Consider becoming a FIPNet Partner!

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) is looking for several types of partners in relation to FIPNet.

What is FIPNet? GPO’s Federal Information Preservation Network is a strategy for a collaborative network of information professionals working in various partner roles to ensure access to the national collection of Government information for future generations.

What roles can/do partners play?  Partners may elect to work with GPO on one or more of the following preservation activities:

1. Cataloging and metadata creation

2. Digitization and content conversion

3. Harvesting Web content

4. Hosting digital content

5. Storing physical copies

6. Condition assessment

7. Conservation

8. Other innovative activities that support preservation

Do you have a complete collection of government documents in a particular area that you plan on retaining for at least a few years?  Consider becoming a Preservation Steward!  UC Boulder became the first Preservation Steward by pledging to permanently preserve their print collections of Congressional Hearings, the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, and the Bound Congressional Record (and its predecessor titles) at GPO’s fall federal depository library conference in October.  [Press Release here.]

What is a Preservation Steward? “Preservation Stewards, under a Memorandum of Agreement with GPO, will retain all or a portion of discard-eligible depository resources, taking on responsibilities for preserving depository materials that are preservation copies of record. Identifying Preservation Stewards will allow GPO to ensure that preservation copies of record will be in geographically dispersed locations in the United States, as required by the Joint Committee on Printing.”  You can read more about the Regional Discard Policy and the role that Preservation Stewards play here.

Scan federal documents to add to FDsys (or its successor, govinfo)! GPO recently released guidelines for contributing digital content (which include technical specifications).

There are many ways to get involved and help preserve government information.  Please consider becoming a FIPNet partner!

Opportunity for “At Risk” Audio and Audiovisual Materials

Preservation needs extend beyond paper and microfiche holdings.  Do you have any  “at risk” audio or audiovisual materials in your collection?  The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has received $2,725,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a regranting program to digitize “at risk” audio and audiovisual materials of ‘high scholarly value’. The program will run four competitions between January 2017 and September 2018, awarding a total of $2.3 million.

To help develop guidelines and criteria for the program, CLIR will issue a pilot call for proposals, in partnership with the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), in January 2017.  Following the initial competition for audio reformatting at NEDCC, CLIR will launch a series of three open competitions, disbursing $2.15 million in funds over two years. Calls for proposals will be issued in June 2017, December 2017, and May 2018. Awards from the open competitions will range from $10,000 to $50,000 and will cover direct costs of preservation reformatting for audio and audiovisual content by eligible institutions working independently or with qualified service providers.

You can read the entire press release here.  Consider items in your collection which may be eligible!

Public Access to Law and “Official” Court Reports

Some noteworthy posts in the area of access to (and preservation of) legal information:

Peter Martin, co-founder of the LII and author of previous works on citation, has a new blog post on the lag time between U.S. Court decisions and official publication. In terms of the time between the Court’s decision in a case and the arrival of the print volume containing that case at the Cornell Law Library, Martin finds the current delay to be 4 1/2 – 5 years. Not only does this frustrate attorneys and other researchers, but it leaves citation gaps in state print reporters as well — and indeed, in the Court’s own citation to its previous decisions. Martin points to Illinois as a model for publication, in terms of the speed of the release of official opinions (since the digital form is official), and for the immediate release of a public domain citation. He notes that Congress would likely have to act in order for GPO to create a parallel track of official digital publication.

Sarah Glassmeyer, who spent the last year at a fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, has completed an inventory of state legal information that focuses on barriers to access, including  citation requirements, publication lag, and availability of historical law online. Using these (and many more) factors, she scores states, finding Illinois, Indiana and Oklahoma at the top overall, and New York, Illinois and Oklahoma the “most open” publishers of caselaw. Her raw data is available along with the report.

These issues of publication — official and unofficial, digital and print — are intertwined, with no clear solution for the improvement of public access now or in the future. Official digital publication doesn’t solve preservation problems if commercial concerns claim ownership over the information. An example, see the Fastcase litigation over Casemaker’s claimed copyright in Georgia statutes. A recent post by Robert Ambrogi serves as an excellent backgrounder and update, highlighting Casemaker’s recent attempt to have the case dismissed entirely — thereby avoiding a judgment on the issues. As of this morning, nothing new has posted to the docket since Fastcase’s motion for summary judgment and Casemaker’s amended answer and reply to the motion, but expect Ambrogi to report when that decision comes down.