“The times they are a changin'” for our depository libraries

Abstract

In the United States the tradition of the federal government distributing the information that supports the public's knowledge of what our elected representatives are about, is a core activity for our democracy. Conducted as it has been through the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) depository program, this dissemination of essential information has been an historical success without peer. Most GPO depositories are academic and public libraries that serve constituencies of every congressional district in the country. However, like other forms of information, that produced by the U.S. government is subject to the paradigm shift to electronic forms. The appearance of “tiger files” in the mid-1980s probably made it clear that this trend was irreversible and fundamental. Indeed, it is likely that depository libraries will see a faster and more complete shift to networked electronic information by the GPO and federal agencies, together the world's largest publisher, than for any other sector of the information industry. The most important reason is because the vexing problems of intellectual property rights are largely absent. But there are many other problems to be solved if the transition is to be successful, and Prue Adler's column effectively delineates them—CBL, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.