By Michael Kelley Oct 21, 2011

An ambitious and innovative program, two years in the making, to remodel the federal depository library collections in the Southeast has met unexpected opposition from recently installed leaders at the Government Printing Office in Washington D.C.

The face-off with Mary Baish, the GPO's assistant printer and superintendent of documents who took over in January, has frustrated and puzzled the 38 members of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL), who have already begun implementing the new guidelines for the management of depository collections, feeling they had the blessing of the previous superintendent of documents to do so.

GPO's stance called 'incongruous'
The new program, called the Collaborative Federal Depository Program, affects 12 regional and 245 selective libraries in 10 states, but the GPO concluded in August that the plan must be revised by October 31 because it does not comply with a section of the law (Title 44, Section 1912, of the U.S. Code ) governing the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).

ASERL issued a statement on October 17 calling the recent decisions by GPO "incongruous with the future direction of libraries and the demands of the communities they serve." ASERL called on the GPO to reverse its decision. The Association of Research Libraries and the Greater Western Library Alliance have issued similar statements.

"At present, the relationship is tense and we perceive GPO's tone as adversarial," said Judith C. Russell, the university librarian at the University of Florida and a former superintendent of documents. "GPO's requests would change aspects of the plan that we believe are important to its success," she said.

Russell is chair of the ASERL Deans FDLP Steering Committee which governs the initiative, and she is responsible for a multi-state regional depository library that serves Florida, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

"At a minimum, we would like GPO to acknowledge the ASERL plan as an affirmative step in planning for the future of the FDLP and allow us to proceed," Russell said. "Ideally, GPO would actively encourage this and other new models and work with ASERL to assess the effectiveness of the plan as it is implemented," she said.

The GPO says it has conducted a survey in which some ASERL libraries and "other interested parties" mostly expressed positive comments about the plan but also "a lack of understanding or consensus." However, the GPO has refused to release any details about the survey. The plan received unanimous support from the 37 ASERL library directors who manage both regional and selective depository libraries and from the deans of the two regionals that are not members of ASERL, according to the ASERL.

"[The plan], in my opinion, is the most realistic and workable model for ensuring our users access to their governments' documents that I have seen in my career," said Lance Query, a member of the steering committee and the dean of libraries at Tulane University. "I am extremely optimistic that we can resolve the differences that currently exist between GPO and ASERL principals. We are all smart; we all share the same goals; and we all get it," he said.

Moving from a state-based to a regional approach
ASERL, which is the largest regional academic library cooperative in the country, hatched this plan in November 2009 (with the assistance of an IMLS grant) and approved its implementation in April 2011. ASERL concluded the new approach was necessary because the present collections managed by the 12 state-based, regional depository libraries are discrete, incomplete and poorly documented, particularly for pre-1976 material. ASERL officials said that no regional depository library in the Southeast has the resources to catalog its entire collection or acquire all the documents it is missing.

The ASERL plan moves away from a state-based approach and embraces a collaborative, multi-state model that treats the southeast's FDLP collections as a regional asset, albeit one in need of enhancement. Under the plan, various regional and selective depository libraries volunteer to serve as a "Center for Excellence" and they assume responsibility for the cataloging and acquisition of all the documents, whether current or retrospective, related to a particular federal agency or topic.

For example, The University of Kentucky is systematically collecting and cataloging all federal documents relating to the Works Progress Administration, while the University of South Carolina is responsible for all documents from the Department of Education.

This distribution of responsibilities among these centers will result, the plan envisions, in two fully cataloged, comprehensive print collections spread across the various centers --- and across state boundaries. The centers would exist alongside the present state-based collections, which by law must retain their print collections, with limited exceptions.

"Identifying, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and providing public access to a comprehensive collection requires collaboration, not competition," Russell said. "It is the only viable approach, distributing the responsibility and avoiding duplication of effort," she said.

The plan gives priority to the needs of the centers as they build comprehensive collections in their areas of specialization, and a "documents disposition database" has been created by the University of Florida where the centers can post their needs list and where selective depository libraries can post items they are planning to discard (or offer). The database makes matches, with first choice going to the centers, and after 45 days an offering library can discard any items not requested by another library. An online demonstration shows the database's capabilities.

"Whenever possible the original print document should be in the Center of Excellence collection," Russell said. "We all agreed that we would give the COE collections preference in order to build the comprehensive collections," she said.

A dispute about compliance
However, the plan has run afoul of the GPO's interpretation of the law, similar to an ongoing dispute in Michigan and Minnesota, which gives primacy to a state-based approach.

The GPO maintains that each state's regional depository library has a legal mandate to build a comprehensive, tangible (not digital) collection and that the ASERL plan would change the reporting relationship between regionals and selectives, particularly when it came to discard lists.

"The discard process is in violation of the law, and we have made that clear to them," Baish said, referring to an August 25 letter from Robin Haun-Mohamed, the director of collection management and preservation at GPO, to John Burger, ASERL's executive director.

In a September 23 letter, Haun-Mohamed wrote that "ASERL should affirm that regionals must continue to review withdrawal lists, with the goal of building a comprehensive collection that suits the state."

The GPO is demanding that ASERL eliminate the statement that regionals "are not required by law to build retrospective collections or to replace items that are lost ...."

Haun-Mohamed said the Centers of Excellence should "not trump regionals and selectives in comprehensive collection development. As such, changes need to be made to the disposition tool to acknowledge the primacy of the regional role in the withdrawal process."

In an August 12 response signed by all the members of ASERL's FDLP steering committee, the group said this concern was "unfounded," noting that even though all items posted to the database are available to depositories anywhere in the Southeast region that does not abrogate the responsibility of regionals to consult with selective libraries on any changes to collection management, including major weeding projects. In addition, the database can be searched and sorted, so regionals can review items posted by the selective libraries from their regions.

Title 44, Section 1912, of the U.S. Code states that regional depository libraries may permit selective depository libraries to dispose of government publications which they have retained for five years after first offering them to other depository libraries within their area, then to other libraries. The GPO's interpretation emphasizes "within their area" and "first offering."

"Our biggest concern is GPO's interpretation of 44 USC Chapter 19 to require regional depository libraries to build comprehensive retrospective collections in each state and their use of that doctrine to object to ASERL's plans to build two distributed comprehensive collections," Russell said.

"Asserting that this is a legal requirement is a recent position taken by GPO," she said. "The plan was developed in consultation with GPO to be in compliance with the statute and we were assured that it was by the prior superintendent of documents," she said. "GPO's position has changed, not ASERL's."

But Baish says this is not true.

"Our position is no different that what was expressed by GPO in 2010," she said. Although ASERL says the GPO's general counsel had found the plan in compliance after an informal review, Haun-Mohamed, in the August 25 letter to Burger, wrote "I have uncovered correspondence from the last two years that indicates the plan was discussed, but after checking with the Office of General Counsel, it does not appear that the plan was every actually approved."

And now the GPO has found the plan not in compliance, also raising questions about how ASERL would implement the two library of record copies that the law requires and expressing concern that digital formats not be mistaken for a tangible collection.

"The entire process of developing the plan has been open and transparent," Russell said. "Some of the criticisms and concerns seem to be based on misinterpretation of the ASERL guidelines and failure to review the supporting documents on the ASERL website," she said.

ASERL members have said that the best means of providing broad public access to these collections is through online access to digitized copies and that it supports efforts such as the HathiTrust to create an authentic digital collection in the public domain.

Russell said ASERL is preparing a written response to GPO in anticipation of a future meeting.

"I hope that the senior officers at GPO will support ASERL as we are taking measures to keep the FDPL in our region and beyond strong and sustainable far into the future," said Sarah Michalak, the president of ASERL's board of directors and the University Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Haun-Mohamed of GPO did not return a call seeking comment.