ARL Members Weigh Changes to Federal Depository Library Program
From government documents librarians to government information specialists
Josh Hadro -- Library Journal, 10/19/2009
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- Ithaka report on the future of FDLP
- Print collections still necessary, but also pose difficulties
- Incentives to collect government documents declining
At the opening session yesterday of the 155th Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Membership meeting in Washington, DC, leaders from the largest research institutions in North America considered the future of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), at risk of attrition because of space and staffing demands.
The premise behind FDLP—to both ensure permanent public access to and the preservation of information published by the government—enjoys broad support despite being considered an "unfunded mandate."
Still, as indicated by a preliminary results of a report commissioned by ARL and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) from Ithaka S+R in June, the number of libraries participating in FDLP is declining, and the incentives to participate in the program are dwindling. (The report is not online at this point.)
Presenting the report, Roger Schonfeld, Ithaka manager of research, outlined a number of issues the program faces, and suggested how the library community might bolster FDLP to remain relevant in the 21st century.
Need for print remains, but decreasing
The legacy of print document collections is foremost in the minds of many administrators. Though 97% of newly published government documents are available digitally, rigid program rules strictly dictate the deprecation and deaccessioning of print materials, which proves problematic for resource-constrained libraries.
As the report summary notes, "[m]any directors, especially at academic libraries, would like to reassign space to higher-value collections or programmatic uses such as information commons and other service-based initiatives."
The report suggests a number of responses, including a dual effort to move away from print while improving discoverability of existing collections.
Because of existing legislation, any immediate action to free institutions from the burdens of print will have to come from close cooperation among the appointed regional depository libraries, Schonfeld said. In the near term, however, improvements to the discovery and usability of digital government documents collections will be as or more important.
Building a better interface
Whenever the effectiveness of digitization efforts is considered, high-profile centralized efforts like those from Google and the Internet Archive are cited as models. Unfortunately, library efforts are far more diffuse in comparison, and digitized materials often fail to find their way into the centralized government repository, Federal Digital System (FDsys).
The Ithaka report suggests that Government Printing Office (GPO) work more closely with federal agencies to distribute the burden of document access mandates.
Finally, it will be incumbent upon libraries, non-profits, and vendors to create usable portals and interfaces to these materials. GPO is urged to improve the underlying technologies to enable programmatic access to documents and bulk downloads, but the research libraries mainly must take on the responsibility of providing access to these materials via newly created discovery environments.
As the interim report concludes, librarians who work with these collections are in a transition: from government documents librarians to government information specialists. To support this new paradigm, Schonfeld said, ARL members and other libraries must reemphasize their commitment to government documents or risk neglecting "one of the cornerstones of American democracy."
