Applications Sought for the 2004 Library of the Year Award

Do you know a depository library that is providing outstanding government information service? Do you know a depository staff that has shown creativity, innovation, and leadership in developing community programs for use of Federal Government information?

Write up the details and send them to GPO for a chance to be honored as the 2004 Federal Depository Library of the Year. GPO will provide travel and lodging to the Conference for the depository coordinator and the library director from the winning library.

The Federal Depository Library of the Year award provides special recognition for a library that furthers the goal of the Federal Depository Library Program; by ensuring that the American public has free access to its Government's information through:

• Outstanding service to meet the Federal Government information needs in the library’s service area
• Creativity and innovation in developing specific community programs for use of Federal Government information or a dramatic increase in their community’s usage of Federal Government information
• Leadership in creating public service programs that can be emulated by other Federal Depository Libraries

You are invited to nominate your library, or any other Federal Depository Library, regardless of its size or type. (Past winners, libraries of current Depository Library Council members, and libraries on probation are ineligible for consideration.)

Please submit your entry by May 1, 2004. Applications may be submitted online at <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/04dlofyear.html>.

We are coming to the end of a long morning during which you have already been given many interesting things to think about and I am about to add some more, without apology since I think the things that are happening right now at GPO and in the community are so exciting that you will all be sitting on the edges of your chairs (and not because you are ready for lunch or a bathroom break).

I will try to keep this brief so we can have as much time as possible for questions from the audience. We have brought a handout, which should anticipate many of the "frequently asked" factual questions, so you may want to pick one up if you do not already have it.

I very much appreciate Howard [Lowell]’s presentation on the National Archive’s strategy for electronic records, including the partnership between GPO and NARA. We value that relationship highly and see the partnership as a critical part of fulfilling the goal of permanent public access that our two agencies share with the depository community.

I was also very struck by Janet [Coles’] comments, which Jill [Vassilakos-Long] presented on her behalf, about the problems facing the California state depository program. The issues are certainly very similar to ones we face at the Federal level.

That is a very good background from which to turn to a discussion about what is happening currently at GPO and in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the effort that we are making to plan for a long and stable partnership for public access to government information.

When Bruce came to GPO as Public Printer just over one year ago, he immediately began discussions with the middle and senior managers at GPO about how to reorganize to accomplish our short terms goals and position GPO for the future. From the beginning he said that he was seeking an interim organization and that he expected that the planning process, which we were beginning at that time, would result in another reorganization within a few years. The interim organization that he announced several months later continued the three main operating areas, establishing managing directors of the printing plant, a consolidated customer service/printing procurement area, and the Superintendent of Documents organization, identified functionally as information dissemination. He also created for the first time a Chief Information Officer and a Chief Human Capital Officer and restructured the position of Chief Financial Officer. Of those six senior management positions, I was the only one already in place. The other five positions have now been competed and filled, so we now have a full management council to work with Bruce and the Deputy Public Printer, Bill Turri, on day-to-day operations and planning for the future.

Bruce also created an Innovation and New Technology group to help GPO reach out to other organizations to learn about new technology that is on or over the horizon, so we can incorporate that knowledge into our planning. INT, as we call it, has kept us busy with opportunities to talk to a wide variety of companies, universities and other organizations with an emphasis on future applications in one or more of the three major areas that Bruce has asked them to emphasize: Authentication, Version Control and Preservation/Permanent Public Access.

Bruce asked each of the six managing directors/officers to follow a similar process for reorganization of our own areas of responsibility, and as you know, we announced the reorganization for the SuDocs/information dissemination staff last June at ALA. We have spent a number of months planning the lower levels of the organization and developing the necessary job descriptions. We have now filled two of the four senior management positions. I am delighted to announce that Ric Davis has accepted the position as director of Program Development and Sheila McGarr has accepted the position as director of Collection Management. Offers are pending for the directors of Program Planning and Coordination and Library and Customer Relations and should be announced shortly.

Perhaps as early as the end of next week, but certainly by the end of the month, we will post the next tier of managerial positions. There are 12 positions: 2 under program development, 3 under program planning and coordination, 3 under library and customer relations, and 4 under collection management. As the handout indicates, these will be posted so that the positions are open to applications from "all sources," not just current GPO employees or current and former Federal Government employees, which are the other two common options in Federal recruitment. I will post the announcements to a number of lists as I did with the senior management positions–and I hope you will forward them on to other lists or individuals who may find the positions of interest. We are hoping to attract a wide range of excellent candidates. Once those positions are filled, we believe that the other positions will move very quickly. We are not likely to meet our goal of completing the reorganization by April 1, but we are working to complete it as quickly as we can.

GPO has been working hard this year to get our costs under control and put an organization in place that can both manage the current operations and prepare the agency for the future. The agency was "in the black" with a small, positive cash flow in October and November (I haven't seen the December numbers yet). That is a major achievement, since GPO lost about $38 million in FY 2002 and $32 million in FY 2003. My staff has been doing its part to bring losses from the Sales Program under control by such actions as closing the bookstores, consolidating the two Laurel warehouses into one, and using retirement incentives to reduce staff.

At the same time, Bruce and I (among others) have spent a great deal of our time out talking to agency publishers, libraries, and others to gather input for our planning process. We have also been discussing the future with our employees and unions and working with the General Accounting Office (GAO) on the report that Congress requested on our behalf. Bruce has labeled this our "fact gathering" stage and it should be completed by early March when we receive the GAO report.

Meanwhile, we are continuing to gather facts from the Depository Library Council (DLC), the regional depository libraries, the major library associations, and anyone else who wishes to contribute. We are expecting reports from the DLC and from the regional libraries shortly, based on the meetings that were held last fall. We hope that ALA and GODORT will be submitting something and we will certainly carry back ideas gathered in our conversations here, as we have done from all of our meetings over the past year.

GPO will compile all this information and release a document sometime in the spring for review and comment. Bruce and I and others will then be out talking about that document and seeking reactions and revisions. What Bruce is seeking, before beginning the planning process, is agreement on the facts–facts about GPO's current status, assets and liabilities; facts about the current status and expected changes in the library community and in agency publishing practices; facts about opportunities and constraints from new technology, facts about what the future is likely to offer as challenges and opportunities. Once we have agreement about the most important facts, we can begin the planning process with a solid footing. Hopefully by the time we meet again in Orlando in late June, we will have completed the validation of the facts and be ready to discuss where those facts lead us and the logical actions to take based on those facts.

Ideally, by the end of the year, we will have at least the outline of a plan. Perhaps some segments of the plan will be substantially complete–especially where there is significant agreement among the wide variety of stakeholders. Remember, we have to involve not just the library community, but also the printing and information industries, agency publishers, the Congress, OMB and other policymakers, our labor unions and employees and others with an interest in, or concern about, the changes that are being considered.

Once we have developed the plan, we have to seek agreement on the plan, much as we will seek agreement on the facts. Once we have that agreement, the plan will have to go to the Congress and Congress will have to enact any legislative changes that are required to implement the plan. Then–at the end of this long process–GPO can begin to implement the plan.

Does that mean that GPO is standing still while all of this discovery of facts, agreement on facts, planning, and agreement on plans takes place? Of course not. There are many short-term changes that we can make, and in some instances have already begun to make. Even as I talk to the library community about the future of GPO and the FDLP, I continue to ask what can we do NOW or in the near future–without waiting for complete formal plans or legislative changes–to make things work better. As with the OMB Compact for procurement of agency printing and many of our pilot projects, there are many things that we can do within the framework of the existing laws and policies to begin to test ideas that we may wish to implement more fully in the ultimate plan.

At the fall Depository Library Council meeting and conference, Bruce spoke of the need to develop a new economic model for the Sales Program. For many years the Sales Program and the FDLP co-existed and were complimentary. Then GPO Access was launched, and shortly thereafter the paid subscriptions to the online service were dropped and GPO began to provide free public access, not just to Federal Depository libraries, but also to the general public. It has been wildly successful. As the handout indicates, we are averaging over 33 million downloads per month–the equivalent of 808 million typeset pages.

However, the results of that action–and the simultaneous changes in agency dissemination from paper publications to posting on Web sites–have been devastating for the Sales Program. We have dropped from revenues of over $80 million to revenues of approximately $30 million in 10 years. At one time we sold over 30,000 paid subscription to the Federal Register; now we sell fewer than 2700 copies, while customers download in excess of 4 million free Federal Register documents per month. We have improved public access, but destabilized the Sales Program, which, in the past, was an important part of the overall revenue and income for GPO, making significant contributions to GPO's overhead and its economic well being.

As Bruce stated at the conference, this change was not planned. GPO didn’t develop a new model for the Sales Program in response to the vast amounts of information offered for free public access on GPO Access and the World Wide Web. The Sales Program declined rapidly, to the point where it was losing over $1 million a month, and draining the capital the GPO needs to invest in its future.

What Bruce asked of the library community is that you help us determine the appropriate boundaries for free public access, outside of which we can try to develop a new economic model for the Sales Program that will generate $30 to $50 million in additional revenue for GPO annually. We are having a similar dialog with the information industry about the boundaries from their perspective, so that GPO does not compete inappropriately with commercial publishing.

I have begun to describe this using the story of Odysseus seeking to make a safe passage between Scylla and Charybdis. For those of you who don’t remember Greek mythology, Scylla and Charybdis were two sea monsters dwelling on the opposite sides of a narrow strait, the personification of the dangers of navigation near the rocks and eddies. I am not implying that either the library community or the information industry are monsters to be avoided, but rather that this is a difficult voyage that requires careful planning and for which there may be no successful outcome.

At a meeting with the representatives of the library community after the fall conference, Bruce said that, as a business man and as a Republican, he could not go to Congress and ask for a change in policy and funding for GPO to offset the revenue losses from the Sales Program until he had made a good faith effort to determine if it was possible in the current environment to create a sustainable economic model–acceptable to both the library community and the information industry. He and I are both prepared for the fact that the answer may be that there is no viable economic model and that GPO will have a very small Sales Program with limited revenues, or none at all. We hope that GPO can find a safe passage between the requirements of the library community and those of the information industry, but we both acknowledge that it may be a very narrow strait and one that will require careful navigation. I personally believe that there is a both a genuine need and an opportunity for a healthy Sales Program, but we have to structure it correctly.

To move this dialog forward, I am planning a meeting in Washington of representatives from agency publishers (who have also expressed great interest in and concern about this issue), the library community, the information industry and perhaps some academics with good credentials in issues related to economics models in information. This meeting will probably take place in early March. My hope is that by having a discussion with a small group of "experts" we can develop a document which can be shared more broadly to seek consensus. Those of you who were at the Council meeting this fall will recognize how difficult it is to have that type of dialog with 500-600 people. I think it will help everyone to have a few concrete proposals to respond to, instead of the generalized anxiety and uncertainty that currently exists. We are hoping to have a panel present the results at the Spring DLC meeting in St. Louis and have a discussion about it there, and will also circulate it and obtain comments in other ways.

Before I close and take your comments and questions, I want to address one other important issue that was discussed extensively at the fall conference, managing legacy collections.

One of the most exciting and encouraging things that is happening is the progress that has been made on the issue of managing our legacy collections. There are three related initiatives that are underway simultaneously.

First is a movement toward shared repositories, or shared housing agreements, that would allow two or more libraries to eliminate some of the redundancy between or among their collections. These initiatives are still in the early stages, but they are very important since they will help us move toward a smaller number of comprehensive sets that can be more readily preserved. As I said at the fall meeting, we are not going to preserve 1280 sets of most government documents. We are not going to preserve 53 sets of most documents. But we do need to decide as a community how many sets of tangible Federal documents should be preserved and take the necessary steps to establish consolidated collections that are as comprehensive as possible, so we can actively preserve the materials. The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) will help us evaluate the options and opportunities, and we will share the resulting report with the community.

Second is the decision by GPO to establish a collection of last resort. At a minimum this will become, over time, a comprehensive collection of tangible and electronic titles that will backstop the regional collections or repositories as they are established. We will receive reports from the regional depository librarians and the Council within the next few weeks. We will incorporate their recommendations and comments into a plan, which will be circulated for review and scheduled for further discussion at the Depository Library Council meeting in April in St. Louis.

Third, and essential to the other two, is the decision by the Association of Research Libraries to collaborate with GPO, and ultimately with the entire library community, on a national digitization plan, so that we can coordinate our efforts to digitize a complete legacy collection of U.S. Government documents and make sure that the documents are available, in the public domain, for permanent public access. The ARL proposal is one of a significant number of related efforts that, together, will make it possible to accomplish this goal within the next few years. We have one regional depository library that is willing to allow its collection to be used for a comprehensive digitization initiative and willing to provide space for scanners and personnel in its facility. The National Agricultural Library is interested in working with GPO and the land grant universities that are also depository libraries to digitize the entire legacy collection of USDA publications. We are having discussions with Congress and other agencies about their desire to have accessible online collections of their legacy publications. There are many exciting opportunities that will contribute to this effort.

This will be a collaborative effort. As I see it, a number of libraries will actively digitize materials, based on established priorities or local needs, while other libraries will collaborate to support the digitization specific materials. A variety of government and foundation grants and private sector partners will facilitate this effort.

GPO’s roles will be to coordinate the effort, assist in the establishment and coordination of standards, serve as a trusted repository for preservation and access (in addition to any other places that the materials might be held), certify and authenticate the electronic files, and ensure that there is appropriate cataloging and metadata for the items in the collection.

As I said before, GPO will seek funding in FY 2005 to perform OCR on digitized files and output XML tagged data that can be used for access and for print-on-demand. Thus, whatever OCR scanning is done by individual libraries, we can ensure that the preservation and access collection maintained by GPO is consistently tagged, making it a true collection, not just a random assortment of electronic files. We will also continue to work with Congress, the Judiciary and Federal agencies to get them to participate and, where appropriate, to certify the files as official copies.

This is an extremely shorthand description of a complex set of actions which together will help us preserve a reasonable number of copies of the tangible artifacts as well as to create and maintain a comprehensive, digital, public domain collection for preservation and access. The availability of these tangible and electronic collections will allow all depository libraries, including regional libraries, to manage their collections more effectively, substituting electronic copies for tangible copies–if they wish to do so. And it will ensure that the legacy collections now available only in print and microform are fully a part of the electronic library collection of the future.

One immediate, and extremely useful, thing that each of you can do is help us develop the priority list of titles for digitization for the various sizes and types of libraries. We began this process at the fall depository conference, but we need to expand and accelerate it. Not surprisingly, the preliminary lists from the fall meeting indicate that the priorities are quite different among the different sizes and types of libraries. These lists are a good starting point for further discussion among representatives of each type of library–public libraries, state libraries, small academic libraries, Federal libraries, etc. Law libraries are actively working on a priority list, as are the ARL libraries. If you are willing to work with me and the Council to establish the priorities for another specific category of libraries, please let me know. The best way would be via e-mail. As you know, you can reach me on this and other issues at jrussell@gpo.gov.

Now, I would be happy to take your questions and comments.

Two appointments have been made in the new Information Dissemination/ Superintendent of Documents organization: Ric Davis as Director of the Program Development Service and Sheila McGarr as Director of the Collections Management Service. Offers are pending for the directors of Program Planning and Coordination and Library and Customer Relations and should be announced shortly. Postings for vacancies in the next tier of positions will be available before the end of January and notice will be sent to a number of lists as well as posted on the USAJobs and Monster.com Web sites.

Browse Topics is an important tool that provides users with topical pathfinders to U.S. Government information. Recently, GPO and its partner, Oklahoma State University, have teamed up to examine and enhance the Browse Topics application. A prototype is being demonstrated at the GPO booth (#251). GPO is currently gathering feedback from the library community on ways we can improve the service. Please take some time to stop by the GPO booth to view the proposal and provide feedback.

The spring meeting of the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer will be held in St. Louis, MO, from April 18-21. Discussion will focus on "the facts" from GPO's data gathering, input from the Depository Library Council and the community, GAO report, etc. GPO is seeking concurrence on the facts from all constituencies before beginning to develop the strategic plan for the future of GPO and FDLP. The main issues include: authentication of government information, preservation of information for future generations, version control, and the training of depository library staff to deal with new technologies.

Nominations for five new Council members for the fall meeting are now being accepted. GPO invites library organizations to submit nominations and also encourages nominations from interested individuals. To submit a nomination, contact Judith C. Russell, Superintendent of Documents, at jrussell@gpo.gov, or fax nominations to (202) 512-1434.

The 17th Annual Interagency Depository Seminar will be held in Washington, DC from June 2-9, 2004. The weeklong seminar, which is considered invaluable by new depository staff who have attended, presents an overview of various agencies' information products and activities as they relate to Federal depository libraries. Register online by March 29 at <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/tools/04interagency_reg.html>. Space is limited so be sure to sign up early.

Applications for the 2004 Federal Depository Library of the Year Award may be submitted at <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/04dlofyear.html>. The award provides recognition for a library that furthers the goals of the Federal Depository Library Program by ensuring that the American public has free access to its Government's information. Service, community programs, and leadership in areas affecting Federal Government information are the primary criteria.

The 2003 Biennial Survey of Depository Libraries was conducted from November 5 through December 5, 2003. 1,243 of the 1,279 depositories responded by the closing date. By law, the GPO must conduct the survey every two years to ascertain conditions in the libraries and each library is required to submit a response to the survey. Libraries that have not submitted their survey must do so by contacting staff in Depository Services at (202) 512-1119, or by e-mailing Robin Haun-Mohamed at rhaun-mohamed@gpo.gov.

GPO will circulate a draft plan for the collection of last resort prior to the spring Council meeting. GPO is waiting for additional input from Council and the regional libraries before issuing the draft plan.

GPO has acquired the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion for the collection. An acquisitions team has also found a treasure trove of old documents for the collection in GPO's basement storage areas. GPO continues to explore the possibility of acquiring other materials, including the Serial Set.

GPO is well underway in its efforts 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, now and in the future. Customers 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.

Work has recently been completed on a Certificate Policy, PKI Architecture document, and Certification Practices Statement. GPO has procured hardware/ software and PKI professional services to assist staff in the Chief Information Officer's (CIO's) organization on a PKI implementation.

Once this work has been completed and an audit is conducted, GPO will begin to digitally sign GPO Access files. This signing process is expected to begin in April 2004. In conjunction with this, GPO is taking steps to cross-certify its PKI with the U.S. Federal Bridge Certification Authority.

GPO continues to work on procuring a new platform to replace the WAIS search and retrieval software for GPO Access databases. Based on research conducted by GPO staff, software alternatives have been identified that meet customer functionality requirements and can provide for a transition from WAIS to XML encoded documents. Currently, staff is in the process of evaluating all of the features and advantages of the various solutions. Once a solution is selected and procured, GPO plans to migrate all WAIS databases on GPO Access to the new platform. This will help ensure continuity and ease of use throughout the site and provide greater functionality and inter-linking of data. In conjunction with our WAIS replacement efforts, GPO is planning to have network attached storage (NAS) at an Alternative Congressional Facility (ACF). This will also allow for the completion of a mirror site which will be set up based on the new platform.

The Superintendent of Documents has made a recommendation to the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) regarding the procurement of a new ILS system, and that office will operate the ILS system on behalf of the Superintendent of Documents. The CIO organization is currently taking steps towards the acquisition of the system.

As part of ongoing efforts to provide users with the highest quality service, GPO recently launched a new customer service tool, which can be found on the "help" page at <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/help>. This tool consists of a knowledge base that contains answers to frequently asked questions related to GPO Access, the U.S. Government Online Bookstore, and the Federal Depository Library Program. The customer service tool also replaces the LostDocs and askLPS services. The added functionality of Web chat may be implemented in the near future.

Phone assistance is also available Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. eastern standard time at 888-293-6498 (toll-free) and 202-512-1530 (DC Metro area). Since October 1, 2003, there have been more than 63,000 hits on the help page, and customers have retrieved almost 11,000 answers. Additionally, nearly 12,000 customer inquiries have been submitted and answered through this service.

There is a new page at the FDLP Desktop: "Main publisher domains within the Catalog of United States Government Publications." It identifies and provides online access to approximately 1,500 main publisher domains associated with more than 40,000 online titles cataloged by GPO.

This application, available at <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/tools/domains.html>, will be updated on the first Friday of each month. It provides access via two listings, by publisher and by URL. Access is to main publisher domains only. Those who wish to identify and access individual online titles should see the "Catalog of United States Government Publications" at <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cgp>.

GPO conducted a survey of Essential Titles for Public Use in Paper Format, seeking suggestions for additional titles to include in the list. By the end of the survey in October, 2003, 108 libraries had nominated a total of 324 titles.

All titles with three or more requests were collated for review. 43 titles had three or more requests across all categories of libraries; two of the titles were no longer active and six were already on the Essential Titles list. Law libraries requested 15 additional titles; Medium and Small Academic libraries requested six titles; Large Academic libraries requested four titles; Large Public libraries requested four titles; Small Public libraries requested one title to be added to the list. State and Other libraries and Federal libraries did not have any titles that had at least three requests.

As the number of respondents is limited, additional consultation must be done with Council before any of the recommendations will be implemented. The list of titles submitted will be made available on the Council Web page at <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/council/index.html> in the near future as we continue to work on this important project.

Training of key cataloging and acquisitions/classification staff has begun in the use of the tool set built by OCLC as part of their Digital Archive. The new tools streamline and enhance the processing of electronic publications into the Electronic Collection Archive and will greatly expand the production of metadata for preservation, integrating that process with other cataloging and classification activities. GPO was a principal participant in the design and testing phases of the Digital Archive service.

GPO is accepting proposals from regional depository libraries for a pilot project to test the concept of establishing 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, with the duration of the visit depending on the need. They would offer training and attend local, state and regional documents meetings to speak and answer questions.

The idea is to recruit from within the community people who would serve as a consultant for one to two years and then return to work in a depository library. GPO has received proposals from Michigan, North Carolina/South Carolina/Georgia, and Minnesota. Regional coordinators in California, Massachusetts, and New York have also made inquiries to host a consultant in their areas. If you wish to submit a proposal, please contact Robin Haun-Mohamed for further information at rhaun-mohamed@gpo.gov.

In June 2003, GPO and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced a compact that will allow Federal agencies to select their own commercial printers using standard contracts issued by GPO. GPO will register and qualify printers for participation in the contract and offer twenty-four hour customer and printer support, while the agencies will have authority to address performance issues directly with the printers they select. Payments will be routed through GPO to private printers, with agencies approving them before they are made, and GPO will offer additional printing procurement services on a cost recovery basis.

Under the terms of the agreement, GPO will receive an electronic copy of every publication directly from the printer for dissemination to the public. This contract condition should help eliminate the fugitive document problem and bring many more titles into the FDLP. In addition, GPO will receive two printed copies of these publications, from which GPO can create a new digital copy if future format or other usability issues occur with the original electronic copy. GPO will also have the option to create a version of the file for print-on-demand publishing.

This agreement currently is being tested through a pilot project with the Department of Labor. Since the inception of the compact, there have been 84 offers made through the compact. Twenty-six publications were selected from among the print orders submitted for inclusion in the FDLP. Those not selected were not within the scope of the FDLP.

• The Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions is now available on GPO Access at <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/ua>.
• The GPO Annual Report Fiscal Year 2003 is now available online at <http://www.gpo.gov/aboutgpo/03annrep/Welcome.html>.
  • The Congressional Directory for the 108th Congress is now available on GPO Access at <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cdirectory>.

    Search Engine Report

    The tenth iteration of GPO's Search Engine Evaluation Project has been completed. Based on the results, the 20 search engines studied returned GPO Access pages for targeted keywords in the top five search results 29% of the time, which is an increase of nearly 4% since the previous evaluation. This overall increase is an encouraging sign that the visibility of GPO Access in the major search engines is continuing to increase. However, further analysis of the results of this evaluation and current industry trends reveals several areas in need of more consideration. The full report of the Search Engine Evaluation Project can be found on the Federal Bulletin Board (FBB) at <http://fedbbs.access.gpo.gov/access.htm>.

    GPO Sales Program

    The GPO Sales Program continues to streamline its operations by reducing overhead, most recently through the ongoing consolidation of its warehouse facility in Laurel, MD. It has begun using print on demand technology to increase the long-term availability of publications and testing the capabilities of a number of vendors. Sales is also engaged in bringing its bibliographic practices more in line with those of the commercial publishing sector by exploring ONIX (Online Information Exchange), the publishing industry's standard electronic format for sharing product data with wholesale and retail booksellers, other publishers, and anyone else involved in the sale of books. ONIX will enable GPO to have Government publications listed, promoted, and sold by commercial book dealers worldwide.

    Opportunities are also being explored to initiate e-commerce consulting services, for the purpose of defining alternative solutions that will enable the U.S. Government Online Bookstore to offer the "next generation" of enhancements aimed at improving customer functionality and order processing. The Superintendent of Documents has provided a list of functionality requirements to the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and asked that consulting services be procured.

    GPO Access Statistical Measures

    • Since 1994, GPO Access retrievals have exceeded 1.8 billion, and in October of 2003, reached a monthly high of more than 38 million retrievals.
    • The average number of monthly retrievals from GPO Access is 33 million, or over 1 million retrievals a day. The average number of monthly retrievals from GPO Access measures over 1.6 terabytes in size and is equivalent to over 808 million typewritten pages.
    • GPO Access contains over 156,000 electronic titles and points to over 103,000 others for a total of over 259,000 titles.
    • GPO Access provides use of almost 2,900 databases through more than 100 applications.

    Upcoming Outreach

    GPO Staff will be attending and displaying the GPO booth and/or conducting training at the following venues:

     

    January 22 – 24 Florida Educational Technology Conference Orlando, Florida

    February 2 – 4 Legal Tech New York, New York

    February 24 – 28 Public Library Association Seattle, Washington

    March 17 – 20 Texas Library Association San Antonio, Texas

    April 18 – 21 Depository Library Council Spring Meeting St. Louis, Missouri

    June 5 – 10 Special Libraries Association Nashville, Tennessee

    June 24 – 30 ALA Annual Conference Orlando, Florida

This article is based on a brief presentation delivered at the fall 2003 meeting of Ohio GODORT at Wright State University in Dayton. The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (PLCH), thanks to the initiative of its Public Documents and Patents Department (PDs), decided in 2002 to become a passport acceptance facility. Highlighted here are our experiences and success with the service, but of more relevance to you is deciding whether your library might want to offer the service itself.

PLCH unveiled its passport service in January 2003, and by the end of October had processed 644 applications. Each new application handled by an acceptance agent demands, by law, a $30 agent fee separate from the standard $55 ($40 if applicant under sixteen) passport application fee sent to the Department of State (DOS). Thus, the library earned $19,320 in ten months.

While this revenue clearly is the incentive for taking on an additional task, more subtle but equally important are the related benefits. With evening and weekend hours, and perhaps a more accommodating staff (many patrons noted how happy they were to bypass the post office!), PLCH better serves the public and business community. In turn, the service has lured non- or untraditional users to the library and into a Federal depository to boot—every application becomes an opportunity to expose the patron to our services and the world of government information.

Ask yourself and your institution these questions before you commit. "How do you do it?" will be outlined further below in case you're still curious.

Only permanent full-time staff directly employed by the institution may serve as acceptance agents. In PDs, which fully handles the service, we currently have 7 acceptance agents, and that makes a difference. If we average 20 minutes of one-on-one service time per application, our workload might look like this:

• April (peak): 94 applications processed = 30 hours staff time
• July (valley): 32 applications processed = 10 hours staff time

You one-person depositories will be laughing at this point, but consider the following. You can offer the service on an appointment-only basis (as we do on nights and weekends), and could centralize the service in your circulation or reference department so that full-time staff from throughout the system could participate. Or think of it this way: you'd be making $90 an hour.

If you're no more convenient (nor pleasant!) in terms of location, hours, staffing, and speed of service than your local post office, then this might not be a service worth providing. But as one college librarian noted, you may have untapped customers right under your nose, e.g., students studying abroad, the children of local immigrants, or traveling businesspeople whose offices are only footsteps away.

1) Daily mailings? You should mail applications to the passport agency within a day of receiving them from the patrons, and ideally not by means of any convoluted institutional procedure.

2) Securing of materials? As you would be taking the official citizenship evidence from the patrons, you will need to be sure of the documents' protection, especially if you hold them overnight before mailing.

3) I.D. judgment and application inspection? Your key function as an agent is deciding that the person before you is the person pictured on the official identification presented, so this sort of assessment is something that you must be comfortable with. Your other primary tasks are to review the application in front of the patron, making sure that it has been adequately completed; cross-checking that information with the ID and citizenship evidence supplied; and verifying that the evidence is, at least, not a photocopy (the DOS will analyze it after that).

4) Accepting payment? Some public institutions may feel awkward about the "profit-making" aspect of the passport service. But don't forget that the $30 is legally mandated to be paid to any and all acceptance facilities, including the post office. And to be sure, many patrons would rather that your library got the dough.

5) Basic record-keeping? (Please–we're librarians.)

1) After meeting with colleagues and administrators at your library to see if applying for acceptance facility status is a viable possibility, have your director fax a letter expressing your interest to:

Chrystal Watkins
Passport Services
CA/PPT/FO/CS
2100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW 3^rd Floor
Washington, DC 20037
(202) 663-3977

Upon approval, you will be assigned a regional customer service manager–your direct contact for all the questions you'll have as you launch the service. All designated staff will sign papers attesting to their qualifications, and the DOS must in future be made aware of any changes in staff status or involvement.

2) You will be notified of one-day training seminars scheduled regularly in your region. Not all of our staff could attend due to timing and distance and, though useful, the seminar I attended was less of an orientation than a Q&A for seasoned agents. So we relied on our own in-house training, based entirely on the Passport Agent's Reference Guide (PARG) now issued on CD-ROM to every facility. The PARG is an exhaustive step-by-step explanation of how to review an application (not to mention the patron), with every what-if scenario accounted for in detail. We required all of our agents to read the PARG, answer quizzes we devised, and role-play in numerous situations. While the majority of our patrons supply the standard, simple documentation, we still consult the PARG when we're pitched a curve ball.

3) You should consider establishing a space, however small, for accepting applications; we have an extra office desk in our department where we can sit with the patrons and store materials. If you can only serve an applicant over a public desk, you should still make room for the following:

• DOS forms (various and supplied in bulk by the Passport Office)
• the PARG
• your library seal and date stamp
• mailers
• black pens (for you) and crayons (for the kids!)

Somewhere you will also have to store a year's worth (approx. one large binder) of copies of the daily transmittal lists you submit with each mailing–your records of whom you served and when. Our library took the extra precaution of creating a checklist we fill out for every patron, documenting the interaction, what ID we reviewed, and what citizenship evidence we submitted to the DOS, in the rare event that a problem arises later.

4) You should determine how you'll process the $30 payments from the patrons; we have our patrons submit cash or check to our circulation desk before signing the application. In addition, you should streamline as much as possible your institution's mailing procedures–you really can't have the "expedite" (rush) applications snoozing in the mail room.

5) And finally–tell it to the world! To aid public awareness, PLCH had the means to create:

• a web page added to our library site (http://passports.cincinnatilibrary.org/)
• a brochure and in-house signage
• a separate phone number (513-369-6976) with informative message options
• an email address (passports@cincinnatilibrary.org) for questions and appointments

In publicizing our new service, we not only used our standard press outlets, but contacted sources of likely customers (passport photographers, study-abroad offices, large international businesses) and even our "competitors," who have been glad to tell patrons that they have another option.

In conclusion, I am happy to report that the service has been running very smoothly. While training ourselves and publicizing the service initially took some time, the acceptance of applications has become an almost invisible part of PDs' routine. We've had an extremely low problem rate, with fewer than 10 follow-ups out of 644 applications. The support we receive from our customer service manager is always courteous and reliable. Our administration is happy about the revenue and, even better, our patrons tell us that they're happy too.

Please feel free to contact the author's agency if you have any questions or comments.

The Colorado State University Libraries celebrated its centennial as a Federal Documents Depository on November 10, 2003. Several special guests presented remarks in observance of the occasion. Library Dean Catherine Murray-Rust began the program with a perspective from within the library. Ray Martinez, mayor of Fort Collins, then spoke of the importance of the documents collection and the library to the community. University Provost Peter Nicholls highlighted changes and continuity at the institution in the past century. Nancy Hunter represented Marilyn Musgrave (Congresswoman of the fourth Congressional District of Colorado), and spoke of the role of the depository within the District.

Our special guest, Superintendent of Documents Judith Russell, provided an overview of the importance of the Federal depository system and its long-standing partnership with libraries around the country. She then presented Murray-Rust with a certificate from GPO recognizing the centennial of the Colorado State University Federal Depository. The framed certificate was later placed in a prominent location on the first floor of the library, near the map collection and reference area, where it can be viewed by the public.

Approximately 80 people were in attendance at the event. Included were a number of documents librarians from the Colorado Front Range. Refreshments followed the remarks and certificate presentation. An exhibit on the second floor of the library displayed representative government publications from 1903 and 2003. The Colorado weather cooperated by presenting a dry, sunny day, expediting travel to the event by those from elsewhere in the state.

As a land-grant institution, the Agricultural College of Colorado (as Colorado State University was known from 1870 to 1935) had a natural interest in acquiring publications of the Federal Government, particularly those dealing with the sciences, agriculture, forestry, and engineering. It was not until 1900 that the population of Colorado grew to a point allowing for the designation of another library in the state as a depository for such publications, joining four other libraries that already had depository status. Congressman Franklin Brooks secured depository status for the college in December 1903. Brooks, a Republican, served two terms in Congress from March 1903 to March 1907. In Colorado only the depositories at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Colorado College, the Denver Public Library, and the Pueblo Library District predate that at CSU.

From the beginning, the CSU depository assumed an important role in library activities. By 1914, college seniors were receiving a lecture on government documents. By the late 1920s, the library featured a Technical Room that emphasized the documents collection. When other budgets diminished during the Great Depression, government publications continued to arrive in a steady stream.

Among those librarians responsible for the depository over the years have been Laura Makepeace, Lorene Ashton, and Fred C. Schmidt. In the late 1970s Schmidt obtained a grant under the auspices of the Higher Education Act that enabled the library to catalog 15,000 ephemeral government publications not previously recorded by the Government Printing Office. The advent of an electronic "card catalog" in 1988 saw for the first time the inclusion of cataloging of government publications with other library collections. In 1998, the documents reference function was integrated into the main reference desk when a new addition to Morgan Library opened, enabling staff to assist users with government publications at almost all times the library is open. Aside from electronic access, the tangible collection now numbers over one million items.

The planning for the Centennial celebration was expedited by cooperation between staff at Colorado State University Libraries and the Government Printing Office. A team at GPO consulted with CSU staff on various aspects of hosting anniversary celebrations. [One result was several new depository anniversary promotional products, which may be ordered at <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pr/order.html>.]