Administrative Notes

Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program

Vol. 22, no. 07 GP 3.16/3-2:22/ 07 May 1, 2001

Recent Developments Impacting the SuDocs Programs

Remarks by Francis J. Buckley, Jr.

Superintendent of Documents

Depository Library Council Meeting

San Antonio, TX

April 2, 2001

Good morning and welcome to San Antonio. Customarily the Public Printer has opened the

Council meeting and extended his appreciation for everyone's attendance and participation.

Unfortunately, Mr. DiMario's travel schedule will not permit him to arrive until later this

afternoon, so he will address you tomorrow. In the meantime, I have the pleasure of welcoming

you all to San Antonio.

“I like the story, doubtless antique, that I heard comes from near San Antonio. A child asks a

stranger where he comes from, whereupon his father rebukes him gently, “Never do that, son. If

a man’s from Texas, he’ll tell you. If he’s not, why embarrass him by asking?” John Gunther,

Inside U.S.A., 1947

I am pleased that you made it here to San Antonio, airline strikes and threatened strikes

notwithstanding AND that you followed us on our journey from one hotel to another. We

appreciate your patience and understanding.

As usual we have an ambitious program with updates from GPO staff and presentations from

NCLIS and the Census Bureau as well as many of your depository colleagues to address current

government information policy issues and the operation of the FDLP.

I'd like to discuss some of the general issues and recent developments impacting the SuDocs

programs. Gil Baldwin, T.C. Evans and George Barnum will be discussing a number of specific

operational issues that affect you in your libraries and I don’t want to (well, I have been asked

not to) steal their thunder.
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I had the pleasure of speaking at the annual Federal Library and Information Center Committee

(FLICC) forum last week, which had the theme of "Preserving our Federal Heritage in the

Digital Era.” The keynote speaker was Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who chairs the Senate

Appropriations Committee. Senator Stevens began by reading from a prepared speech about the

topic. But then he said he would deviate from the prepared text (a staff person’s worst

nightmare!) and went on to say how important it was to preserve digital and printed words. He

said that libraries have an enormous responsibility to preserve our history and that important

information should be stored and preserved. He said that the issue of preserving digital

information hit home when he made a note on his computer about a particular incident, but kept

a paper copy. He was unable to find the hard copy when he needed it and has yet to track down

the information on his computer.

I was on a panel addressing the roles of central Federal agencies in creating the Government's

digital archive with Lew Bellardo, Deputy Archivist from the National Archives and Records

Administration, and Laura Campbell, Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives, who is

responsible for the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and

Preservation Program.

We all agreed on the importance, and indeed necessity, of preservation of digital information. I

even quoted Patrick Henry who said, “I know of no way of judging the future but by the past” –

in a speech in the Virginia Convention, March 1775. And George Santayana's comment: "Those

who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (The Life of Reason, 1905-1906.)

Both NARA and LC are involved in research and pilot projects to model and test concepts for

archival programs. GPO on the other hand, has instituted a program to begin to systemically

capture records for depository electronic publications, that are, at least potentially, at risk.

George Barnum will shortly discuss our operations in more detail.

And you may be aware of GPO's efforts in the area of permanent public access initiating

meetings with other Federal agencies, national libraries, Congressional staff, public interest

groups and other organizations outside of the government that are concerned with the

preservation of, and access to, government information produced electronically. These

permanent public access working group meetings have, we hope, engendered an environment of

cooperation among those engaged in related activities. In fact, I saw a number of meeting

participants at the FLICC Forum and was asked by them when the next meeting will be. Since

John Stevenson is the Council liaison to this working group and has attended the last two

meetings, I will say here that staff will be arranging another meeting for later this spring.

We also anticipate being involved in the planning effort of the Library of Congress to develop

the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program I mentioned earlier.

LC is to develop the plan in collaboration with other national libraries, Federal agencies, and

other public and private organizations involved in efforts to preserve, collect, and disseminate

information in digital formats. The plan is to “set forth a strategy for the Library of Congress, in

collaboration with other Federal and non-Federal entities, to identify a national network of

libraries and other organizations with responsibilities for collecting digital materials that will

provide access to and maintain those materials. In addition to developing this strategy, the plan
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shall set forth, in concert with the Copyright Office, the policies, protocols, and strategies for the

long-term preservation of such materials, including the technological infrastructure required at

the Library of Congress. In developing the plan, the Library should be mindful of the

conclusions drawn in a recent National Academy of Sciences report concerning the Library’s

trend toward insularity and isolation from its clients and peers in the transition toward digital

content.”

In the consolidated Appropriations Act for 2001, LC was authorized up to $100 million for this

program; $75 million must be matched by non-Federal funds. LC is just beginning to plan how

to set up the planning process.

GAO Report

Also as you may be aware, the General Accounting Office (GAO) was directed in our FY 2001

funding bill to conduct a comprehensive study on the impact of providing documents to the

public solely in electronic format and to assess how to transfer the depository library program to

the Library of Congress and measures necessary to ensure the success of such a transfer. We had

invited a representative to report on their study, which was due to Congress last Friday, but she

withdrew last week due to the press of business, and as of 5:30 pm last Friday we had not

received a copy of their report. I will therefore only make a few comments about the process and

our reactions to the draft of the report.

GPO staff had many meetings with GAO -- indeed I know that a number of you in the audience

today also met with the GAO staff. We had an opportunity to review a draft of the report and

had only one week to respond with questions, comments or corrections. But respond we did --

and the letter from Mr. DiMario to GAO is included in your packets. We were very concerned

about the scant attention to all the issues involved in an assessment of the impact of all-electronic

dissemination, the draft did not address how public access to Federal government information

would be improved by transferring the FDLP to LC, or really examine the congruence of

missions, operations and the costs involved. There were unclear and confusing comments about

GPO Access, but apparently they intended splitting up GPO Access and transferring

responsibilities for the FDLP/EC only to LC, closing the integrated aspects of GPO Access

production and maintenance.

I encourage you to read Mr. DiMario’s letter to GAO. In addition, we analyzed the draft and

found 109 instances where there were factual errors, misinterpretations, etc., and we

communicated them to the GAO staff. When we have the opportunity to review the final report

we will see what they have accepted from our comments, as well as their response to the

questions and issues raised by Mr. DiMario.

From what we understand, the Library of Congress had minimal discussions with GAO as to

their ability to undertake the responsibility of running the FDLP or the cost or operational

concerns. GAO only met with LC staff twice for brief periods and based their report on studies

done in 1993 and 1994. LC feels the whole idea should be deferred pending the strategic

planning initiative for digital information they will be undertaking. They also questioned the
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absence of any quantifiable or substantive benefit to users that would be achieved by

consolidation. We have asked for sufficient copies to make distribution to all depositories.

NCLIS Report

At this conference Judy Russell, Deputy Director of NCLIS, will be reporting on the issuance of

the Commission report: A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination.

Volume 1 of their study was issued more than a month ago, and sent to all depository libraries.

Volume 2 with legislative and regulatory proposals was just released last Friday and is in the

process of being printed for all depositories. As you are probably aware, the Commission is

recommending restructuring all government information dissemination into Public Information

Resource Administrations (PIRA) in each branch of government, with the Executive Branch

PIRA responsible for all dissemination and sales programs (including NTIS).

Mr. DiMario has officially responded that he does not think such a sweeping reorganization or

the transfer of the SuDocs information dissemination programs into the Executive Branch is

necessary or appropriate.

Private Sector Issues

I am sure that many of you who read GOVDOC-L recently saw some messages that raised

concerns about statements put forth by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)

calling for a "diversity of information sources in the digital age, ” in their White Paper,

"Challenges and Opportunities for 2001.” In their proposals for government information policy

they stated:

"As we progress further into the digital age, advancements in information technology promise to

dramatically increase the ease of public access to government information, both directly and

through private sector disseminators. However, when considering new models for dissemination

of public information, the government must continue to uphold the greatest commitment to the

free flow of information through a diversity of information sources. The public is not served

when the government, or some other provider, is the only source of public information."

I have to suggest, however, that the public is not served when a fee-based private or non-profit

sector products is the only source of public information.

The SIIA policy on preventing government competition with the private sector went on to say

that, “Government initiatives to disseminate public information electronically should not result in

expanding the role of government in providing commercial information services. Rather,

government efforts to disseminate information should take full advantage of public-private

partnerships or independent private services and products to efficiently and effectively provide

the desired added value for the public.”

As Dan Barkley correctly pointed out on GOVDOC-L: "This issue strikes me as very

reminiscent of the privatization issues librarians faced in the late 1980's."
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We understand a number of private sector information aggregators are attempting to call into

question government information indexing and abstracting (and even full-text) products, which

are mission-related, subject-oriented products incorporating government publications, and

contributed private-sector information. Suggestions have been made that they should not

produce such products or if they do, the products should be kept within the agency and not

provided to the public.

In a related development, in October of last year, a report commissioned by the Computer and

Communications Industry Association was released. Titled, "The Role of Government in a

Digital Age," the authors laid out principals for government action and labeled them with a

green, yellow or red light. A green light was given to "providing public data and information is a

government role." Good so far, but then came the yellow light: "the government should exercise

caution in adding specialized value to public data and information." And the topper -- the red

light: "the government should exercise substantial [emphasis added] caution in entering markets

in which private-sector firms are active."

So, not only is the future of PubMed Central (produced by the National Institutes of Health) at

risk, as noted in Michele McNelly's recent posting to GOVDOC-L, but so is the fate of

PubScience, produced by one of our stalwart partners, the Office of Scientific and Technical

Information (OSTI) at the Department of Energy, as well as ERIC, produced by the National

Library of Education.

I find this push from elements of the private sector ironic in light of comments last week by

Steven Emmert, Director of Government and Industry Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, at the same FLICC

Forum I mentioned earlier. He was frank and honest about the private sector’s interest in and

ability to preserve proprietary value-added databases of Federal information. Essentially he said

there’s little room for altruism in the private sector. They must make money to stay in business

and reward stockholders. If a product is not generating funds to support itself or to provide a

sufficient return on investment it will be cut--even a sympathetic CEO cannot carry products that

do not contribute to the bottom line. Thus the role of the private sector in the preservation of

government and non-government digital information would only last as long as there was a

market for the information and someone was paying for it. This is one of the issues concerning

LC and research libraries for government and non-government information.

Other issues in SuDocs

There has been much talk recently about the issue of Internet filtering in libraries engendered by

restrictions on the use of Federal LSTA, ESEA, or e-rate funds that require Internet safety

policies and the use of technology that blocks or filters certain materials. Of course many of the

libraries in the depository system are affected by the Federal mandate. When this question

comes up, we refer to our filtering policy, which was enunciated in the FDLP Internet Use Policy

Guidelines, published in the January 15, 1999 Administrative Notes (v. 20, # 2). The section on

filtering states:

"Since the use of filtering software may restrict access to official FDLP information, for example

in the health or biological sciences fields, depository libraries must allow users the option to use
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workstations without filtering software or to turn off the filter while searching FDLP

information."

Use or access may be mediated or unmediated. The availability of one or more of these options

in library policies would seem to comport with the requirements of the legislation and our public

access concerns.

Conclusion

These are interesting times for the FDLP, GPO and for you in the depository community. We

appreciate your continued support for our efforts.

Enjoy San Antonio!

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Remarks by Gil Baldwin

Director, Library Programs Service

Depository Library Council Meeting

San Antonio, TX

April 2, 2001

Howdy, partners! It’s a lot of fun to be meeting with you deep in the heart of Texas, and to have

Council, as Willie Nelson would say ... “on the road again.” This morning I want to cover some

of the changes and activities that have been going on at the Library Programs Service (LPS) and

to highlight some of the upcoming presentations on this meeting’s agenda.

Personnel News

One of the big news items for LPS has been staff changes. This has been a period of significant

turnover among our staff. As you no doubt know, our former Council mistress of ceremonies,

Sheila McGarr, left LPS in December to become the director of the National Library of

Education. As great as that was for her and for NLE, it meant a lot of adjustments within LPS to

fill the gap, especially since she had been wearing two hats. As Chief of the Library Division,

Sheila had management oversight responsibility for the Cataloging Branch, the Depository

Administration Branch (DAB), and the Depository Services Staff (DSS). The Depository

Services Staff includes the library inspection team, the responsibility for LPS publishing, and

event planning for the annual Federal Depository Library Conference, the Council meetings, and

the annual Interagency Seminar. In order to cover these critical activities, I named Robin HaunMohamed as permanent Chief of the DSS.
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The transition of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to a program that emphasizes

the discovery, cataloging, and management of online publications has brought about many

operational adjustments in LPS' work. During the past year LPS has experimented with an

Electronic Collection Team. More recently, we have begun new work processes and

assignments based on a closer coordination between the Cataloging Branch and DAB staff.

Therefore, Thomas A. Downing, is addition to carrying on as the Chief of the Cataloging

Branch, also has been named the acting Chief of the Depository Administration Branch.

Vicki Barber, Chief of the Depository Distribution Division, has been detailed to the

Superintendent of Documents' staff to assist in implementing the Integrated Processing System

(IPS) in the Documents Sales Service. This detail is expected to last up to one year.

Consequently, Colleen Davis, Chief of the Depository Processing Branch, has been detailed to

the position of Chief of the Depository Distribution Division.

We presently have a number of staff vacancies that we are trying to fill. We are in the hiring

process for one inspector, one publications management specialist, two catalogers, a program

analyst, Chief of the Micrographics Section in DAB, the Chief of DAB, and the Library Division

Chief. These hires do not represent organizational growth or empire-building; filling these jobs

will just us get back to where we were a year ago.

We will also request additional personnel as part of our FY2002 budget proposal. We would like

to bring on additional catalogers, another inspector, and personnel to work on enhancing the

FDLP Electronic Collection. The fate of these proposals remains to be seen, but I believe that

they are essential to providing the level of service that you expect and deserve.

Accelerating the Electronic Transition

Since last fall, we have been pushing ahead with the transition to a primarily electronic FDLP.

As you may remember, the reasons for this hurry-up are specific Congressional direction and

reduced funding. The result of our efforts has been to raise the bar yet again for the amount of

electronic products in the FDLP. For the October through February period, 61% of the new titles

in the FDLP were online electronic. And you may expect this trend to continue.

New Electronic Operating Guidelines

At the last Council meeting, LPS presented drafts of two important working documents for our

staff to use in acquiring publications for the FDLP, and in particular in making the decision of

when to make a certain publication electronic only. These documents are the Superintendent of

Documents’ policy statement on “Dissemination/Distribution Policy for the FDLP” (SOD 71)

and the related list of “Essential Titles for Public Use in Paper Format.” We listened closely to

the input from Council and from the library community, and incorporated the substance and

spirit of those comments into our final version. Both SOD 71 and the expanded list of “Essential

Titles for Public Use in Paper Format” were published in the January 15, 2001, issue of

Administrative Notes (v 22, #2) and are also available on the FDLP Desktop.
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U.S. Code

This fiscal year GPO will begin producing the 2000 bound cumulative edition of the U.S. Code.

We are pleased to say that this essential product will be made available to all selecting

depositories in case-bound format, although International Exchange libraries will get the

paperbound edition. This is the single most expensive product in the FDLP; at almost $1.9

million it uses up almost 20% of the FDLP acquisitions budget. Originally we estimated the

2000 U.S. Code at $1.6 million, but the number of volumes in the set has grown. Obviously we

have to do some cost saving elsewhere to make room for the 600-pound gorilla of the FDLP.

We continue to make product-by-product decisions that will ultimately reduce multiple format

distribution in the FDLP by trimming the distribution of physical products.

“Migrating” to an Electronic FDLP

Since last summer, as we communicated in the August 2000 letter to the directors of depository

libraries, LPS has been taking action to terminate the physical distribution of numerous titles

when there is an official and reliable online version available. This means that we are no longer

simply proceeding with the transition in tandem with the actions of the publishing agencies.

Now that we are getting out ahead of the agencies we are running into a new set of operational

issues. Product acquisitions through GPO’s labyrinthine system can have a life of their own,

particularly in cases where agencies are placing the depository orders by attaching riders to term

contracts. In such cases agencies often overlook our directions to stop acquiring print copies and

keep on ordering FDLP stock that shows up on our doorstep. Worse yet we get charged for it.

Up to this point, our policy has been to go ahead and distribute it, but this has a couple of big

disadvantages. First, we give you a mixed message, by telling you that a title is going electronic

only, but the paper copies keep showing up. And second, we’re not realizing the savings that we

need.

Since most of these situations involve term contracts, we are working with GPO’s Customer

Service department to get the agencies to follow our directions. Agencies will be charged for

stock that they over-order on our behalf, and the excess copies will be returned to the publishing

agency. This is a lot of follow-up work, but we must break the cycle of faulty ordering by

agencies being charged to us. With individual monographs, general publications for the most

part, we are better positioned to make these format decisions at the front end. LPS has

publications management specialists stationed in the Customer Service Department. The LPS

people review incoming printing orders to see if it belongs in the FDLP, and if there is an online

alternative that meets our selection criteria. In many cases they can make an immediate decision

to go electronic-only on a given title before any stock is ordered.

Electronic Documents in your Collections

The shift to a primarily electronic FDLP requires us to revisit and revise other documentation,

including the Instructions to Depository Libraries, specifically the guidance on the recommended

basic collection for any depository library. This list was last revised in 1993, and in the

meantime some of the products have ceased, some have changed titles, and several now have

online versions that may serve your customers’ needs better than hard copy. The LPS staff has
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reviewed the list and prepared a draft for discussion at this meeting. One of the underlying

approaches to revising the basic collection list is to focus on the content rather than the

distribution media. LPS believes that these products should be available to the public in any

depository collection, but your local needs should dictate whether you select the print or the

online version.

This proposal is contained in the salmon-colored handout entitled “Revise the Basic Collection ”

and it will be discussed in a Council working session at 2:30 today.

Cataloging Priorities

As we move toward a primarily electronic Program, the operations within LPS are changing as

well. As Tad Downing has told you many times, the electronic environment has created

significant new workloads for LPS, and made the catalogers’ tasks much more complex. Our

catalogers are now involved in the discovery, evaluation, and selection of online resources, as

well as in assigning PURLs to those resources and archiving them. We are giving our best effort

to controlling the new online resources and describing the relationships to their tangible

counterparts.

Inevitably this work has been accompanied by evolving policies and practices. We have just

completed a thorough revision of our cataloging priorities guideline; one that gives full

recognition to the importance of cataloging the online resources in the FDLP.

Included in this priority guideline is the statement that “In general it is GPO’s policy to create a

cataloging record based on the format that was distributed or made accessible via the FDLP.

Therefore, if a publication is included in the FDLP solely in online format, GPO will create a

cataloging record for the online version, and appropriate record links will be made from a record

describing a physical manifestation of the same content.” Our cataloging policy is part of the

same transition that affects the Program overall, and we are acting in recognition of the fact that

bibliographic control linked to content is the critical factor in an electronic FDLP. You may read

the cataloging priority guideline in our response to Recommendation 1 from the fall 2000

Council meeting, or in the April 15 issue of Administrative Notes (v 22, #6).

Classification of Online Products

Another guideline that we are working on is the classification policy for online products. In

looking back we find that the “GPO Classification Manual” is silent on this matter, hardly

surprising given that the last revision was in 1993. We have developed a draft guideline for

classifying online resources, and we are test-driving it within LPS. Later this spring we will post

the draft guideline on the FDLP Desktop and get your comments and feedback before we finalize

it.

Systems Modernization Underway

LPS has begun modernizing the automated systems used in LPS in support of the FDLP. For

many years LPS has used four legacy systems:
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• ACSIS (Acquisitions, Classification, and Shipment Information System) put in operation

about 1992.

• DDIS (Depository Distribution Information System) designed in the late 1970’s.

• MoCat system for cataloging and Monthly Catalog production, started about 1976.

• ADDS (Automated Depository Distribution System, formerly known as the Lighted Bin

System), started about 1985.

In recent years, it has become obvious that these old systems do not communicate, interact and

exchange data well, and they are unable to support your expectations for service. This is truer

than ever now that most depositories use commercial Integrated Library Systems (ILS). We are

looking into replacing at least the first three and possibly all four of the old LPS systems. The

most likely way to attain this goal is to obtain a commercial, off-the-shelf ILS and to use it for as

many of our processes as it is able to support. Currently we are looking at three very well known

ILS packages. Just coincidentally, they are the top three library systems reported in use at

depository libraries.

We are also examining some of the ways in which we do things, to better make them fit into

standard library practice and meet the capabilities of a standard software package. Ms. Laurie B.

Hall, supervisory program analyst, is taking the lead on the LPS systems modernization effort.

While we are in this planning stage, we would like to get input from you about your expectations

of what an LPS automated system should do. I hope that you will be able to attend our

Wednesday morning “LPS Systems Modernization Discussion Group.” Laurie will present some

background information about our current systems environment. Then we want to hear from you

about the services and features a system must offer in the FDLP of the future.

AskLPS Backlog

The need for systems modernization has a very direct impact on our ability to process work, and

specifically to answer your inquiries. I’m referring to askLPS, our email channel for inquiries

about the FDLP operations. In the most recent 6 months, we received about 5700 email

inquiries, and we processed 5300, or about 93% of them. Most of these inquiries come in

directly to an individual person, not to the askLPS general email box. The askLPS questions run

about 40% about classification, 25% about fugitive documents and “whatever happened to...”

another 25% for cataloging and PURLs, about 5% for distribution and claims inquiries, and

another 5% miscellaneous. Many of these questions require significant amounts of research, and

then the results need to be posted to our legion of legacy systems. It’s a time-consuming

process, averaging 30-60 minutes per inquiry to research, process, and respond. And the fact is

we have no staff purely dedicated to responding to askLPS questions and other inquiries. It’s an

ancillary duty for 6 or 7 different people, many of whom are here today, including Laurie and

Robin.

Meanwhile, the inquiries keep on coming in back at home. In order to keep up at all, we are

obliged to perform a triage on inquiries. One category includes inquiries that have already been

answered. Another category is the multi-paragraph questions that could take hours of research to

unravel all of the threads. The third category, and this is where we put most of our efforts, is
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questions that can be answered in a reasonable amount of time, especially if they involve fairly

new material in the program. When we left for this trip, we had about 500 inquiries on hand.

Answering inquiries has always been a resource issue for LPS, so we need to look for some

innovative ways to work together on these questions. One approach that would reduce

everyone’s frustration is for folks to look in the Serials Supplement, in WEBTechNotes, and so

on, before they send in a question. We still find lots that have already been answered. Another

approach might be to partner with people in the library community to assist with some of the

underlying research. There is a long tradition of this kind of voluntarism in the FDLP, and it can

really benefit everyone if done well.

Feedback Loop

I believe that it is an honor to be part of this program. It’s a real bargain for the public, in terms

of services delivered for the dollars invested. We value your comments and feedback, and we do

our best to be responsive. I only hope that others can learn how much these services mean to

constituents, in terms of economic impact, distance education, civic involvement and the like.

Librarians are always thought to love to read, and we know that you love to write as well. Just

make sure to write other people who can influence the program as well. Thank you coming

today and helping to keep public information one of the nation’s strengths. And one more

thought before I step down. I want to express LPS’ appreciation to all of the folks on the local

arrangements committee here in San Antonio. Your help and hospitality means a lot to us and to

the success of these meetings. Thank you all!

GPO Access Update

Remarks by T.C. Evans

Director, Office of Electronic Information Dissemination

Depository Library Council Meeting

San Antonio, TX

April 2, 2001

Introduction

I appreciate the opportunity to update the Depository Library Council and the library community

on the current and future state of GPO Access. The good people back at GPO who make it all

happen have been hard at work, so there is plenty to report. As always, I tip my hat to their

efforts to keep this ever-growing colossus moving forward.

Hopefully, you have a copy of our GPO Access update [see p. 23]. It contains size and usage

numbers, as well as what is new and on the horizon.
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Size

GPO Access continues to grow, with almost 1,900 official government databases offered through

some 80 applications. At this time, approximately 203,000 electronic titles are available through

the FDLP Electronic Collection, with 119,000 titles on GPO servers and almost 84,000 titles

linked to from GPO Access.

Usage

GPO Access usage continues to amaze, with recent months bringing us to some significant

milestones. The more than 26 million retrievals in October propelled total usage of GPO Access

to over 1 billion documents retrieved since the service premiered in 1994. January produced the

highest total to date, with more than 32 million documents downloaded.

It will be interesting to watch these totals in upcoming months, particularly as the

implementation of our new contract with the Akamai content delivery network progresses. The

improved response time, particularly for downloading large files, should enable users to more

successfully retrieve documents as more and more GPO Access applications become

“akamaized.” Yes, you heard correctly. The process of “akamaizing” the site refers to the work

necessary to deliver files through the Akamai network of more than 8,500 servers geographically

dispersed around the world when a user clicks on a link on a GPO Access page, including search

results. Simply put, this allows us to dramatically spread the load for delivering requested files

and makes it likely that a user is downloading a file from a server located near them rather than

all the way from Washington, D.C.

As an example, let me describe the difference this would make in delivering the Supreme Court

decision on the election. Instead of the millions of users all trying to download the file from

GPO servers at the same time, a maximum of 8,500 requests would arrive at GPO from the

Akamai servers, who would then serve up the files to users in their areas when those users

clicked on that link on the Supreme Court Web site. Akamai servers first check to see if they

have the file in cache, and if not, look in their region and beyond in expanding arcs until coming

to GPO as a last resort. Once they initially pull the file from GPO, it is held in cache on the local

server to handle requests from users for a period of time established by GPO.

 This process began with the Supreme Court Web site hosted on GPO Access and the daily table

of contents to the Federal Register. Our Production department will be working to carry this

work to other GPO Access applications as soon as possible, based on priorities we have provided

that are based on usage popularity.

While we believe that this will serve to reduce most of the problems being experienced by users,

we will continue to strive towards other improvements that will benefit our users. This includes

a geographically separate mirror site under development at the GPO regional facility in Denver,

Colorado. Work has begun to expand the available bandwidth at the facility and the specs for the

necessary hardware and software are being drawn up so that they may be procured and put in

place. We have developed a plan for migrating copies of the databases that matches the

popularity of the databases at the main GPO Access site. When complete, this site will provide
AN-v22-# 07-5/1/01

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backup in the event that the main GPO Access site cannot be reached and could be brought in

play to relieve use burdens in times of heavy demand for popular information.

We are also actively engaged in expanding our ability to measure the performance of the GPO

Access system from the user’s perspective. Two different tracks will be pursued concurrently.

The first track involves a contract with the Keynote performance measurement service. This

contract will provide information on the performance of the system as it would be experienced

by users who are both geographically and technologically diverse. The initial focus will be on

12 of the most popular applications on GPO Access. In addition to measuring the basics such as

page load times, it will also measure performance of transactions such as searches and file

downloads.

The second track will rely on volunteers from our user communities to act as our eyes and ears to

test system performance. For our initial examination, my staff has developed a short set of

exercises to be performed by volunteer users in relation to the degree of improvement realized

through our new relationship with the Akamai content delivery network. Users will record the

results and pass them through e-mail to Selene Dalecky for aggregation and analysis. Copies of

these exercises are available as a handout in the back of the room. I urge you to take a few

minutes and help us with this important task. For those of you who can volunteer to help us for a

few minutes each month, a new set of exercises will be sent out each month to get an accurate

assessment of key issues at that time. In both cases, we need volunteers from all areas of the

country and with all kinds of technology. I assure you that we will limit the size of the tasks to

something that will not be overly intrusive on your valuable time, but that will provide us with

data of great significance.

Referrals to GPO Access from Other Web Sites

We have begun monitoring the number of referrals to GPO Access from other Web sites. This is

accomplished through the use of referral logs that record the host domain from which a referred

user was directed to one of the pages on GPO Access. It has been most gratifying to see just

how many referrals occur in the short time we have been analyzing these logs, as well as the

broad array of sites who direct users to us.

Part of our referral review has been to track the number of times users are referred to us from

depository Web sites. While some have remained remarkably consistent, it has been interesting

to speculate on the vacillation of others. During the first four months of measurement we have

recorded referrals from 660 of the 796 registered depository sites and we hope to see referrals

from the rest as we move forward in time.

Part of the impetus for reviewing referral logs came from a request to determine how many

referrals we have been receiving from FirstGov. In the first two months, their totals represented

about one half of one percent of the total referrals received. The third month declined to about

one quarter of one percent and the total declined further in the fourth month, falling to just over

three one hundredths of one percent.
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My staff is in the process of completing an update of an analysis first conducted when FirstGov

premiered to see how well their site directs users to the products and services of GPO Access.

The primary goal of these analyses is to provide a basis for working with the developers of

FirstGov to ensure that their coverage of the resources of GPO Access is maximized. I have

recently spoken with the director of FirstGov, who expressed great interest in seeing our analysis

and in working with us to help users discover GPO Access.

What’s new on GPO Access

There are a number of recent changes to GPO Access that should be mentioned. The most

notable are:

• The new Davis-Bacon Wage Determination site. This site provides free access to wage

determinations issued by the U.S. Department of Labor under the Davis-Bacon and Related

Acts. The Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor determines prevailing

wage rates to be paid on Federally funded or assisted construction projects.

• A summary of the President’s budget plan titled “A Blueprint for New Beginnings – A

Responsible Budget for America’s Priorities”

• My staff has recently completed the Third Edition of the GPO Access Legislative Resources

Comparison Report. I would also like to pass along a word of thanks to Mary Alice Baish of

AALL and Suzanne Campbell in the GPO Law Library for their excellent assistance in this

effort. The report compares the congressional and other legislative branch information

available on GPO Access with data available on other government and non-government Web

sites. I am pleased to report that GPO Access continues to excel among the compared sites,

providing access to 19 of the 22 legislative resources measured. All versions of the

Legislative Comparison Report are available on the Federal Bulletin Board.

What’s on the Horizon for GPO Access

As always, work is under way to add more content to GPO Access and to refine access to the

materials already provided. Some key examples of current efforts are:

• An eCFR application, which will be updated daily as opposed to the current quarterly

updated Code of Federal Regulations application, should be fully available by summer.

• As a result of the development of the free eCFR application, the Sales program is

developing a new e-mail subscription service. Customers will be able to purchase

subscriptions that will allow them to be notified via e-mail of any changes in one or more

CFR titles and/or parts, as they are published in the Federal Register.

• We will be conducting the first Ben’s Guide focus group on May 9, 2001 in Long Island,

New York. The focus group is being offered in conjunction with a speech at the Long
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Island Library Conference. We will be meeting with students from local schools in an

attempt to gain feedback about Ben’s Guide from a student’s perspective. Currently,

classes from grades K-2 and 3-5 have volunteered to participate. Efforts to gather input

from grades 6-8 and 9-12 as well as a parent, teacher, and librarian perspectives are still

being explored.

• We are also undertaking an examination of Section 508 of the Workforce Investment Act,

which is meant to increase accessibility for the disabled in the workplace, to determine

how it might apply to GPO Access Web pages. In particular, we are looking at how the

sixteen Section 508 standards increase accessibility, and how each of these standards

might be applied to the GPO Access Web site and its hosted sites to make them more

accessible.

• We are constantly looking for valuable feedback to improve the usability of GPO Access.

A number of methods are used for this purpose, including focus groups, online surveys,

and of course, questions and comments received by the GPO Access User Support Team

on a daily basis. In addition to these mechanisms, we have started doing usability testing

at a usability-testing lab at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington DC, in order to

get immediate feedback on how users find government information on GPO Access.

This will provide us with another measure of the effectiveness and efficiency of our site,

as well as the satisfaction of users. One of the interesting things learned in the first series

of tests involved ways in which users utilize our site contents page, which should lead to

some significant improvements on that important resource. If you are interested in

participating in future usability studies for GPO Access, or hosting them at your

institution, please contact us. The contact information is in the handout.

Authentication/PKI

Another topic that has been of great interest during the electronic transition is authentication of

the electronic versions of official print publications. This is particularly true when the decision is

made to rely solely on that electronic version and cease the dual distribution in paper. We are

working towards utilizing Public Key Infrastructure, or PKI, to ensure non-repudiation evidence

that the file retrieved by the user from GPO Access was created by the appropriate authority and

that it has not been altered since it was created.

In accordance with Section 706 of Title 44 USC, GPO produces the official print versions of

Congressional Bills. These printed versions of these important instruments are universally

accepted as such. By establishing PKI certificate authority for those responsible for producing

both these printed copies and the exact duplicate electronic versions, GPO can provide evidence

to the user that the electronic version was created as part of the official process. In addition to

this validation, the user of these authenticated files will be able to easily ascertain that this

official file has not been altered since its creation, as well as when it was signed by the creating

authority. This will be accomplished through the use of a free reader installed on users’

machines that works in conjunction with their Web browsers and helper applications such as the

ADOBE Acrobat Reader.
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The law also validates the use of digital signatures. In section 101 of the Electronic Signatures in

Global and National Commerce Act (Public Law 106-226), it states “a signature, contract, or

other record relating to such transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability

solely because it is in electronic form.”

GPO will embark on this important effort with diligent speed, but the size and complexity of this

project should not be underestimated. In an article in the February 2001 issue of Imaging and

Document Solutions Magazine, Jim Minihan stated “The legislation largely puts to rest the issue

of the acceptance of electronic documents.” He went on to say, however, “Be advised that

building a PKI is an enormous undertaking, especially if unrelated third parties will rely on the

signatures.” This is certainly the case with Congressional Bills and all of the official Federal

documents made available through GPO Access, so GPO will be careful to take sufficient time to

do it right.

While neither this action, nor anything else that GPO can do will force acceptance of electronic

versions by outside parties, it is the most positive means of guaranteeing that the user has

received the same official text that appeared in the print version. Hopefully, in conjunction with

the recently passed law, it will help foster the acceptance of the electronic version in official

matters.

Search Engine Project

Our ongoing effort to improve the accessibility of GPO Access resources through popular search

engines continues. Unfortunately, despite our efforts, performance has continued to decline.

The evidence suggests that much of the decline can be attributed to the growing trend towards

various methods of paid positioning. Because of our commitment to achieving the best possible

results for searchers whose needs could be met by the resources of GPO Access, we are in the

process of testing some of these methods. These tests will initially focus on the U.S.

Government Online Bookstore portion of GPO Access, the results will be studied, and a decision

will be made regarding how to proceed in terms of the rest of the site. All of our reports from

this project are available on the Federal Bulletin Board.

I would like to note in closing that a look at the eCFR application has been added to the topics

for the GPO Access open forum on Tuesday. Thank you for your attention and I look forward to

discussing your ideas for a better GPO Access during the conference.
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FDLP Electronic Collection Update

Remarks by George Barnum

Electronic Collection Manager

Depository Library Council Meeting

San Antonio, TX

April 2, 2001

I’d like to take a moment as I begin this to thank Mr. DiMario for altering his travel

arrangements, so that this morning’s lineup had to be shifted slightly, taking me out of the “right

before lunch” slot, which is never an enviable place to be.

It is, as ever, a pleasure to be before you with an update on what’s simmering on my stove

currently. My objective this morning is to update you a bit, and remind you as well, about where

we are and what we’re doing about the creation of this “comprehensive digital library of U.S.

Government information.”

First some background. In April, 2001 we are almost five years into the transition to a more or

mostly electronic FDLP. We can observe that in practice the FDLP has evolved to perform four

broad functions:

• Deposit. The functions that relate to selection, acquisition, distribution, and physical

control of publications (classification, etc.) by GPO, including the retention of ownership

of deposited publications by the Government, and inspection to assure compliance;

• Assurance of current and permanent public access, including the requirements made of

depository libraries for free access to the general public, retention schedules, and service

to users of Government information;

• Provision of locator tools, including the statutorily mandated catalogs and indexes GPO

produces as well as bibliographic description and other types of finding aids;

• Promotion and facilitation of use, including training opportunities, conferences, and

marketing.

It is in the first two categories, deposit and assurance of access, that the transition to a more

electronically-based program has had the most fundamental effect. In the print world the system

of deposit provides a stable and secure environment in which information is, as a by-product of

the legal requirement that Government printing be either performed or contracted for by GPO,

funneled into a geographically distributed and fairly closely regulated system of outlets. In the

Internet environment, federal agencies no longer have an imperative to involve GPO in the

dissemination of their information, and the need for redundant housing of copies of publications

to achieve geographical equity is obviated by the ability to use a single source from multiple
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remote locations. At the same time, needs and expectations on the part of librarians and library

users for access to this information have grown.

The attempt to reinvent distributed, permanent access has centered on the creation of the FDLP

Electronic Collection, a digital library conceived on fairly traditional library collection

development principles, and consisting of an interdependent set of locator tools, user interfaces,

links to content on agency servers, a digital archive, and various kinds of metadata. The

collection is being built using a standard collection development document which emphasizes a

blending of new and adapted roles for the depository program.

Fundamentally, the FDLP must continue to provide access, through its network of designated

libraries, to the information that its enabling statute describes as being in scope. The everyday

realities of providing both actual electronic access and bibliographic/intellectual access tools

have been in a state of almost constant change since the first introduction of electronic products

in the early 1990s. Previously the processing of materials from the printing press through GPO’s

verification and distribution mechanisms and into libraries was a highly detailed process not far

removed either in concept or practice from other mass-production processes employed in a large

printing and publishing concern. The shift to a digital FDLP has altered this model, changing the

skills and workflow required to provide access. As you well know, the size and composition of

the workforce performing these tasks at GPO is changing, with an increase in the need for socalled knowledge workers superseding the need for production-line materials handlers and

lower-level clerical employees. Many of you are seeing a shift in the skills needed within your

libraries and documents operations as well.

I’ve now been back at GPO as Electronic Collection Manager for 18 months. During my first

tour at GPO, between mid-1997 and mid-1999, we began in earnest to erect the framework of the

“more electronic FDLP” described in the 1996 Transition Study and Transition Plan. We

published the Collection Plan in 1998, giving the Electronic Collection not only its name but its

basic structure: the universe of U.S. Government electronic publications divided into four broad

categories:

• Core legislative and regulatory GPO Access products that reside permanently on

Government Printing Office (GPO) servers (e.g.: Congressional Record, Bills, Slip Laws,

House and Senate Reports & Documents)

• Products which GPO manages on the GPO Access site, and content partnerships

• Products that GPO identifies, describes, and links to but which remain under the control

of the originating agencies

• Tangible electronic Government information products distributed to Federal depository

libraries (e.g.: CD/ROM; DVD; floppy disk).

In the context of the Collection Plan we identified key areas of activity that, taken together,

comprise an architecture for the collection:
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• Intake

– Discovery

– Evaluation

– Selection

– Acquisition

• Registry

– Item number/Classification assignment

– New Electronic Titles

• Storage

– FDLP/EC Archive

– Partner Archives

– Agency Agreements

• Cataloging and Locators

– CGP

– PURL

– Browse Topics

• User Interface

We’ve been active in every one of these areas, and all the areas are closely interconnected. I

want to focus today on our archive activities, but bear in mind that it’s impossible to talk about

archiving without talking about many of the other areas of activity.

To begin with, I want to explain, once again, just what we’re doing about archiving for permanent

public access. Remember that that’s our point: permanent public access. We’re not an archival

repository in the traditional, “preserving essential evidence” sense.

Our strategy is (and has been) that no single solution will be the be-all and end-all of archiving.

Thus we’re putting together a varied menu of solutions that includes:

• Agreements with agencies that are willing to guarantee that their publications will remain

available on the web, from the agency server, for all time (the most recent are NCLIS and

NLM)

• Partner sites such as UIC and North Texas which have specific emphases

• The core legislative and regulatory material on GPO Access, which is permanent by

statute

• Our own on-site archive

We are also investigating other kinds of solutions:
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• Archiving on servers operated by contractors/vendors (including redundant/mirror sites

or failsafe arrangements

• The Stanford LOCKSS model, which distributes copies to caches in a ring

Our own archiving effort is in full operation, for publications that meet the following criteria:

• Electronic only in the FDLP (no paper distribution)

• Not covered by an agency agreement

• Not included in a depository partnership

• Not available only in a proprietary format or with proprietary access software

We are capturing publications, listing them in NET, cataloging them (as appropriate) in CGP, and

retaining a copy of the captured publication on our servers.

Every one of these new additions receives a PURL. Those links are being checked regularly and

when we discover that a publication is no longer available on the publishing site (by that check or by

being told by someone else) we verify what has become of the publication and redirect the PURL to

the archived copy. This actually happens with two titles currently. The final piece of our initial

development of this model is the screen that appears to the user when that redirect to the FDLP/EC

Archive takes place, informing the user that the copy they’re getting is an archived copy.

Is this system perfect? No, probably not. Is it working so far? Yes. Is it a retrospective effort

covering every single electronic title we’ve ever heard of? Nope. We started it in a full scale way in

2000. That said, I can tell you that we’re negotiating right now with a depository library to do the

retrospective work that will get all the pre-FDLP/EC Archive PURLs (about 2500) and URLs (about

2200) checked, verified, and archived (and in the case of the URLs, PURL-ed). I can’t reveal yet

which institution is bravely contemplating this task, but an announcement will be forthcoming

VERY soon, and if YOUR valiant institution would like to help out in the effort, see me and we can

talk.

In January we went live with a page of Frequently Asked Questions about the Electronic Collection

and our discovery, archiving, and cataloging activities. Let me encourage you to check the FAQ at

ÿ http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/ec/faq.html

As a little sidebar to this archiving activity, I want to talk a bit about the best library conference I’ve

ever been to. I was fortunate to give a paper (that I wrote with the collaboration of former Transition

Specialist Steve Kerchoff) at “Preservation 2000: An International Conference on the Preservation

and Long Term Accessibility of Digital Materials” sponsored by the Cedars project in the UK, and

held in the north of England at York in early December. In one room were 150 people from libraries

across Europe and the US who are making the preservation of digital library materials happen. It

was there that I learned about (and got very excited about) LOCKSS, and heard about initiatives at

the National Library of Canada, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, the Cedars group in the UK,

and the National Library of Australia, among others. I learned that our activities compare extremely

favorably with those cutting-edge projects. I also learned that the National Library of Australia,
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whose digital library program is extremely successful, planned their work in much the same

pragmatic, seat-of-the-pants way that we have, and are actually using some of the same cheap-butgood software that we are for capturing publications from Web sites.

The proceedings from the conference can be found at <http://www.rlg.org/events/pres2000/prespapers.html>, and my presentation has appeared in Administrative Notes (v. 22, # 5,

3/15/01).

OK, back to the update. Most of you know that we have been working on various sorts of projects

with OCLC, Inc. for the last several years. At the conclusion of the GPO/OCLC/ERIC pilot project,

we began talking with them about the part of that project that we felt never got addressed: digital

archiving. Through late 1999 and into last year, we worked on developing a high-level requirements

document that describes a toolkit for discovering, documenting, saving, storing, and cataloging

electronic publications. We are presently at work on an investigative project in which OCLC is

prototyping a system to manage all these functions in an integrated environment. It will be based on

the CORC interface, with lots of added functionality. OCLC has promised us a first working model

by summer. We hosted a site visit by some members of the development team at the big red

buildings last week, and it’s safe to say that everybody who participated learned a lot.

The initial prototype will give the staff in DAB a tool for making sure that all the bits and pieces of

information that are created and recorded while we’re acquiring a publication are done in a

systematic way, and that the information, such as item and class, PURL and originating URL, dates,

and all the rest, are turned over into other parts of the process, like archiving and bibliographic

control.

The site visit was a real eye-opener for the OCLC project team, most of whom are pretty solidly of

the dot-com generation, and who’ve never really come across a production-line setting like ours.

As the project develops, we hope to gain functionality for identifying electronic publications (the

part I like to call 21st century gray bins, in honor of our venerable old GPO sorting bins that help us

sort out newly received pubs for classification) for storage on a “vault” server operated by OCLC,

and for other activities surrounding the actual download or “harvest” of publications.

The tools that we hope to come out of this project with will support the functions that we’ve had the

most trouble with since we began dealing with electronic publications: the acquisitions and

classification tasks that are supported by our old mainframe systems, and their interaction with the

creation of NET and the FDLP/EC Archive. You’ve heard about our systems modernization efforts

from Gil Baldwin earlier this morning, and will hear more detail from Laurie Hall. We’re hopeful

that this project will dovetail in nicely.

There is another major project that we’re at work on that I want to report to you about. As you

probably know by now, the Census Bureau has (finally) firmed up the dissemination plans for the

Census 2000 data products. You’ve been walked and talked through this a number of times already,

I’m sure. There will be basic printed reports. All the Summary Files (which correspond to the

Summary Tape Files of yore) will be available on disk with accompanying retrieval software (it’s

looking like DVD will be the optical medium of choice) and these will be distributed to depositories.
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In addition, the Summary Files will be available as compressed comma-delimited ASCII files by ftp

from Census.gov. This was very welcome news for us because, from a permanent access point of

view, the DVDs with proprietary software aren’t very good.

We are now in negotiation with a major academic library depository to establish a partnership in

which the ASCII Summary Files will be monitored, downloaded, and archived by the partner. They

also hope to develop a front end for using the files. This will be a specifically FDLP effort, and

Census is very supportive, since it will help reduce load on their servers and make the data more

widely available. We’ll be making a more formal and detailed announcement very soon, as well as

looking at other accompanying projects.

I wanted to wrap this update up on a positive note, saying something hopeful and upbeat. It’s a

ticklish time for that, since so much of what lies ahead is unclear to us at this point. I can look with

some satisfaction over the time I’ve been at GPO and point to some real progress in creating the

more electronic FDLP. If you go by the numbers, our numbers are strong. There are many ways to

slice and dice that figure of 61%, but the reality is that we’re handling ever-more electronic

publications, and finding ways to cope with this transitional period. A lot of our biggest challenges

currently are fairly transient in nature, centered on keeping up with our “traditional” work while

incorporating the electronic pubs in a way that we feel is consistent with the statutory mandate. We

continue to feel that eventually we will see most of the publications in the program disseminated in

electronic form. We’re certainly taking as active a stance to accomplish that as we can, but we’re

also led to a great extent by the agencies themselves, who continue to buy printing services from

GPO.
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[Handout]

GPO Access Update

Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services

Spring 2001 Depository Library Council Meeting

GPO Access Statistical Measures

• GPO Access achieved a record high of over 32 million document retrievals for the month

of January 2001.

• GPO Access contains almost 119,000 electronic titles and points to more than 84,000

others, for a total of almost 203,000 titles.

• GPO Access provides use of almost 1,900 databases through more than 80 applications.

• GPO Access received over 500,000 referrals from other Web sites for the month of

January. Of these referrals 54% had an undetermined source (the origin of the referral

could not be detected by the log program) and, over 30% came from the “.com”, “.gov”,

and “.mil” domains (13.6% “.com”, 17.8% “.gov”, and < 1% “.mil”). The domains for

“.net”, “.org”, and “.edu” had a combined total of almost 7%, and 2.3% were referred

from Federal Depository Libraries. To date, for FY 2001, Federal Depository Libraries

have had a cumulative 56,678 referrals with a high of 18,461 referrals in October 2000.

What’s New on GPO Access

• The Davis-Bacon Wage Determinations application is available at

<www.access.gpo.gov/davisbacon/>.

• A summary of the President’s budget plan entitled A Blueprint for New Beginnings – A

Responsible Budget for America’s Priorities is available at

<www.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/index.html>.

• FY 2002 Economic Outlook, Highlights from 1994 to 2001, FY 2002 Baseline Projections is

available at <www.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/index.html>.

• A Public Documents Distribution Centers Page has been added to GPO Access with links to

the centers in Laurel, Maryland and Pueblo, Colorado at <www.gpo.gov/puddc/index.html>.

Usability Testing

We are constantly looking for valuable feedback to improve the usability of GPO Access. A

number of methods are used for this purpose, including focus groups, online surveys, and of

course, questions and comments received by the GPO Access User Support Team on a daily

basis. In addition to these mechanisms, we have started doing usability testing at usability-
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testing centers, in order to get immediate feedback on how users find government information on

GPO Access. This will provide us with another measure of the effectiveness and efficiency of

our site, as well as the satisfaction of users. We recently conducted our first usability study at the

Bureau of Labor Statistics lab in Washington, DC. The results were most helpful and will be

used in the ongoing development of GPO Access. We are currently trying to recruit hosts for

usability testing. If you have a lab or know of an available lab, or are interested in participating

in or hosting future usability studies for GPO Access, please contact Jason Humm, Office of

Electronic Information Dissemination Services, by phone at (202) 512-2122 or email

<jhumm@gpo.gov>.

Section 508

GPO staff are also undertaking an examination of Section 508 of the Workforce Investment Act,

which is meant to increase accessibility for the disabled in the workplace, to determine how it

might apply to GPO Access Web pages. In particular, we are looking at how the sixteen Section

508 standards increase accessibility, and how each of these standards might apply to the GPO

Access Web site and its hosted sites.

Metadata Evaluation

Dublin Core Metadata Elements have been incorporated into the HTML source code of our

major Web pages as information resource descriptions. Our goal is to use these elements to help

facilitate indexing of GPO Access pages in our site search and in Internet search engines to

support consistent use of metadata elements on Web pages. For more information on the Dublin

Core Metadata Initiative, please visit <http://dublincore.org/>.

Search Engine Results

EIDS is continuing its ongoing process of attempting to achieve higher positioning for GPO

Access pages in the search results of major Internet search engines. After conducting research on

each search engine examined in the study, it is apparent that paid positioning in search engines is

becoming more prevalent. In light of this, EIDS is currently examining measures in regards to

paid placement and positioning to improve the ranking of certain pages in major Internet search

engines.

News for Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids

Ben’s Guide was recently highlighted in the February, 2001 issue of Skewl Sites newsletter as "a

top notch resource to teach many topics related to government." In addition to that honor,

Lightspan's StudyWeb featured Ben’s Guide as one of the best educational resources on the Web.

The U.S. Government Printing Office is holding the first ever Ben’s Guide focus group on May

9, 2001 in Long Island, New York. The focus group will be held with students from local

schools in an attempt to gain feedback about Ben’s Guide from a student’s perspective.
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Conferences

We recently participated in the “Computers in Libraries” conference held from March 14-16 in

Washington, DC. We will also be participating in the Medical Library Association 2001

Information Odyssey being held in Orlando, FL from May 26-29, the Annual American Library

Association Conference being held in San Francisco, CA from June 14-20 and we will finish up

FY 2001 at the American Association of Law Libraries Conference in Minneapolis, MN being

held from July 14-19.

Coming Soon

• An eCFR application, which will be updated daily as opposed to the current quarterly

updated Code of Federal Regulations application, will be available soon.

• As a result of the development of the free eCFR application, the Sales program is

developing a new e-mail subscription service and a quarterly CD-ROM subscription

service on a fully rendered CD-ROM with a search engine installed program. Customers

will be able to purchase subscriptions that will allow them to be notified via e-mail of any

changes in one or more CFR titles and/or parts, as they are published in the Federal

Register.

• GPO Access is currently researching a subscription service that will allow us to monitor

the site’s performance at various times from a user’s perspective. This will allow GPO to

gain knowledge about what enhancements should be made to increase the overall

performance of GPO Access.
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Table of Contents

Recent Developments Impacting the SuDocs Programs / Buckley, Council Meeting, 4/01........1

Deep in the Heart of Texas / Baldwin, Council Meeting, 4/01.....................................................6

GPO Access Update / Evans, Council Meeting, 4/01.................................................................11

FDLP Electronic Collection Update / Barnum, Council Meeting, 4/01 .....................................17

GPO Access Update (Handout), Council Meeting, 4/01 ............................................................23

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

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