Federal Depository Library Program Research Articles

“The Twilight Zone”: Congressionally Chartered Organizations

Governments worldwide have established a variety of corporations, instrumentalities, quasi-official agencies, quangos, and other “hybrid” entities. This paper explores congressionally chartered organizations (CCOs) in the United States. First, it seeks to explain why CCOs exist and why Congress establishes them. Next, it reviews the cases of some specific organizations to illustrate the complexities of these anomalous entities. It concludes with a discussion of how CCO publications are treated in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and how laws that promote public access may not be applicable to CCOs.

News from the Field

PALNI celebrates 30th anniversary ACRL, ARL share community response to White House memorandum on public-access to research IMLS now accepting applications for Native American, Native Hawaiian Library Services grants supporting core library programs Task force recommends digital Federal Depository Library Program New from ACRL—Teaching Critical Reading Skills: Strategies for Academic Librarians OverDrive releases 2022 digital book circulation data and highlights Gale launches new ChiltonLibrary platform New born-digital chapter focusing on Islamic history hosted by Project MUSE

Contributing to HathiTrust on a Smaller Scale

In 2021, the Oklahoma State University Library contributed titles from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in their regional depository library collection to the HathiTrust Digital Library. A coordinated effort, this allowed the university library to expand the mission and outreach of the Federal Depository Library Program and also disseminate information and further education as part of the responsibility of a land-grant institution. Contributing Bureau of Indian Affairs materials enhanced the OSU Library’s role as a preservation partner with the Federal Depository Library Program, supported the state with the importance of Native American tribes in Oklahoma, and complemented the goals of the HathiTrust Federal Documents Collection Framework as a key agency to complete as to a comprehensive collection.

Technological transformation of United States government documents librarianship

The United States Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a government mandated program that distributes government information to the populace through designated “depository” libraries. From the 1970s until today, due to advancing technology, government documents librarianship has undergone several transformative changes. Beginning with distribution of government information on microfilm through the appearance of electronic information in the 1980s exponentially increased the amount of information available to users, information that often came with a large learning curve to use. The proliferation of government information transformed government documents librarianship from a self-contained, stand-alone, bibliographically focused entity to a more forward-facing, user-centric focus.The depository community is largely led by academic institutions, which account for 72% of depositories. They have lobbied the FDLP for increased access, better training, improvements in delivery, and assurances that electronic information would be found, captured, and preserved. In addition, their efforts have ensured digitization of the historic print depository collection is largely complete. However, until federal statutory legislation changes, significant amounts of born-digital government information is being lost to time.

Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) Academic Library Websites A webometric analysis of academic libraries participating in the FDLP

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the website content of academic libraries participating as selective depositories in the FDLP to examine legal compliance and accessibility to electronic government information.

Designing and Marketing a LibGuide for Presidential Papers

When I joined the faculty at the Fred J. Taylor Library at the University of Arkansas at Monticello (UAM) in July 2019, I became the coordinator of our institution’s Federal Depository Library Program and Arkansas Documents repositories. As I began inspecting our collections, I discovered that documents were dispersed throughout the library. Though the library has a designated Government Documents Collection cataloged under the SuDoc classification scheme, numerous documents were cataloged under the Library of Congress classification as well. Compounding this issue, documents classified under LC were distributed across various collections. The distribution of government documents across multiple collections is not unique to UAM, and is a common problem among FDLP depositories. Having government documents classified under different schemes and shelved in multiple collections can lead to discrepancies in cataloging, particularly as personnel change over time. Finding multiple split-cataloged series in our collections convinced me that, with rare exception, documents should be consolidated into a revamped Government Documents Collection.

Georgia Depository Libraries: Expanding Engagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), the Government Publishing Office (GPO) provides materials published by government agencies to designated libraries in the United States and its territories. In return, these libraries offer free, public access to the materials in their depository collections. The state of Georgia has 23 federal depository libraries—one Regional and 22 Selectives. All but two of these libraries are affiliated with academic institutions, and the majority are part of the University System of Georgia (USG).

Weeding Digital Government Information Resources: Considerations and Strategies

Weeding is a systematic approach to the removal of resources from a library’s collection. In the weeding process, materials are identified for withdrawal in order to maintain a collection that is accurate, updated, well-used, meets the needs of the users, and is in line with the library’s mission. When weeding tangible resources that are part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), a depository library must ensure that its weeding policy follows the Legal Requirements & Program Regulations of the Federal Depository Library Program and any separate guidelines set by the Regional Depository. However, there are no specific rules or guidelines to follow when weeding digital FDLP resources. This means that individual libraries have more leeway to craft digital weeding procedures that best serve their institution, patrons, and the community at large. In this article, we will discuss initial considerations when developing a process for weeding digital depository materials, we will examine different methods for analyzing a digital collection’s size and usage, and we will review methods for maintenance and weeding of digital resources.

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications

Many librarians and staff find government documents confusing, especially those distributed by the Government Printing Office (GPO) through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). The FDLP p...

“A Library Within a Library”: Organizational Design as Perceived by Academic Government Information Librarians

Government information librarians in academic libraries often serve multiple roles, providing public and technical services for government information along with other duties as assigned. This study conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 academic Federal Depository Library Program coordinators to better understand how they view the organizational design of their library. The study finds that coordinators are able to clearly identify their own priorities for government information. However, their ability to integrate these priorities with larger university and library goals depends on the presence of a strategic plan and a clear method by which to adapt priorities to a larger plan. The study also discusses themes of data services, physical collection legacies, and access and discovery of government information materials.

Government Information: Readily Accessible yet Also Grey Literature

ABSTRACT Government information is a unique subset of grey literature. Often governments are the only source of information because they are the only entities that collect or create specific information, such as census data. Government information is usually categorized by level of government (local, state, federal, international), as well as by agency, and is often in the form of serials, such as annual reports. For the larger jurisdictions, there are often repositories or depository programs that index publications, but local government information often must be actively acquired. Currently, government information is published online. Some agencies are conscientious of their historical information and digitize and post older materials, but other agencies focus on access to current, born-digital information, and may not be archiving older material. There are several library community initiatives to combat grey government information. A couple of examples are the Federal Depository Library Program’s Lost Docs Reporting mechanism, and the End of Term Archive that collects federal websites at the change of each presidential term. These are at the federal level, and more needs to be done to index and preserve state, and especially local, government information. This is because issues such as copyright affect the accessibility and preservation of non-federal government information.

The Federal Depository Library Program Regional Collection in Oregon: Shifting Roles in Access and Preservation of U.S. Government Publications

The Federal Depository Library Program Regional Collection in Oregon: Shifting Roles in Access and Preservation of U.S. Government Publications

“Who are ‘We the People’?” Pilot Survey Investigating Government Information Professionals: A Conversation

At the fall 2017 Federal Depository Library Program conference, a chance conversation regarding government information librarians’ average salaries evolved into a survey to learn who is working with government documents. In the course of the conversation, it became apparent the roles and duties of government information professionals were shifting. After some consideration, the authors determined that the best course of action would be to ask government information professionals about their perceptions of who they are and what they consider the future of government information librarianship to be.

The Poetry of Government Information

Anne Carson’s Autobiograpy of Red is one of those beloved poetry books that everyone kept telling me to read, but somehow I never got around to it until recently. Imagine my surprise to find government documents librarianship at the crux of the story! In Carson’s poetic novel, our hero Geryon is so full of artistic and erotic passion that he appears as a winged red monster. After he is dumped by a lover, “Geryon’s life entered a numb time, caught between the tongue and the taste,” a poetic dark-night-of-the-soul rendered metaphorically as a job shelving government documents in a joyless library basement. The forlorn, distinctly unpoetic texts are stored on shelves labeled in all caps, “EXTINGUISH LIGHT WHEN NOT IN USE.” This accuracy of detail suggests that back in 1998 when the poem was written Carson had most likely encountered an actual Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) collection. Nonetheless, she is kind to the librarians who occupy their dusty world willingly and consider Geryon “a talented boy with a shadow side.” Now that so much government information is online, this gloomy subterranean library may someday come to seem like pure imagination, a poet’s fanciful invention of an impossibly drab occupation.

Depository Designations

Though the FDLP Modernization Act of 2018 failed to land on the president’s desk, the first serious attempt at a legislative solution to the structural hindrances facing the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) must be applauded. In particular, granting the Superintendent of Documents the authority to designate depositories is a vast improvement over the current and ancient Congressional District Model of Depository Allocation. The inadequacies of this well intentioned method of allocating depositories nationwide have been articulated since the nineteenth century.

Finding Government Resources Online: A Webometric Study of Selective Federal Depository Library Websites

Over eleven hundred libraries across the United States and its territories participate in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) by providing public access to free government resources. In the last decade, there has been a significant shift as many government publications are being published only electronically. At the same time, several older physical collections are being digitized and made available online. This shift has caused many FDLP libraries to weed their older physical government document collections and increase their electronic holdings.

Documents without Borders: Dear International Organizations: Please Don’t Delete Your Data

In the US government-information community, domestic issues dominate the conversation, as they arguably should. Yet at times I feel discouraged at how little traction international issues receive—the situation is just as serious, if not more so, than with the US Federal Depository Library Program. International organizations, including the United Nations, have been effectively ending depository programs and paywalling their publications, in spite of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 16, Target 10, to provide “access to information.”1 International government data is likewise under duress. While the proliferation of online international data has resulted in tremendous research gains, unless the data is deposited in trusted repositories and subjected to best practices, international organizations may alter or delete the data for a multitude of reasons. This is in fact what has happened.

Survey of Current Retrospective Cataloging Practices: Pre-1976 Government Documents in Regional Depositories and the Importance of Access to Holdings

Among regional depository libraries in the United States, most collections include a large number of government documents published prior to 1976. Much of this material may remain uncataloged because of several factors, including the sheer volume of material that was published during the mid-twentieth century prior to the advent of online catalogs. The availability of the US government’s indexing systems, which allow discoverability through the Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) classification and Government Printing Office’s (GPO) Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP), has also prompted some depositories to postpone cataloging their older materials, and lack of staffing in many government-documents departments makes retrospective cataloging a lower priority. A survey of regional depository librarians sought to learn about the current retrospective cataloging practices and plans for these materials at various institutions. The survey responses indicate that the majority of regional depositories that responded are working on or already have completed retrospective cataloging for pre-1976 materials. Those that are not cataloging these materials are relying on CGP and library shelf lists to locate materials with SuDoc numbers.Cataloging of these collections provides greater control over these materials and increases their use through the online catalog and interlibrary loan. But it will also assist libraries and GPO in the identification of materials regarding recent Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) initiatives, the Preservation Steward Program, the FDLP Regional Discard Policy program, and Guidelines for Establishing Shared Regional Depository Libraries. Also of consideration is the “Regional Depository Models: A Vision for the Future” presented by the DLC Regional Models Working Group in April 2016, which outlines the benefits of a fully cataloged regional. It can also assist libraries to determine materials for possible in-house digitization by identifying titles that have few holdings in OCLC and that have a relevance to the institution or state.

Recommendations: The Federal Depository Library Program and Title 44

GODORT’s FDLP / Title 44 Principles are recommendations that seek to strengthen the promise of long-term access to federal information by building on the existing strengths of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). These Principles focus on Chapter 19 but also address policy codified in other parts of Title 44, including Chapters 17, 35, and 41.We see the majority of these Principles as supportive of activities authorized under current law, and in many cases already underway as part of existing GPO initiatives. If there is an opportunity to strengthen and clarify these provisions, we believe it is the best interest to do so.

From the Chair: Where do we go from here?

As I write this message in early March 2018, we are on the cusp of the introduction of the major legislative reform affecting access to government information.1 A draft bill, written by the Committee on House Administration, is expected to be introduced that would make substantial changes to the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and possibly to the agency that administers it, the US Government Publishing Office (GPO).