Selection practices for Web-based government publications in state depository library programs: Comparing active and passive approaches
This comparative case study examined the capture and selection practices used to populate electronic depositories of born-digital state government publications. The three case sites illustrate differences in collection building approaches, technological infrastructures, and statutory contexts. The findings reveal two basic modes of selection practicesactive selection and passive selection, and three selection models based on the loci of selection controllibrary selection, liaison selection, and creator selection. Also, the findings suggest the power of defining and selecting government publications for state depositories is shifting from government agencies to state libraries in the active selection. The authors argue for the needs to attend to Web publications in non-traditional formats (e.g. an interactive HTML document) and to include common publications produced for lay citizens (e.g. brochures, fact sheets, FAQs, etc.) in the permanent collections in order to fully document the government activities for the historical record of a society.
government publications depository libraries materials selection electronic publications web content management state library agencies