[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
TRANSFORMING GPO FOR THE 21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND: PART 3_FEDERAL
DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE
ADMINISTRATION
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
----------
SEPTEMBER 26, 2017
----------
Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on the Internet:
http://www.govinfo.gov/
TRANSFORMING GPO FOR THE 21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND: PART 3_FEDERAL
DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE
ADMINISTRATION
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 26, 2017
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on the Internet:
http://www.govinfo.gov/
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
29-520 WASHINGTON : 2018
Committee on House Administration
GREGG HARPER, Mississippi, Chairman
RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois, Vice ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania,
Chairman Ranking Member
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia ZOE LOFGREN, California
MARK WALKER, North Carolina JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
TRANSFORMING GPO FOR THE 21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND: PART 3--FEDERAL
DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM
----------
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2017
House of Representatives,
Committee on House Administration,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:13 a.m., in Room
1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Gregg Harper
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Harper, Davis, Comstock, Walker,
Smith, Loudermilk, Lofgren, and Raskin.
Staff Present: Sean Moran, Staff Director; Kim Betz, Deputy
Staff Director/Policy and Oversight; Bob Sensenbrenner, General
Counsel; Dan Jarrell, Legislative Clerk; Bob Tapella,
Professional Staff; Erin McCracken, Communications Director;
Jamie Fleet, Minority Staff Director; Khalil Abboud, Minority
Deputy Staff Director; and Eddie Flaherty, Minority Chief
Clerk.
The Chairman. I now call to order the Committee on House
Administration for purposes of today's hearing, Transforming
the Government Publishing Office for the 21st Century and
Beyond, part 3 of our hearing series, Examining the Federal
Depository Library Program. The hearing record will remain open
for 5 legislative days so Members may submit any materials they
wish to include. A quorum is present, so we may proceed. I will
keep my remarks brief to allow more time for questions and
answers. However, I would like to take this opportunity to
thank our witnesses who make up our two panels.
Most of our witnesses have traveled from different parts of
the country to be with us today and our Committee appreciates
their attendance. Additionally, I believe for all of you this
is your first time testifying before a congressional committee,
and we welcome you. I know today's hearing is significant in
many regards, most notably because the structure and
operational aspects of the Federal Depository Library Program,
or FDLP as it is commonly referred, have not been thoroughly
examined since it was created in 1962. And if you think back to
1962, the Beatles were touring, the late John Glenn became the
first American to orbit around the Earth, and Walmart opened
its first store. As we all know, times have changed since then.
The digital revolution not only changed the way information
is created, maintained, and disseminated, but it also changed
the way in which the public consumes that information. That
means for the Federal Depository Library Program and the 1,150
libraries that participate in the program the technological
advances have brought many questions. Created to disseminate
government information through a network of participating
libraries, those current programs set up under chapter 19
contemplate an ink on paper, hard copy framework.
The technological advances that have moved consumers of
information away from hard copy documents to digital formats
challenge this with many people who would consider an archaic
framework. For example, the government documents are now born
digital, meaning that they are created electronically and are
transmitted via the internet. Some Federal publications are
only available on Federal agencies websites. Many Federal
Government documents are not captured in this program and are
considered fugitive documents.
Finally, there are costs associated with ensuring
technology remains up to date. Notwithstanding these emerging
issues, libraries must also continue to grapple with cumbersome
processes, such as making sure paper-based collections are up
to date and complete and ensuring collections are preserved
accordingly.
Many of the libraries that participate are also facing
storage issues. These are just some of the issues that we will
examine today. And I would like to now recognize Ms. Lofgren
for the purpose of providing an opening statement.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for calling this hearing and for paying attention to the
Government Publishing Office, and specifically today, the
Federal Depository Library Program, or the FDLP.
The FDLP has a presence really in each one of our
districts, and it plays a very important, but sometimes
overlooked, role in keeping America informed. As the Committee
hears from these distinguished witnesses and considers reforms
to the FDLP, we have to keep in mind the program's founding
principles: Government information should be free and available
to all. We must protect the privacy of citizens and make
available information that is never put on paper so that these
important documents of our government are available for
everyone to use forever.
A modern and vibrant FDLP is not just about students and
scholars and authors and researchers of today; it is about
making sure that authentic documents about the work of our
government is available tomorrow and many tomorrows after that.
It is the service that these librarians and their institutions
have provided to the public for generations. And I look forward
to hearing from them about how we can help give them what they
need to do to do it better.
And, Mr. Chairman, in some ways--I was talking the other
day about regular order and how many of us have decried the
passing of the regular order. I think that although this may
not be a headline gathering hearing, it is the kind of
thoughtful work that responsibly must be made to make sure the
government works well. And I want to thank you for convening
this hearing, and I am eager to participate with you. And I
yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Lofgren.
Any other Member wish to make an opening statement?
Seeing none, I would now like to introduce our first
panel's witness. And it is my privilege to introduce Laurie
Hall, who serves as the Acting Superintendent of Documents for
the United States Government Publishing Office. Ms. Hall has
worked with the Government Publishing Office since 1985. Before
accepting the superintendent position, Ms. Hall served as
Managing Director. She has a bachelor's degree in art history
and American studies from the University of Virginia and a
master's degree in library science from Catholic University.
Ms. Hall, the Committee has received your written
testimony. You will have 5 minutes to present a summary of that
submission. And to help you keep time, you will see the timers
on the desk there. The device will have a green light for 4
minutes and will turn yellow with 1 minute, and then the light
will turn red, and we will certainly let you know then that
time would be up. And we welcome you to this Committee and we
look forward to hearing your testimony. You are now recognized
for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF LAURIE HALL, ACTING SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS,
GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
Ms. Hall. Thank you, Chairman Harper, Ms. Lofgren, and
Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to join in
the discussion about Title 44 and the evolution of the Federal
Depository Library Program. My name is Laurie Hall, and I am
currently serving as Acting Superintendent of Documents and
Managing Director of Library Services and Content Management.
I have worked in support of the FDLP since joining GPO in
1985, and I currently oversee a very dedicated staff of 94
librarians and information professionals that administer the
four statutorily mandated programs: the Federal Depository
Library Program, the Cataloging and Indexing Program, the
International Exchange Service with the Library of Congress,
and the By-Law Distribution Program.
The Superintendent of Documents organization implements
strategic programs and operations in partnerships with our
1,143 libraries nationwide, Federal Depository libraries, and
in collaboration with colleagues at GPO, with agency
publishers, and national libraries.
The historic program that is the FDLP has legislative roots
that date back to 1813. In those 204 years, the program, in
partnership with our libraries, continually evolves to meet the
needs of the public seeking official publications and
information about their government.
Along the way, Title 44 has been modified, tweaked,
interpreted to help the Superintendent of Documents
organization better administer the program, working with our
oversight committee, the Joint Committee on Printing. One most
recent challenge has been the introduction of digital formats.
When the 1993 GPO Access Act was passed, the Superintendent of
Documents and the agency as a whole took on an entirely new set
of responsibilities, developed new systems and infrastructure,
modified work flows, revised policies and procedures, acquired
new skill sets, and launched new services for our libraries and
the public. Today, we have nearly 25 years of experience
providing digital information to our depository community.
Another example of where the FDLP moved forward was in 2002
when a new technology was available and an obsolete practice
could be eliminated as it no longer served our community.
Currently, in Title 44, section 1711, the law requires GPO to
print a monthly catalog of documents. We asked the Joint
Committee on Printing to approve a project to implement an
integrated library system with the new online public access
catalog, eliminating paper production of the catalog. A Title
44, section 1711 waiver was issued for the project in 2007.
Today, the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, we call
it the CGP, contains close to 1 million bibliographic records
for historic and current government information products and
access to digital resources housed in FDsys or govinfo, agency
websites, and partner libraries. Access to this information has
increased exponentially.
But not only is the GPO organization changing in the
digital age; our libraries are obviously changing too to meet
the new challenges of serving up government information to
their communities. As we meet, work, and visit our libraries,
we find that many of them are facing major budget cuts,
decreased staffing levels, and have significant space issues.
They tell us they need more flexibility in managing the
collections in order to remain a member of the FDLP. They tell
us they need more services from GPO to help identify, find, and
collect digital government information, while still requiring
certain products in tangible formats.
For those libraries that have large historic print
collections, they are looking to GPO to assist in projects that
preserve these national assets, while helping to mitigate space
and storage issues. For these reasons, Director Vance-Cooks
asked the Depository Library Council, the FDLP community at
large, and other stakeholders to provide inputs on changes to
Title 44.
To date, we have received over 130 submissions, and we are
continuing to evaluate them. Some of the major themes that have
surfaced are continuing to ensure free public access,
preserving collections of all formats, providing libraries with
additional options to select and receive material, offering
grants for enhanced services, and sharing collections and
services across State boundaries for regional libraries.
While some of the recommendations for changes to Title 44
are simple language changes, others could require
investigations and analysis, new types of collaborations and
partnerships, and potential organizational changes in order to
find optimal solutions. The Superintendent of Documents
organization is ready to take on these new challenges to best
serve our libraries and the public seeking information about
their government.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, this concludes
my remarks, and I am happy to respond to any questions that you
have.
[The statement of Ms. Hall follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Ms. Hall. And now we get
to ask you some questions.
Ms. Hall. Okay.
The Chairman. The Committee certainly is honored that you
would be here. We will now have an opportunity. Each Member
will have 5 minutes each to ask you questions that they have,
and obviously, the Members are going to be looking at the clock
as well. And I will begin by recognizing myself for 5 minutes,
and I will start by asking you a few questions.
Before I do that, I certainly want to acknowledge that we
are honored to have in the hearing room today Davita Vance-
Cooks. Ms. Vance-Cooks is the Director of GPO, and it is
probably better to just be here to visit as opposed to
testifying. Right? So we are honored to have you here with us
today. So you can relax.
Ms. Hall, can you tell us, how much money is spent
providing tangible documents to regional libraries?
Ms. Hall. Somebody asked me that question just before I
came. We have not really investigated how much money per
library. Regional libraries in the past had to select or
receive all of the material. Now, they are allowed to receive
different formats; some may receive microfiche, some may
receive paper, and there are some particular titles that they
do not have to receive. So each collection is a little bit
varied, as well libraries have been in the program for a long
time. So we have not done that kind of investigation on how
much--because we usually develop services that will help all
the libraries, the smallest to the largest.
The Chairman. Even without maybe the totals, would it be
the same cost for each regional library?
Ms. Hall. In terms of our--no, because we send them more
material, so the cost of publications, the number of titles
would be more, and the postage would be more, just from a
tangible distribution perspective.
The Chairman. Let's talk just a small item, but maybe not
so small with what you have to do would be shipping costs. So
do we have an indication of what the shipping costs would be,
perhaps depending upon where the regional library is located,
and how is that shipped to them?
Ms. Hall. Right, yeah. Depending on where they are located,
it costs more. And we have different services to get it to
Alaska, to Puerto Rico, rather than sending it down the street
to Virginia.
Yeah. I don't have those with me, but I can get you those
costs.
The Chairman. It probably wouldn't hurt if we could just
take a look at those, if you could gather those up and send
those to us in the future.
Ms. Hall. Okay.
The Chairman. And obviously, those costs are different, we
realize that, but let me shift over for a minute.
In chapter 19, government publication is defined as, quote,
informational matter which is published as an individual
documented government expense or as required by law. But if you
move over to chapter 41, the term Federal electronic
information means, quote, Federal public information stored
electronically.
Are these definitions consistent? And should there be a
single definition for the entire title? And if so, give us a
little guidance here on what your thoughts are.
Ms. Hall. My opinion is I would like to have a consistent
definition, because in the way the information is produced,
even the agencies still ask us--you know, when you go to Title
44 it says print publications. When they ask us, well, do I
have to let you know about digital publications, we say yes. We
have always considered government information regardless of
format and within scope of the program, it is not for national
security, you know, it is not for administrative use as part of
the program.
The Chairman. That has been our ongoing, you know, struggle
here as we look at something that really hasn't been changed as
the way that the items are disseminated and now stored, it is
time for a look. So we would be very interested in your input
as we go forward on this. I know the Members will also have
some questions here to ask.
So with that, I am going to stop and recognize Ms. Lofgren
for 5 minutes for any questions that she may have.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, I wanted to ask a question about standards
developed by private entities that are incorporated by
reference into law. It is my understanding that these standards
are only minimally accessible through a small number of Federal
depository libraries or citizens can pay money to the standard
development organization that developed them for a copy or to
access the standards.
Now, if we pass a law and we incorporate these privately
developed standards for--usually, it is regulating health or
food safety, infrastructure, building fire codes, even
children's playground equipment, these standards are as much of
the law as anything we write, you know, down with legislative
counsel. So the question I have is whether we can take a step
forward to make sure that these standards are more accessible
to the public than I think they currently are.
I honestly think there is a huge due process problem here.
If the law applies to you but you don't have the capacity to
find out what it is without paying a fee, I think that is a due
process violation. But the question is what can FDLP do to
increase physical access to these standards, and what should
the FDLP do to increase digital offsite access to these
standards? And what should Congress do to assist you in this?
Ms. Hall. We have some examples of that in the past when--
and my colleagues can correct me if I get the names wrong, but
the Commerce Department at one particular time transferred some
of their information from a print to a digital service. And it
was a fee service. And we as a depository--the FDLP program
worked with the Commerce Department to allow and provide access
for depository libraries to get into that information free.
So there are some scenarios that we have done in the past
to make sure that if patrons coming into libraries needed
access to a database of information that was in scope of the
program, that they had ability to get in freely without paying.
So we do have some models that we have used in the past that
may still apply to this, and we have been able to give our
depository libraries access to quite a few things.
Ms. Lofgren. Well, I am wondering if, you know, maybe after
this hearing we can follow up with some examples on this,
because there is litigation underway about this. But it is
really an important issue, I think, of due process in the
United States.
I have a question about how the GPO provides depository
libraries with preservation best practices information and
specifically digital best practices. If you have, you know, a
piece of information, digital information that is only valuable
if you can read it, which relates to not just having the data,
but having the access to the program to read the data, that may
seem easy right now, but 100 years from now, it may not.
Ms. Hall. Right.
Ms. Lofgren. And so I am wondering what efforts are we
making to make sure, not only GPO, but all of our sister and
brother libraries are maintaining access to the data?
Ms. Hall. That is a good question. This is a relatively new
field. We at GPO work with other organizations, national
libraries in collaboration on these particular issues. For the
FDLP, we have a Preservation Librarian, and we are in the
process of hiring a Digital Preservation Librarian. We have
provided webinars and information exchange for our libraries on
preserving tangible and digital objects. We are in the process
of getting ready to do an audit for our trusted digital
repository, which will be the first in the government. We have
done the self-audit of FDsys/govinfo, so we are becoming more
and more familiar with long-term preservation and collection of
digital assets, so----
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will
yield back.
The Chairman. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair will now recognize Mr. Davis, the Vice Chairman
of the Committee, for 5 minutes for the purpose of questions.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Director, thank you for the tour a few weeks ago. I
learned a lot about the GPO. I appreciate the time that many of
your employees took to show us around, and they were great. I
just wanted to relay my personal thanks.
Ms. Hall, thanks for being here today. GPO has published a
document entitled Legal Requirements and Program Regulations of
the Federal Depository Library Program, which were downloaded
from FDLP.gov. It is dated June 2011. Are these the most
current SuDocs regulations?
Ms. Hall. Yes.
Mr. Davis. Okay.
Ms. Hall. We are in the process of doing some revision of
those. And we have done those online so that we can revise them
on an ad hoc basis. So, yeah, we are in the process of doing
those.
Mr. Davis. All right. How were those regulations--how were
these created?
Ms. Hall. A lot of them are really like best practices.
They are based on interpretations of Title 44, working with our
libraries, what works. So, yeah, it is to give them guidance
and how working with our outreach librarians, how to deal with
certain situations in libraries, so----
Mr. Davis. Okay. As a legislative branch agency, we know
GPO is not required to follow the Administrative Procedures
Act. However, did GPO follow the spirit of the Act, including
noticing the FDLP community and seeking comments from them as
these regulations were contemplated?
Ms. Hall. Yes, we always do. We either formally on our
travels meeting with librarians give them copies of these, work
with them. We have committees, our Depository Library Council
worked with our staff on that particular document. So, yeah, we
always have input from the community, the associations, and our
working librarians when we draft those kind of documents.
Mr. Davis. Well, thank you. As somebody who represents an
FDLP at the University of Illinois, that communication is very
much appreciated.
We have heard from some selective libraries that they often
must take additional documents in a particular category in
order to get the specific documents they would like to get.
Would you please describe to us how that process works and for
these types of libraries?
Ms. Hall. Yeah. That process has been going on since about
1940, where we have general categories of materials from a
particular agency. So you will have the Department of
Agriculture, and you can select general publications, which is
everything like pamphlets, brochures, that kind of thing. And
if you select that, you get a wide, random offering. But there
are specific categories where you can say I only want the
annual reports, and you will only get the annual reports.
It is an old system, you get stuff you don't want
particularly. And it is something we have talked about with our
libraries many times about how to modify it, change it. We have
a lot of public libraries that are interested in, like I said,
only getting specific documents, and in tangible format. So we
have been talking to them about different kinds of solutions to
get them only the things that they really want.
Mr. Davis. So 1940s. I wasn't here then.
Ms. Hall. Well, neither was I.
Mr. Davis. In Congress or here.
So, I mean, it seems in today's day and age, with much more
being printed online, that the selective process ought to be
able to work better, so----
Ms. Hall. I agree. I totally agree.
Mr. Davis. How would you change that? How would that work
better?
Ms. Hall. In talking to the public libraries, a lot of the
little public libraries, they want something which I kind of
call a la carte ordering. You know, here is the new title that
has come out, do I want a digital record for it to put in my
catalog or do I want a printed document? Check.
So some of the libraries that are smaller and want
different formats and have very, very specific things that they
know their community wants, that may work. Now, for the bigger
institutions, it is going to be a little more complicated, but
that is one suggestion.
Mr. Davis. Do you consider the University of Illinois
system being a bigger institution?
Ms. Hall. Yes, yes. And they have a long history of
selecting a lot of materials for a lot of purposes to serve,
you know, academic communities. Yeah, there are different needs
in different institutions.
Mr. Davis. Okay.
Ms. Hall. It is going to be a good challenge.
Mr. Davis. Is there anything we can do as a committee to be
helpful in that process?
Ms. Hall. I think we will let you know.
Mr. Davis. Besides not having you come here to testify?
Thank you for your time.
Ms. Hall. You are welcome.
Mr. Davis. We appreciate your time.
I yield back.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Raskin for the purpose of
questions for 5 minutes.
Mr. Raskin. I actually have no questions, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Okay. The gentleman yields back.
I now recognize the gentleman from North, Carolina Mr.
Walker, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your time
today as always.
In the U.S. Government Publishing Office's response to a
number of questions for the record from earlier hearings
regarding the GPO's visit to a number of depository libraries,
GPO responded with this: While most libraries do not want to
commit to preservation services for Federal publications, they
are concerned that these services be done by the government and
others to ensure that there is permanent public access for
these resources.
You probably remember that and are familiar with it. Is it
correct the Superintendent of Documents would be that the
government, in quotations, in this instance, could
Superintendent of Documents provide that service? What are the
costs associated with providing the comprehensive service? And
one last question, since we are throwing three at you real
quick, could the Superintendent of Documents partner with an
organization such as HathiTrust?
Ms. Hall. Yeah. Our model that we would like to use is more
of a collaborative model. We have some things that we have
centralized like FDsys/govinfo. But right now, we have
different libraries who we collaborate with to preserve certain
parts of the collection and also for digital as well. We have
libraries that are digital partners with us. So we like the
collaborative model rather than a centralized model to do both
preservation of tangible and digital.
And we have reached out to Hathi probably every year since
2015 to potentially work with them. They have an access model;
we are looking more for a preservation model for storing
materials both tangible and digital. So, yeah, collaboration is
the key.
Mr. Walker. Well, how hopeful are you that this
collaborative model will work long-term in resolving some of
these concerns?
Ms. Hall. They do. For instance, we have a new program that
is called the Preservation Steward. So we do have libraries
that want to preserve tangible documents, some massive
collections and some smaller collections. So we have agreements
with them that they are committed to save these documents, and
we renew those agreements every 5 years. Then we have some
libraries, the University of North Texas is one of them, who is
one of our digital partners and is preserving digital
information that right now is not in FDsys/govinfo. So we have
a partnership with them as well. So it is kind of a
collaborative, scattered model.
Mr. Walker. We understand that one of the benefits the
Federal agencies using the GPO express program through FedEx
office is that the Superintendent of Documents has an
opportunity to review print orders for possible inclusion in
the FDLP. How does that Superintendent of Documents review
work? Can you shed some light on that?
Ms. Hall. Well, it doesn't work now. We did some
investigation and study. We were looking at all of the files
that came from GPOExpress for about 5 years, and what we found
was the majority of stuff coming through GPOExpress program was
slides, pages from a document, publications that agency
personnel were using to do presentations. A lot of times they
weren't complete documents.
Mr. Walker. You said for years.
Ms. Hall. For years. And I can give you a report. I don't
have it with me, but a report.
We found that it took a lot of staff time to go through
file by file by file, and it was much easier to actually go to
the agency website and get a complete document. That was--it
also has more provenance. It is at the agency website. So we
found that the GPOExpress program was not a really good source
of complete government information that was in scope of the
program.
Mr. Walker. So your long-term suggestion or solution would
be what?
Ms. Hall. My long-term suggestion was to continue to do
outreach to the agencies, and we do that on regular basis. We
are in the process of doing a study with the Library of
Congress Federal Research Division, and they are surveying
specific agencies, talking not only to their printing officers,
but to their publishing officers. They are not necessarily the
same people anymore, because the digital publishers put things
on the web, but the printers, they are different offices often,
to try to find how to best get that information from agencies.
So we would rather work more with the agencies directly to get
their material.
Mr. Walker. Thank you very much.
With that, I yield back to the Chairman.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Nebraska, Mr.
Smith, for 5 minutes for questioning.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you,
Superintendent.
I was wondering what the cost to provide tangible documents
would be to selective libraries, and is there a difference in
cost between libraries or, for example, difference in cost
between East Coast to West Coast? And then who makes the final
decision on how money per library is spent and is there a
limit?
Ms. Hall. Yeah. Right now, we have not done a study, in my
30 years, about the cost per types of libraries because each
library is so different. A selective library--one library may
select 10 percent, one may select 60 percent. One may be in
California, one may be in Virginia. So there is no formula or
investigation we have done to date that--because they are all
so different; I guess that is the best way of saying it.
Postage costs are different depending on where they are
located, if they are in Puerto Rico or they are in Nebraska. So
we don't really have that sense.
And when we develop programs or projects, we try to develop
them that will have an impact for all libraries or a service
that all of them can utilize. We are in the process of doing
some new service called LibGuides, it is a library term,
librarians know about it. And we are developing it so all of
our libraries would have access to it. You know, and it can be
used by all types of libraries, big and small.
Mr. Smith. All right.
Ms. Hall. That information, we could do some investigation
if you would like.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Ms. Hall. Okay.
Mr. Smith. I yield back. Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
That concludes the questioning of Ms. Hall. We want to
thank you very much for being here.
Ms. Hall. You are welcome.
The Chairman. And without objection, all Members will have
5 legislative days to submit to the chair additional written
questions for the witness, which we will forward and ask the
witness to respond as promptly as she can so that her answers
may be a part of the record.
We want to thank you for being here and wish you the best.
Ms. Hall. Thank you. You are welcome.
The Chairman. Thank you for coming. Appreciate it.
With that, I will now invite our second panel of witnesses
to the table, and we will talk a moment to get everyone set in
place.
I want to thank each of you for being here. And I am going
take a minute to introduce each of you before we allow you time
to give your testimony.
Celina McDonald is the Librarian for Government Documents,
Law Criminology, and Criminal Justice at the University of
Maryland. Ms. McDonald previously served as an Assistant
Librarian at Clemson University. She earned her bachelor's
degree in Russian Studies and English from Lehigh University,
and her master's degree in the Science of Information from the
University of Michigan's School of Information.
Beth Williams serves as Stanford Law School library
director. She has served as the director of the law library and
information services at Louisiana State University Law Center
and head of public services at Columbia Law School, where she
also taught legal research. Ms. Williams earned her law degree
from Syracuse University College of Law, a master's degree in
library and information science from the University of
Washington Information School, a master's degree in philosophy
from Marquette University, and a bachelor's degree in
humanities from the University of West Florida. I am dizzy just
reading all of that. Welcome, Ms. Williams.
Stephen Parks serves as the State librarian of Mississippi.
Before he was elected to the position by the Mississippi
legislature, Mr. Parks served as a Research Instructional
Services and Circulation Librarian at Mississippi College
School of Law, while also teaching legal research there. Mr.
Parks has a bachelor's degree from East Carolina University, a
law degree from Mississippi College School of Law, and a
master's degree in library and information science from the
University of Southern Mississippi.
Mike Furlough serves as the Executive Director of
HathiTrust Digital Library. Mr. Furlough previously served as
both the Assistant Dean, and later, the Associate Dean for
Research and Scholarly Communications at Penn State University
Libraries. Mr. Furlough received a master's degree in English
and American literature from the University of Virginia.
I want to welcome each of you here to testify today. This
is going to be very helpful to us to see how this actually
works on the ground in the real world there. And we are excited
to have you; look forward to hearing you.
The Committee has obviously received your written
testimonies and had an opportunity to review that. So each
witness will have 5 minutes to present a summary of that
submission. And to help you keep time, as you have seen the
clock that is there with the light system. The device will be
green for 4 minutes and will turn yellow with 1 minute
remaining. And when the light turns red, it means that your
time has expired. But you have already seen that no trap door
will open up, but we are excited to have each of you here.
And we will now--the Chair will now recognize our witnesses
for the purposes of the opening statements, beginning with Ms.
McDonald. Welcome. You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF CELINA MCDONALD, GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS AND
CRIMINOLOGY LIBRARIAN, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND; BETH WILLIAMS,
LIBRARY DIRECTOR, STANFORD LAW SCHOOL; STEPHEN PARKS, STATE
LIBRARIAN OF MISSISSIPPI; AND MIKE FURLOUGH, EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR, HATHITRUST DIGITAL LIBRARY
STATEMENT OF CELINA MCDONALD
Ms. McDonald. I have to be careful; my voice carries very
easily.
Thank you, Chairman Harper, Ranking Member Lofgren, and
Members of the Committee on House Administration for inviting
me here before you. It is an honor to give my testimony
regarding my experiences as a regional federal depository
library coordinator for University of Maryland, College Park,
as well as at Clemson University.
Before I proceed, I want to make sure to include this
disclaimer that I am testifying on behalf of myself with my own
experiences. I made sure to consult legal at the different
institutions to make sure that they understood that I was just
testifying for me.
I am going to begin with my experiences at the University
of Maryland and then kind of delve back in my experiences at
Clemson.
The University of Maryland libraries, its mission is to
support the intellectual inquiry and learning required to the
education, research, and community outreach mission of the
University of Maryland, which is comprised of over 39,000
students, 4,300 faculty, and 5,400 staff. On top of all of
those research interests, we are also the regional federal
depository library for 59 selective libraries in Maryland,
Delaware, and D.C., including 32 Federal agency libraries.
As the regional federal depository library coordinator, I
oversee the university and the region's U.S. Government
documents collections. This includes providing training,
facilitating annual meetings, responding to depository
questions, providing research support to the public, and
oversee the materials withdrawal process, which I am sure you
guys have heard a great deal about at this point.
Like many of my peers, I face the problem of having a
growing collection that must be maintained in a finite amount
of space with a finite amount of resources. Just consider, last
year, I had one student who worked 20 hours a week to shelve
all materials, retrieve duplicate copies, offer them to other
institutions, transport them to another department for
processing, and when necessary, to ship them to the receiving
institutions. No matter how hard he and I tried, we simply
could not keep up with the work.
Fortunately, at Maryland, and as well as at Clemson, I have
had very, very good, positive working relationships with my
colleagues, and they have been able to support me. And I find
that bribing people with baked goods, bread pudding is a
winner, people offered to help me move. So I highly recommend
that you take some baked goods.
But even with all of that, there comes a point where my
colleagues kind of have to say, hey, we need to do our jobs
too, you know, hold on to your baked goods for another 6 months
and then we can help you again.
One of the ways that regional libraries can approach the
problem of having expensive, low-use, space-consuming
collections is to relinquish regional status, which we did at
my previous institution, Clemson University. The decision to
relinquish regional status was not made lightly. It took 2
years from when the first--the idea was first broached to when
with we fully relinquished regional status. During that
process, I undertook to examine all the ways that it could
impact other libraries in the region, the students, the users,
and of course, the general public, how it would affect them.
At Clemson, it was possible for us to relinquish regional
staff, at least in part, because we were what is called a
shared regional. We were coregional. There was a second one in
South Carolina that was perfectly happy to stay regional. So we
were able to relinquish our regional status without having any
negative impact on the public.
One second. I need a little bit of water.
The Chairman. And then while you are doing that, I also
would note that the baked goods probably works really well for
the intensity of questions by the Committee, but that is just--
--
Ms. McDonald. In contrast, at the University of Maryland,
we are the only regional for three areas: D.C., Maryland, and
Delaware, so we don't have really that option. Many of the
libraries rely upon us to help them fulfill their FDLP
responsibilities.
In order for us to continue as a regional, UMD needs
greater flexibility and control over its collection. In
particular, it would help if institutions were able to share
regional federal depository library materials between State
lines. I have got selectives in other areas. Perhaps I can send
some things their way when they want them. Save them some money
and save me some space.
Another way would be to give regional libraries more leeway
to substitute electronic publications from approved sources,
such as govinfo and FDsys, in order to right size our
collections to the needs of our users and institutions. When I
say users, I don't mean just the UMD community; I mean to the
community at large, because as a regional, that is our
community. The community is the region.
And I know that some people have reservations--oh, my time
is up, so I am going to wrap it up by saying that I appreciate
you guys having me here today and I welcome any questions. I am
right around your corner, so if you need to stop by and ask me
some questions, feel free.
[The statement of Ms. McDonald follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you very much, Ms. McDonald.
The Chair will now recognize Ms. Williams for 5 minutes for
the purposes of an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF BETH WILLIAMS
Ms. Williams. Chairman Harper and Members of the Committee,
good morning. My name is Beth Williams and I am the director of
the Robert Crown Law Library and senior lecturer in law at
Stanford Law School. I am currently serving in my second of a
3-year term as a member of the Government Publishing Office's
Depository Library Council. And I am pleased to appear before
you today in my personal capacity. Thank you for the invitation
to appear at this important hearing. I have been following the
Committee's review of Title 44, and I am honored to be able to
share my thoughts about potential reform.
I approach the question of how best to improve and
modernize chapter 19 of Title 44 based on my experience, not as
a seasoned government documents librarian, but as a law
librarian working with and managing FDLP collections in private
institutions, like my home institution now, previously at
Columbia Law School, and in public institutions during my
tenure at Louisiana State University.
Academic law libraries have relatively smaller but vital
FDLP collections, including primarily the laws that govern this
Nation. And law librarians are nothing if not passionate about
access to and preservation of the law.
For the past 12 years, I have also had the privilege to
teach law students at Stanford, at LSU, and at Columbia, where
and how to find the law, much of which is dependent upon a
familiarity with the complex nature of legal publishing.
As a member of the Depository Library Council, I have
learned a great deal from my distinguished colleagues serving
in different types of depository libraries, regional libraries,
and other selective libraries like my own, public libraries,
court, county and State libraries, and fellow academic
libraries. The diverse group of libraries in the FDLP share
many similarities, the most important being our dedication to
public service and providing our patrons with the broadest
swath of government information.
I have also witnessed GPO's dedication to this program and
their efforts to forge creative solutions with the library
community to the challenges inherent in this program.
I believe that three key revisions to chapter 19 of Title
44 would position the FDLP and the GPO to more efficiently,
comprehensively, and successfully manage government information
in the digital age. As it currently stands, the FDLP represents
a strong and important partnership between the Federal
Government and the diverse network of dedicated libraries and
librarians to meet the goal of keeping America informed. The
impetus to modernize chapter 19 should focus on positioning the
GPO to play a central role in managing the lifecycle of
government information, the vast majority of which is now
digital, and disseminating that digital information in
partnership with the network of FDLP libraries.
To this end, I recommend the following three changes:
First, the definition of government publication in section 1901
of Title 44 should be amended to include information in all
formats, including most importantly digital information. The
current definition woefully fails to capture the universe of
digital documents produced by the Federal Government. This is
hardly surprising given its age. As early as 1990, my law
librarian mentors were arguing for a format neutral definition
of government publication to include electronic information,
rather than relying on a 19th century notion of printing
processes.
Though no format is specified in the statutory definition,
that is, the terms ``print'' or ``paper'' do not appear, many
government agencies have erroneously interpreted the term
``document'' to be synonymous with paper, leaving the bulk of
our Nation's documentary heritage in the digital age either
fragile or forgotten. Amending section 1901 will place the GPO
in partnership with the FDLP community in the best position to
identify, describe, disseminate, and manage government
information in all its formats.
Second, the change to section 1901 should be accompanied by
an amendment to section 1902, and following, to require
legislative, executive, and judicial branch agencies to deposit
electronic publications with the GPO for dissemination.
Many nations throughout the world collect their published
output as systematically and comprehensively as possible
through some form of so-called legal deposit, making this
valuable content openly and freely available to current and
future generations. In general, legal deposit schemes create a
system in which publishers and libraries work together to
ensure success in depositing content, irrespective of format or
technology.
The United States has been conspicuously absent in creating
a legal deposit scheme for digital content. The method of a
deposit required under the statute, in my opinion, should be
neutral to allow GPO maximum flexibility to passively receive
or actively harvest content in a variety of ways over time.
Third, chapter 19 should also be amended to include the
obligation to preserve digital content obtained and distributed
by the GPO. The GPO is well placed to take on a leadership role
as a digital preservation manager, and I have confidence that
they are capable and up to that task.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not include some
mention of the financial cost involved in the FDLP. The digital
age of publishing has opened up many new possibilities,
bringing us closer to the ideal of universal access to the
corpus of recorded knowledge. But like many great things of
value, the cost is in no way cheap.
Digital information disseminated through the FDLP should be
free in precisely the same way past materials have been. The
public should not have to pay a fee to hear our government when
it speaks. Accordingly, section 4102 of Title 44 should be
amended to preserve this foundational democratic principle.
Thank you again for the opportunity to share my opinions on
this important subject, and I look forward to hearing any
questions you may have.
[The statement of Ms. Williams follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Williams.
The Chair will now recognize Stephen Parks for 5 minutes
for questions. And I welcome you, and it is good to see my
friend from Mississippi. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN PARKS
Mr. Parks. Good morning, Chairman Harper and fellow
Committee members. Thank you for having me here today. My name
is Stephen Parks and I am the State librarian of the State law
library of Mississippi.
As the State librarian, I oversee and direct the day-to-day
operations of the State library. And we have a staff of four
librarians, including myself. And we have served as a selective
depository library since the mid-1880s, with the University of
Mississippi being our regional depository. We are located in
the capital city of Jackson, in Chairman Harper's district. And
if I may say so myself, I believe we provide excellent service
to all types of users, whether it is the court, school systems,
State agencies, law firms, or just the general public.
We recently hosted a visit by Dr. Carla Hayden, the
Librarian of Congress. And thank you, Chairman Harper, for
arranging that visit with us. And at that visit, she spoke of
the importance of access to legal materials and how we as law
librarians help provide this access, and the FDLP helps us in
this endeavor.
We routinely serve members of the general public who seek
out government information through the FDLP. This can include
material from the Code of Federal Regulations, the U.S. Code,
the United States reporter, and most recently we had to utilize
our microfiche reader and pull out older editions of the
Federal Register. And without the FDLP sending us these items,
we would not have been able to help those members of the
public. So we strive to provide the most effective service we
can to our patrons.
As many academic law libraries and private law libraries
oftentimes limit patron access, it is important that our State
court libraries provide great service by being open and
available to all citizens, and by having these FDLP items
readily accessible in various formats. And we continue to be
grateful that, in 1972, Congress enacted legislation that
authorized the highest appellate courts of the State to
participate in the program. And we would hope that any
revisions of the FDLP will retain that provision and the
flexibility it provides to the appellate courts.
My purpose here today is to share with you some of the
strengths of the FDLP and some of the opportunities for
modernization that I believe could help.
As far as the strengths, I believe that as distributed
network of libraries, the FDLP plays a critical role in
providing permanent public access to government information.
And it is a smart investment of our taxpayer dollars. The
program relies on the willingness of libraries, such as
ourselves, to provide this permanent public access in multiple
formats, and in return, we receive from the government these
free publications, opportunities for training, and various
resources to offer local communities, regardless of background
or income. And this is especially true in Jackson.
When it comes to background and income, in Jackson, we have
four selective depository libraries, two of those are law
libraries. And of the four in Jackson, the State library is the
most readily accessible. We do not restrict access by having--
like, for instance, the law school libraries are restricted to
key card access now due to safety concerns. We at the State
library are open to everyone. So we provide great access to
those individuals in the public. And we are trained to answer
questions about government websites, information and documents,
thus relieving the agencies themselves from having to answer
those questions. We as librarians are here to help with that.
The FDLP and the GPO have been of great assistance to me
also in my role as a legal research instructor and an
instructor at the University of Southern Miss in their library
and information science program. I would like to warn law
students that when they get out and practice as a solo
practitioner, they might not be able to afford subscription-
based services such as Westlaw or LexisNexis. On the flip side,
I would like to teach them how to use FDsys so they can get
freely available resources to use in their practice, so I would
like to extol the GPO as a trusted resource where users can get
digitized, authenticated government material for free.
We are looking at opportunities to do some modernization. I
first believe it should be clear in any reform bill that the
GPO has an important role to play, not only in providing that
permanent access, but also the preservation of government
information in print and electronic formats. The statute is
currently unclear about GPO's preservation rule.
Secondly, I think the current regional and selective model
of the FDLP works well, but I understand there are pressures on
some libraries, such as the regionals to free up space from
their libraries and offer greater access to born-digital
information. So I believe there should be some flexibility
provided to regionals, and I would be interested in discussing
that.
And, lastly, I also believe it is important for Congress to
continue to invest in govinfo.gov, the website, which will
eventually replace FDsys. Currently, under section 4102 of
Title 44, GOP is allowed to charge fees for public access, but
I would suggest that this language be substituted with language
assuring no-fee public access.
In conclusion, I am grateful to be here today, and I look
forward to discussing ways in which the FDLP operates and ways
that it can be improved.
[The statement of Mr. Parks follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Parks.
The Chair will now recognize Mike Furlough of HathiTrust
for 5 minutes for the purposes of an opening statement.
Welcome.
STATEMENT OF MIKE FURLOUGH
Mr. Furlough. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ms.
Lofgren and the other Members of the Committee. I much
appreciate the opportunity to be here today and share with you
my thoughts on transforming the Government Publishing Office
and the Federal Depository Library Program.
I am going to speak from my experience as the Director of
HathiTrust, which is an organization that is supported by over
130 academic and research libraries. We operate a certified,
trusted digital library and preservation repository that
preserves over 16 million digitized books, journals, and
Federal documents. Many of these were digitized through large
scale digitization partnerships led by Google, the Internet
Archive, and others. And really our goal is to help our
libraries work collaboratively to address challenges that they
each face individually, but to do so at scale and innovative
and affordable ways. I will focus most of my comments on the
digitization of Federal documents.
Over the decades, as you know, GPO has distributed millions
of documents to hundreds of libraries across the country so
that individuals can have ready and in-person access to
government information. But today, especially after the
internet, libraries have shifted their primary emphasis away
from building large physical collections towards services to
help individuals find and use and create information. I am
speaking very broadly here.
Free public access to U.S. Government information remains
imperative, but it is not necessary to duplicate this
information in physical format so extensively. The future
requires that we have fewer duplicative print collections and
that we place a greater emphasis on collaboratively managing
the existing library collections we have.
I think we can foresee a day when the majority of
historical Federal publications will be available online, but
we are not there yet. Today, HathiTrust includes over 1 million
U.S. Federal documents that were published--that were digitized
from the collections of depository libraries. We are
continually working to locate and digitize millions more, and
these are among the most heavily consulted items in our
collection.
Anyone with access to the internet can read these documents
in HathiTrust, as well as millions of other open or out of
copyright items. We don't charge for access to this collection.
A user does not need to visit a library to gain access to read
material in HathiTrust. We paired these services with ongoing
programs that are really important to do things, like improve
the quality of digital copies, improve the cataloging so it is
easier to find what you are looking for, provide these
materials to users who are print disabled and make them
available for text and data mining.
Title 44 should recognize that digitized versions of
historical documents are effective access substitutes for many
uses, but not all uses. We will always need to have libraries
that retain and preserve physical collections of print material
for consultation, but today, as you have heard, libraries face
significant space constraints for their collections and their
services, and they are looking to reduce costly duplication in
the entirety of their collections.
To help address this, we have undertaken a program that is
developing a geographically distributed shared print collection
among our members. This will mirror the entirety of the
digitized collection. Under the program, our members will
retain in suitable environments specific materials for a
minimum of 25 years.
A registry of these retention commitments will allow
libraries to compare their collections with what others have
retained and are promising to keep, and that will allow them to
make choices about what they retain and what they would throw
out when appropriate to do so. I believe these services can
help us manage the collective collection well into the future.
We do not have any direct affiliation with GPO, but we do
count among our members 128 Federal depository libraries, 17 of
these are regionals. They are the leaders in our government
documents work, and as you know, GPO has undertaken similar
work. It has partnered with the Library of Congress, for
example, to digitize the Statutes At Large and the
Congressional Record. Their FDLP program provides for a limited
number of depository libraries to retain print copies so that
others can discard.
But GPO's regulations and resource constraints have
sometimes made it difficult for libraries to work innovatively
and creatively, and it has often been more challenging to
collaborate.
Going forward, I would hope that such programs could be
expanded and aligned with best practices and programs that
libraries are establishing, whether through us or other
regional efforts that they undertake. I believe GPO really
should be empowered to build upon these efforts and not feel
the need to duplicate them all.
Title 44 should be modernized to reflect how contemporary
libraries operate. It should promote comprehensive and enduring
digital access to government information created in the future
and also to documents published in the past. It should ensure
the privacy of individuals who access digital government
documents, and regulations at GPO should enable the libraries
to more easily collaborate among themselves.
Finally, I think GPO should be able to easily make use of
the results of such collaborations and the work of their
libraries by having clearer authority to accept gifts. And
lastly, I believe Title 44 should help these libraries more
cost effectively manage their collections.
What we have seen over the past decades is that when
research libraries can collaborate at very large scales, they
can dramatically and affordably improve long-term and durable
access to information. And preservation and access really is
our business, and we are ready to work with the GPO and other
organizations to help ensure the public information endures.
So thank you very much, and I welcome any questions.
[The statement of Mr. Furlough follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Furlough. And thanks to each
of you for your testimony.
And now we have time for questions. So as Chair, I will
recognize myself for 5 minutes for the purpose of questions.
And if you would, make sure all of your mics are turned off
until you answer. That will just kind of help with any feedback
we might incur.
But this really is a very important issue. I agree with--
associate myself with Ms. Lofgren's comments earlier that it is
important as part of regular order to review this, go through
this process to see how we can make something that we like
better and be ready to move to the future.
So I will recognize myself now, and I will start with you,
Mr. Parks, and ask you a couple of questions. And first of all,
congratulations on your August event that you had with Dr.
Carla Hayden. It is pretty special to know that Mississippi
became a State in mid-December of 1817. In January of 1818,
what happened?
Mr. Parks. Just a month after becoming a State, the
legislature passed a resolution directing the Secretary of
State to purchase books and maps, and that collection has
evolved into what has become today's library.
The Chairman. That is a great story. And so you had Dr.
Hayden in August, and you have a special guest coming in
tomorrow, I believe.
Mr. Parks. Tomorrow, Chief Justice John Roberts will be in
attendance to celebrate the judiciary's bicentennial. He will
be hosting a moot court argument between Mississippi College
and the University of Mississippi.
The Chairman. And we can't wait to see who you are going to
have in October. So this will be great.
Mr. Parks. Have to celebrate the entire year.
The Chairman. There you go.
In your written testimony you state: Beyond mere access,
FDLP libraries have skilled librarians who assist the public in
navigating the government information available to them.
Would you share with us your view on how GPO's role in
training helps FDLP librarians.
Mr. Parks. Training in general helps because a lot of times
when the public approaches a law library, they approach a law
library nervously. They don't know what they are looking for,
how to look for it, or how to even interpret it. I mean, as
librarians, we can't interpret it, but we can lead them to the
material themselves.
So any time GPO or the FDLP is able to provide training,
whether it be in-person training or a webinar, I try to push my
staff members to sign up for that, just to help. Because you
never know when we are going to get someone from the public
coming in who has no clue what to do, and we are there to help
them find that material.
The Chairman. That is great. And, you know, as a selective
depository librarian, share with us your relationship with your
regional depository.
Mr. Parks. We have a great relationship. We have a new
director at the regional. Her name is Ashley Dees. The
previous--Laura Harper retired last year. I was not able to
work directly with her. She was retiring as I came onboard. But
I have been in touch with Ashley. We discussed ways that we
might could actually increase parts of our collection from the
FDLP. And we plan to meet up at the Mississippi Library
Association meeting next month.
So we do have a great relationship. Any time we need
something from them, they are willing to either come down to
Jackson or we even go up to Oxford occasionally and determine
what we could do to increase our relationship.
The Chairman. When we talk about the regional depository--
let's say the University Mississippi were to relinquish its
status as a regional depository. How would that impact the
State law library of Mississippi?
Mr. Parks. I think it would impact the entire State. We
only have one regional where some States have two. But I do
think we would work through it. We have 11 selectives
throughout the entire State, and at least four just in the
metro Jackson area. So I would assume we would all get together
and work through it. Of course, we would like to have the
university remain the regional depository or some other library
step up, but we would do our best to work through it. I would
even consider offering us up as a regional, but we don't have
the space. I know exactly what they mean when the regionals
talk about space issues, because we don't have much space
either.
The Chairman. Got it. But we are not planning on the
University of Mississippi giving up that status on that.
And this is to the whole panel, whoever cares to answer
this. Digital preservation of documents requires three core
components: resources, policy infrastructure, and technical
infrastructure. Am I missing any in that?
Could you help guide us on what might be required to
preserve the electronic Federal collection? Anybody want to
comment on that?
Mr. Furlough. I will take a stab at that. I believe that--I
want to echo something that Ms. Hall said earlier today, which
is that I think collaboration is really critical on this. There
is a role for certain kinds of centralization for organizations
to take responsibility for retaining and preserving digital
information or print information, but you need a network of
these, you need different organizations to take on different
kinds of roles. You need different libraries to take on
different kinds of roles. I believe, you know, some
specialization is necessary, especially when we look to the
future of digital information. The necessity is that you have
different expertise in different places and you draw upon that
as needed, so----
The Chairman. Thanks to each of you.
The Chair will now recognize Ms. Lofgren for 5 minutes.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is excellent
testimony, and you have all made very important suggestions.
And hopefully, we can incorporate, as we look to do even
better, at preserving and making accessible the information
that belongs to the public.
Just seeing the geographic breadth of our witnesses from
Maryland to California, Mississippi, you can see that this
really spans the whole United States, how interested--and
Pennsylvania, of course.
So I have just a couple of questions. You know, I was
reading your bio, Ms. Williams, and I see that you taught legal
research one time. A long time ago, I taught legal research.
And it is completely different now with the digital world that
we have than when I taught that.
I am thinking about what role we need to play, if any, in
making sure that the platforms are accessible to the public.
And I will just--we have oversight over the Copyright Office.
Every one of us believes in strong copyright protection. On the
other hand, if there are barriers to access to information,
that is a competing interest, because the public has a right to
see the law.
So are there things that should be brought to our
attention, Ms. Williams? For example, we have got different
formats. For some reason lawyers like to use WordPerfect
instead of Word. We have got Page, we have got different
proprietary programs that we may or may not have rights to use
under copyright protection. And yet, without access to those
programs, the data that the public owns is simply inaccessible.
Is that a problem or am I making up a problem?
Ms. Williams. Thank you. I don't think you are making up
the problem. I think, as a threshold matter, teaching law
students how to do legal research has become more complicated
rather than less complicated in the digital age.
In terms of how the GPO should position itself in order to
better serve the public, I guess I want to step back and say
one thing: The primary commercial publishers of U.S. law are
not United States companies. So if it were possible for a
revision of Title 44 to include both digital access to the
primary laws of this country, which is pretty much my
motivation for being involved here today, that could open up,
at a minimum, opportunities for questions for researchers that
people in my home institution are hungry to pursue, but also--I
was sure it was going to be my fault--but to offer bulk access
to the primary laws of this country in a digital form could
also change the commercial industry. We have many startups in
my part of the country that are trying to innovatively create
broader access to legal research materials, and that would be a
fantastic outcome to broaching the problems of managing digital
information.
I am not sure if that answers your question, but I guess I
would say we are always worried about what the formats are, how
accessible they are, and how freely accessible they are. So----
Ms. Lofgren. Well, it does--and it leads to the next
question, which I raised to the prior witness, about standards
that are incorporated by reference into law that are then
locked off because of copyright assertion to the public, which
to me, is a huge due process issue, I mean, if you are required
to comply with a provision of law that you can't learn about.
Ms. Williams. I couldn't agree more. The publicresource.org
case that is pending before the D.C. Circuit is an incredibly
important one, and I think one that most members of the public
are not woke to. They don't realize that if private companies
claim some ownership over the laws that bind our citizens, that
could have incredibly personal negative implications.
Ms. Lofgren. Well, and just a final question. I also come
from Silicon Valley, and I am proud, I am a Stanford grad, and
glad to see somebody from home here on the panel. Silicon
Valley is the hotbed of innovation. It seems to me that access
to the raw information must be made available to the public.
But there is tons of room to innovate in the private sector on
manipulating, understanding, using, slicing and dicing, that
information that would still be a profit center for people who
wanted to do that.
Ms. Williams. There is no doubt that even something as
currently interesting as data analytics, as a threshold
matters, these companies need to get access to the data first,
and right now, there are too many impediments.
Ms. Lofgren. My time is up, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Lofgren. The gentlelady yields
back.
The Chair will now recognize Mr. Davis, Vice Chairman of
the Committee, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Davis. Well, thank you. The Chairman and I were
discussing moot court competitions in Mississippi for lawyers.
I did not know if that was a requirement down there or not, but
it seems like you have had a few exciting weeks and exciting
few weeks in front of you too, so congratulations.
My questions are actually for Ms. McDonald. What type of
baked goods do you usually bring?
Ms. McDonald. I have actually had to get some variety in
there. Originally, it was pumpkin bread pudding with rum raisin
caramel sauce. People do the heavy lifting when I bring that
in. And then black bottom brownies with chocolate chip
cheesecake on top, and most recently a chiffon cake with
whipped cream and berries.
Mr. Davis. I am going ask the Chairman to have you back
next week. Those are gourmet baked goods, yes.
Ms. McDonald. I have to bring the good stuff because these
are difficult projects.
Mr. Davis. Well, that is great. Hey, maybe that will work
with us too, we will bring those down to our next retreat.
Ms. McDonald, you were an FDLP librarian at a regional
depository when the decision was made to relinquish regional
status and instead become a selective depository. Why was that
decision made?
Ms. McDonald. For several reasons. I would say the biggest
overarching one was space concerns. The collection occupied the
majority of what was the third floor. It was actually kind of
the ground floor. And on a lot of college campuses, the
administrations are looking into the libraries; they want to
transform those spaces to more user spaces, to computer labs,
to high-tech spaces like makerspaces where you have got 3-D
printing that can help students with their research and their
group projects. So they really wanted to see a way to repurpose
that space.
And at the same time for the libraries, the big issue was
that we had a lot of stuff that was duplicated electronically
as well as there. And it was very, very hard for us to justify
using that space when there was another regional in the State
that would happily hold onto all of that, but we are not
required to get rid of too many things. And in fact, I reached
out to my colleagues there and they have only gotten rid of a
bit of it. The stuff that they have gotten rid of was actually
degradating, it was microfiche, and so it was going to be
rendered unusable anyway. But they have also been able to
repurpose that space.
And for me, I signed up for it because, after my research,
I was able to ascertain that I could continue to provide access
to that content. And that for me is the bottom line. I don't
really--if somebody comes in and asks me a question, I don't
care where they are from, all I care about is getting them the
right information at the right time. And when I was able to see
that I could continue to provide access to that content we had
on our shelves, even if we were selective, then that is kind of
when I said yes, that we should move forward with that.
Mr. Davis. Was that process to move from a regional to a
selective library an easy process?
Ms. McDonald. No. It took about, I would say--it took 2
years overall. But overall, the big part of it was the
beginning part of it. I had to send out a letter, kind of a
warning, saying, hey, we are looking at relinquishing regional
status. And I sent that to all stakeholders, legislators, the
university campus, so that people could send us feedback and
their opinions. So that this was kind of the time for them to
say, no, we don't want this.
We also used that time to talk with GPO, other selectives
in the library, the other regional to make sure that they were
okay with us relinquishing regional status.
And then after that first letter was sent out, 6 months
later, we sent out our second letter saying, okay, we talked
with everybody, now we are relinquishing regional status and
this is the effective date.
Mr. Davis. Do you think you will maybe go through that
process with the University of Maryland?
Ms. McDonald. I don't know.
Mr. Davis. And how do you--why not?
Ms. McDonald. Well, for one thing, it is a much trickier
situation. We have three areas. We have got D.C., we have got
Delaware, we have got Maryland. And if we relinquish regional
status, then all of the libraries that are not Federal agency
libraries will have to retain everything that is in their
collection. They will not be able to discard their materials.
The Federal agencies have different rules, so they would be
able to discard materials through the Library of Congress or
through NARA, but everybody else is not a Federal agency. They
would be stuck with all of their materials.
Additionally, I think as close as we are to D.C., I have
worked a great deal, get more and more with NARA and the
Library of Congress where they have to refer questions our way.
I am finding out that our collections complement each other,
that each group kind of has different types of materials that
are accessible.
Mr. Davis. So kind of regional centers of excellence then?
Do you have--if their collections complement each other, so is
there discussion on you get these types of materials here?
Because obviously, there is a problem holding onto collections
in perpetuity, correct?
Ms. McDonald. Right.
Mr. Davis. So are you communicating with other regionals
and other FDLPs and other selectives to basically say how do we
maximize our space to be able to have access to those
collections and therefore we can interchange?
Ms. McDonald. Yes, I am. Sorry, too loud. I have got a very
loud voice.
Mr. Davis. It is okay, pumpkin, spice, bread pudding.
Ms. McDonald. I will bring that next time.
I am talking with them. I am hoping that--I have been
exploring it more recently. I have visited some Federal
agencies actually where one agency is collecting a title and
they are actually paying for it to be bound. As a regional, I
am getting it bound for free. And for the purposes of my
institution, we don't actually need those bound copies. We are
keeping the historical ones, but those more recent ones we have
no real use for. We have them in a variety of other formats.
My question right now is, though, I am not sure that I can
work out a shared agreement with them, because technically,
they are across a State line. So I am not sure if I am allowed
to actually go into that.
Mr. Davis. Sounds like healthcare.
Ms. McDonald. Because right now, the barriers that we have
right now is you can't send it across the State line. So it
would be lovely if I could do that. I could save the Fed some
money, save myself some space. That is a win-win situation.
Mr. Davis. I know you are out of time and I am out of time,
but I am happy to work with you to address those State line
issues. Thank you.
Ms. McDonald. Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair will now recognize Mr. Raskin for 5 minutes for
the purpose of questions.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And hello to
all the witnesses, and thank you for your excellent testimony.
A special welcome to you, Ms. McDonald, from my home State.
And I actually wanted to ask a question of you or actually
anybody else who wants to take a shot at it. There are--I know
that there are commercial services that sell government
publications and centralize them. And I am wondering, do your
libraries use these services? Why do you use them if you do?
Does that make it easier for library patrons to access the
documents? And are the contents generally not part of the FDLP
collection?
So I am curious about your relationship with these
commercial services. I don't know if, Ms. Williams or Ms.
McDonald, you want to start.
Ms. McDonald. I actually live in your district too.
Mr. Raskin. All the better. And I have got a sweet tooth
myself.
Ms. McDonald. I would say that, yes, we do use those
commercial products. They are very valuable and very, very
helpful. A lot of times there is content overlap. We are
getting materials that GPO or the Feds have put out. However,
our users find them easier to use, to navigate those resources
in there.
In particular, we used to have Westlaw at the University of
Maryland. And law librarians and law students love Westlaw. I
find for Maryland actually, though, that is kind of posing a
problem for us, because we are having--although we have got a
flat budget due to serial inflation across all disciplines,
having a flat budget is a little bit like getting a cut budget.
And so a couple of years ago, we actually had to cut
Westlaw from our collections. We had content overlap from
another database, and so we had to use that. But it was a very
unpopular decision. I wish somebody had brought me some bread
pudding that day. But we use a lot of different resources.
There is a lot of--I actually contacted my colleague at
Maryland, and at least 11 percent of our collection, of our
database prices go to these supplementary subscription
services.
Mr. Raskin. But just back on that Westlaw point, does that
mean that the----
Ms. McDonald. That is all of them. That covers several
providers. I chose our top five.
Mr. Raskin. Does that mean that the law professors and law
students at the University of Maryland Law School are not able
to use Westlaw, or do they have a separate----
Ms. McDonald. They actually are separate because they are
from Baltimore. Those students can go in and use all the
resources up there.
Mr. Raskin. I got you. So it is different for the law
school. But generally, Westlaw is not available to people who
patronize the----
Ms. McDonald. I miss it. It was a lot easier to help people
before.
Mr. Raskin. Yeah. And you were able to save how much money
by eliminating those services?
Ms. McDonald. I think that was over $50,000, but I can't
remember the exact number. I can get it.
Mr. Raskin. Yeah. Okay.
And Ms. Williams now.
Ms. Williams. I will just add that most academic libraries
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to buy public
domain materials from a variety of commercial vendors. Some of
those vendors restrict access so that only the contractor--
incredibly limited--only full-time faculty staff and students
of the law school, for example, have access under the Westlaw
and Lexis contracts that we signed. They are unbelievably rigid
about those terms. They will not open up the packages to other
entities and even a university community without considerable
cost.
But we also buy other forms of commercial access to public
domain content because they have metadata that is incredibly
important for us. They are provided in a digital format that is
not otherwise available. Digitized hearings for instance, spend
huge amounts of money to be able to have access to that kind of
material because it is a more robust search that makes
discovery a whole lot more possible.
Does that answer your question?
Mr. Raskin. Yeah, absolutely.
That is all I had, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair will now recognize the gentleman from Georgia,
Mr. Loudermilk, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Loudermilk. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was not sure after this weekend if the gentleman from
Mississippi would recognize the gentleman from Georgia, but I
am glad that----
The Chairman. Thank you for thinking that, Mr. Loudermilk.
Mr. Loudermilk. But thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
this hearing.
Mr. Furlough, I understand that HathiTrust is creating a
registry of U.S. documents. Is that true?
Mr. Furlough. Yes, sir, that is true.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. How does your registry differ from
the catalog of government publications that the Superintendent
of Documents has required?
Mr. Furlough. Thank you for the question. The registry of
Federal publications that HathiTrust is developing is somewhat
broader, and it is intended to not only identify Federal
publications that exist, but also for us to be able to identify
materials that are held in libraries so that then we can
identify them for digitization as well.
The way we have proceeded to create that registry is to
collect a significant number, really over 25 million catalog
records from libraries of items that they have identified as
Federal documents. We then analyze those records and have
reduced them down to identify what we believe to be not a
complete set, but a much reduced size registry.
I think librarians and GPO would recognize that the catalog
government publications is not complete. Materials that were
published prior to 1976 often were not cataloged. There really
isn't a single location to go to identify every publication
that was produced at Federal expense. So we have undertaken
this project both to help us digitize materials, but also to
help our member libraries and the public really understand what
is the corpus of Federal documents and to do so a little bit
more broadly than I think what is covered in Title 44.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. So do you perceive that HathiTrust,
your project, would be--would meet the criteria of what the
Superintendent of Documents is required to----
Mr. Furlough. I don't believe I could answer that question
without consulting those criteria.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. Is it something you are willing to
share with the Federal Government?
Mr. Furlough. I am sorry?
Mr. Loudermilk. Is your project something you are willing
to share with the Federal Government?
Mr. Furlough. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely yes. And it is
available right now for anyone to search. As I said earlier, I
want to understand what are the requirements and obligations of
GPO for gift authority at that time.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. Thank you. No further questions.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
Again, we would like to thank each one of you for being
here. You know, this is in-the-weeds information. Very, very
helpful to us as we go forward, particularly looking at how to
modernize Title 44. So this is essential and you each helped us
a great deal.
So without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative
days to submit to the Chair additional written questions for
the witnesses, which we will forward and ask the witnesses to
respond as promptly as you can so that those answers may be
made a part of the record.
I would also like to ask for unanimous consent that the
record be left open for 10 additional business days to allow
members of the public to submit written questions on this
issue.
Without objection, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:41 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
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