 

<http://bookstore.gpo.gov>. 

• Re-Design of GPO Access - GPO Access

was re-launched with a new and enhanced 

look and feel and became the agency

homepage. This was accomplished as a 

result of feedback from users, through 

surveys, usability studies, focus groups, 

and contacts received through the GPO 

Access User Support Team. Significant 

work towards establishing a 

geographically separate mirror site was 

accomplished, as was effective work 

building towards the next generation of 

the infrastructure supporting GPO Access.

• Sales Inventory - Advances in print ondemand printing technology began to 

enable reductions in the number of copies 

purchased for the sales inventory. An

analysis of the current inventory and the 

possibilities presented by on-demand 

printing allowed for the formation of a 

product procurement strategy that should 

substantially reduce the future cost of 

unsaleable publications in the sales 

program. With exception of a small, but 

significant, number of sales titles that 

must be ordered and maintained in the 

traditional way due to their content or

construct, using print on-demand 

technology will allow ordering smaller 

quantities as needed for many titles. It 

will also allow for low-demand titles to 

be kept in the sales offering without 

financial risk to the program because 

copies are not printed until a sale is 

actually made. 

• Laurel Complex Consolidation - The 

changes in the way inventory is purchased 

and stored, plus a concerted effort to 

dispose of unsaleable stock allowed for 

the consolidation of space at our primary 

storage and distribution facility. This 

consolidation enabled GPO to reduce 

leased space by 180,000 square feet, or 

almost half of the size of the facility. 

OUTSIDE PARTICIPATION

To aid in the reorganization process, prepare 

for the future, and assume a leadership role in 

the information industry, the Information 

Dissemination organization joined or 

increased participation in a number of 

significant groups during FY 2003. These 

included: 

• Book Industry Study Group (BISG) - 

Information Dissemination staff actively 

participated as a member of this group 

and its major subcommittees, including 

Book Industry Standards And 

Communications (BISAC). BISG has

led the way in setting industry standards 

and conducting vital industry research on 

behalf of publishers, booksellers, libraries 

and vendors. This participation facilitated 

and will continue to help Information 

Dissemination and GPO efforts to be 

industry leaders in standards such as 

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ONIX (ONline Information Exchange) 

and RFID (Radio Frequency 

Identification). 

• National Information Standards 

Organization (NISO) - Participation

through NISO allowed Information 

Dissemination and GPO to play a key role 

in interagency discussions regarding 

Electronic Resource Management, Digital 

Reference Services, Performance 

Measures and Statistics for Libraries, 

Reference Linking, Controlled 

Vocabularies, Interoperability, and 

Thesauri, Electronic Journals - Best 

Practices, Scientific and Technical 

Reports: Spanning the New Technology, 

and Archiving Electronic Publications.

• Commerce, Energy, NASA, Defense 

Information Managers Group (CENDI) 

- Staff participation with CENDI in 

numerous discussions and explorations of 

intellectual property, Web site 

administration, content management, and 

other forces at work in the area of 

publishing and disseminating 

Government scientific and technical 

information greatly facilitated the 

advancement of GPO’s information 

dissemination programs. 

• Coalition for Networked Information 

(CNI) - Staff participation in CNI’s 

meetings puts them together with 

representatives of a variety of 

constituencies to discuss ongoing and 

new projects and plan for future 

initiatives pertaining to their three central 

themes: Developing and Managing 

Networked Information Content; 

Transforming Organizations, Professions, 

and Individuals; and Building 

Technology, Standards, and 

Infrastructure.

New Initiatives 

Information Dissemination personnel 

undertook a number of new initiatives during 

FY 2003. Among the most significant were: 

• Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) - In 

September 2003, the Deputy Public 

Printer and the IRM Policy Manager 

signed the GPO PKI policy. GPO plans 

to implement Public Key Infrastructure 

(PKI) technology that will include the use 

of digital signatures for congressional and 

other information made available through 

GPO Access. This will help ensure the 

protection of data against unauthorized 

modification or substitution of 

information. It will also enable GPO 

customers to verify the authenticity and 

integrity of the information they are using 

from GPO Access. Customers with a free 

software reader will be able to confirm 

that information was approved for 

submission to GPO by the appropriate 

Federal agency and that it has not been 

altered since it was signed. 

• NARA Archival Affiliate Status - GPO 

signed an historic agreement with the 

National Archives and Records 

Administration (NARA) on August 12, 

2003, making GPO an official "archival 

affiliate." All of the GPO Access 

databases are considered the official 

archival copies, as if they had been 

physically transferred to NARA, but GPO 

will continue to maintain them for 

permanent public access.

• Electronic Depository Library Pilot 

Project - In conjunction with Information 

Dissemination personnel, the University 

of Arizona began a pilot project to 

become the first all-electronic selective 

depository library. Begun in September 

2002, the active phase was completed 

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September 1, 2003, and evaluation and 

documentation by both GPO and the 

University of Arizona will continue. The 

project included University of Arizona 

personnel working with GPO to identify 

electronic counterparts for all of the items

that they select and systematically 

substituting those items in the place of 

tangible products. The development of an 

online depository requires a method of 

accessing and organizing the online 

government resources. The University of 

Arizona relies on GPO’s cataloging 

records, and the persistent uniform

resource locators (PURLs) within them, 

to both access and organize the 

documents that make up the University of 

Arizona online depository. 

• On-Demand Inventory - Information 

Dissemination planned and set in motion 

an effort to set up a means of utilizing ondemand printing technology to meet 

dissemination needs without having to 

produce and maintain costly inventories 

until the products are actually needed. 

While this will ultimately benefit all 

dissemination programs, it should prove 

particularly effective for the sales 

program, where inventory has proven to 

be problematic. A number of tests 

utilizing both internal GPO capabilities 

and those of outside companies were 

conducted and the results were used to 

anticipate potential issues and fine-tune 

the use of print-on-demand technology in 

the future. 

• Establishing a Public Information 

Collection - A draft collection plan that 

focused on building a comprehensive, 

timely, permanent collection of U.S. 

Government publications was developed. 

While primarily designed to proactively 

acquire, preserve, provide online access 

to, and make available for other GPO 

dissemination programs, copies of 

Government publications, the collection 

would also include paper copies to ensure 

future access even if a particular 

document has to be re-digitized. Through 

access to stored digital objects, and by

repurposing those objects for print-ondemand and document delivery services, 

the Collection will also support other 

GPO organizations and operations. In 

conjunction with regional Federal 

depository library collections, the 

collection will serve as the collection of

record for the FDLP, as well as the 

collection of last resort for all Federal 

depository libraries. 

• Integrated Library System Procurement 

Progress - Substantial work was 

completed on procuring an integrated 

library system (ILS) to meet GPO’s needs 

for creating and maintaining bibliographic 

information. The process should be 

completed early in FY 2004. 

• Online Bookstore Enhancements - 

Significant progress was made in 

enhancing the U.S. Government Online 

Bookstore customer experience and in 

preparing for even greater gains in the 

future. This includes progress towards 

the identification of a complete ecommerce infrastructure for the sales 

program that will hopefully be procured 

in the near future. 

• CRM Software - A customer relationship 

management package was procured and 

readied for implementation by the end of 

the fiscal year. It provides an electronic 

knowledgebase to help answer frequently 

asked questions, and also will provide 

Web chat functionality in real-time. This 

CRM application will help GPO manage 

and improve contacts with its many 

customers, including users of GPO 

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Access, GPO’s award-winning Web site. 

• DOE Pilot Projects - Information 

dissemination personnel worked with our 

partners in the Department of Energy’s 

(DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical 

Information (OSTI) to develop two new 

web services modules that will enhance 

the usefulness of the DOE Information 

Bridge service. 

• Regulations.gov - GPO was one of the 

lead partners in the project to establish 

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

gov>. Regulations.gov was created as the 

first step in the online rule-making 

initiative. Citizens can search, review, 

and comment on Federal agency rules and 

proposed rules open for comment from

the Regulations.gov Web site. The GPO 

Access User Support Team provides 

support for the site through a toll-free 

telephone number and e-mail.

• Public and Private Laws Listserv - 

Information Dissemination personnel 

utilized GPO’s list serve technology to 

establish an e-mail notification service 

that allows interested parties to sign up to 

be notified through e-mail when new 

public and private laws become available 

on GPO Access. These e-mails include 

links to the ASCII text and PDF versions 

of new public or private laws. Users can 

sign up at <http://listserv.access.gpo.gov/ 

archives/gpo-plaws-1.html>. 

• Search Engines/Paid Positioning - 

Recognizing that search engines are one 

of the most popular ways in which users 

find the resources available via GPO 

Access, Information Dissemination 

personnel continued their pursuit of 

optimizing the visibility of GPO Access

pages in major search engines and 

directories. In addition to ongoing 

optimization efforts, several successful 

paid positioning tests were conducted 

through industry leaders Google and 

Overture. One example is the campaign 

conducted on Google for the GPO Access

home page, which brought 94,000 new 

visitors to the site over a three-month 

period. 

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Readers Exchange 

Thinking Outside the Box 

(or in our Situation the Display Case) 

Holding a Raffle in a Depository Library 

Andrea Wyman, Government Documents Library 

California University of Pennsylvania 

A raffle in a depository library? Surely that 

can’t be, but that’s exactly what we tried at 

the Louis L. Manderino Library at California 

University of Pennsylvania. We are a midsize depository collection for an academic 

library and the funds we wanted to try and 

raise were going to go toward our library’s 

endowment. Fortunately, we had the 

enthusiastic support of our library director. 

The idea germinated initially from a 

government documents display celebrating 

the U.S. Mint and the 50 State quarters. The 

coins that we featured were proof sets of 

quarters plus a set including a penny, nickel, 

dime and half-dollar. We used $60 as seed 

money from the endowment to buy two 

quarter sets plus a commemorative Susan B. 

Anthony dollar. 

Next, we printed raffle tickets and sold them

for $1.00 each or a “bargain” package at 

$5.00 for 6 tickets. Each staff or faculty 

member in the library, who volunteered to 

sell, was given a packet of tickets and we 

gave ourselves about three weeks before we 

held the drawing. 

Were we successful? Fortunately, we were 

victorious on a number of fronts. First, the 

case for the display is in our main lobby and 

attracted a great deal of attention because it 

had quite a colorful, rah-rah, star-spangled 

look about it. Although it focused on the 

U.S. Mint, there was also a section on h.i.p. 

pocket change showing the links for Games, 

Machines, Time and Coin News on the Web 

site. This was particularly popular with our 

elementary education students. And as a bit 

of serentipity, when one of our elementary 

education faculty saw it, she asked me to give 

a brief talk for her “pre-service teachers,” 

about what could be found on a variety of 

government Web sites that would be relevant 

in the classroom. This provided the perfect 

opener for introducing the students to Ask 

Ben! 

The raffle, itself, was a success because we 

not only broke even, but we cleared about 

$175! One of our emeriti faculty won the 

coins and was delighted to have them. 

Would we do it again? Certainly, providing 

the display and topic coincided with a raffleable item. We believe it brought a bit of new 

traffic into the library and also provided some

positive PR for governments, at least for the 

moment, shifting the notion of government 

documents from being one dimensional to 

rah-rah and profitable. 

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Table of Contents 

New Customer Help Service Now Available from GPO.............................................................. 1 

2003 Biennial Survey of Depository Libraries Scheduled for November.................................... 2 

Invitation to Depository Library of the Year Award Presentation ............................................... 2 

Information Dissemination Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2003 ..................................................... 3 

Readers Exchange: Thinking Outside the Box: Holding a Raffle in a 

 Depository Library / Wyman.................................................................................................... 10 

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

Library Programs Service, SLLD 

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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