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INFORMATION POLICY edited by Robert E. Dugan and Peter Hernon Changing Lanes on the Government Information Highway by Joan F. Cheverie and Judith F. Trump L ibrarians have good reason to be excited and at the same time wary of the increased emphasis on dissemi- nation of government information in electronic format. Lack of copyright restrictions has allowed government informa- tion to be widely repackaged and disseminated in multiple for- mats from multiple sources and in multiple pricing structures. Now the transition from paper and microformat documents in favor of electronic products brought about in large part by the National Performance Review (NPR) and the emerging National Information Infrastructure (NIT), may be placing financial and technological obstacles in the way of accessing government information, and questions concerning the authen- ticating and archiving of electronic information have yet to be fully answered. Libraries will need to be proactive rather than reactive in meeting the challenge of providing for the informa- tion needs of their patrons in this increasingly electronic envi- ronment. This column discusses two information products affected by the decision to “go electronic” that illustrate the implications for both users and libraries. The issues raised by these two information products are not unique, but are representative of the challenges facing the information world today in the midst of the transition from a traditional to an electronic environment. In this shifting environment, there is no assurance of wide dis- semination of government information, nor is there any cer- tainty of free, open, and long-term access to this information. Libraries need to play an integral part in national information policy issues and will need to rethink their plans for access to and archival preservation of electronic government informa- tion. FBIS TRANSFORMSINTO WNC The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), a divi- sion of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has been pro- ducing Daily Reports since the early 1940s. These consist of full-text translations of newspaper and magazine articles, radio and television broadcasts, wire service reports and speeches from eight regions of the world: China, East Asia, Near East and South Asia, West Europe, East Europe, Central Eurasia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The reports are widely Joan F: Cheverie is the Department Head, Government Documents and Microforms, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Box 571174, Washington, D.C. 20057-I 174. ]udith E Trump is a member of the Government Documents and Microforms Department staff. 378 The Journal of Academic Librarianship used by university faculty and students in the course of their research, government analysts, and businesses tracking the commercial development climate abroad. Until recently, Federal depository libraries had the option of selecting a microfiche format of the Daily Reports, although many libraries found it necessary to purchase a commercially produced index to make the information easily accessible to their users because the microfiche provided no index to the material. The print format of this series has been available only by subscription from the National Technical Information Ser- vice (NTIS), and despite the hefty subscription rates’some libraries purchased subscriptions to facilitate faster access (usu- ally five to seven days after publication here in the Washington, D.C. area as opposed to months for the microfiche) and to enhance browsing capabilities for their users. Since late 1995, information from FBIS and the Joint Publi- cations Research Service (JPRS) translations (also a CIA prod- uct) has been made available on the World Wide Web through World News Connection, a new fee-based subscription service from NTIS. Although most of the content of FBIS is available through WNC, some publications included in the Daily Reports are not because of continuing negotiations with publishers. WNC plans to provide two years’ content on a rolling basis online, and although there has been some discussion of making archival material available for purchase either on CD-ROM (requiring yet another technology for access) or by creating a separate database, as of this writing, a final decision has not been made. ’ Subscribers to FBIS Daily Reports were recently notified that production of both the paper and microfiche format will cease by the end of September 1996, three months earlier than previously announced, leaving no option for access other than to subscribe to World News Connection.3A WNC offers three search options to suit user preferences: free text, region/topic, and a more traditional structured boolean search. Subscribers can use any of these search options to create customized “profiles” of their information interests. The same search is then performed every “government business day” and the results are sent to the subscriber’s Internet e-mail address. Those searching for a specific event or topic will do better with the boolean search options, but browsing can be accommodated in the region/topic search by choosing a region, leaving the “topics” empty and limiting by the desired dates. This would somewhat accommodate the user accustomed to browsing sev- eral months of issues at one sitting, not at all an uncommon occurrence. The WNC Latest Headlines option retrieves the previous day’s articles for each region.

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Page 1: Changing lanes on the government information highway

INFORMATION POLICY edited by Robert E. Dugan and Peter Hernon

Changing Lanes on the Government Information Highway by Joan F. Cheverie and Judith F. Trump

L ibrarians have good reason to be excited and at the same time wary of the increased emphasis on dissemi- nation of government information in electronic format.

Lack of copyright restrictions has allowed government informa- tion to be widely repackaged and disseminated in multiple for- mats from multiple sources and in multiple pricing structures. Now the transition from paper and microformat documents in favor of electronic products brought about in large part by the National Performance Review (NPR) and the emerging National Information Infrastructure (NIT), may be placing financial and technological obstacles in the way of accessing government information, and questions concerning the authen- ticating and archiving of electronic information have yet to be fully answered. Libraries will need to be proactive rather than reactive in meeting the challenge of providing for the informa- tion needs of their patrons in this increasingly electronic envi- ronment.

This column discusses two information products affected by the decision to “go electronic” that illustrate the implications for both users and libraries. The issues raised by these two information products are not unique, but are representative of the challenges facing the information world today in the midst of the transition from a traditional to an electronic environment. In this shifting environment, there is no assurance of wide dis- semination of government information, nor is there any cer- tainty of free, open, and long-term access to this information. Libraries need to play an integral part in national information policy issues and will need to rethink their plans for access to and archival preservation of electronic government informa- tion.

FBIS TRANSFORMSINTO WNC

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), a divi- sion of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has been pro- ducing Daily Reports since the early 1940s. These consist of full-text translations of newspaper and magazine articles, radio and television broadcasts, wire service reports and speeches from eight regions of the world: China, East Asia, Near East and South Asia, West Europe, East Europe, Central Eurasia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The reports are widely

Joan F: Cheverie is the Department Head, Government Documents

and Microforms, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Box

571174, Washington, D.C. 20057-I 174. ]udith E Trump is a

member of the Government Documents and Microforms

Department staff.

378 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

used by university faculty and students in the course of their research, government analysts, and businesses tracking the commercial development climate abroad.

Until recently, Federal depository libraries had the option of selecting a microfiche format of the Daily Reports, although many libraries found it necessary to purchase a commercially produced index to make the information easily accessible to their users because the microfiche provided no index to the material. The print format of this series has been available only by subscription from the National Technical Information Ser- vice (NTIS), and despite the hefty subscription rates’some libraries purchased subscriptions to facilitate faster access (usu- ally five to seven days after publication here in the Washington, D.C. area as opposed to months for the microfiche) and to enhance browsing capabilities for their users.

Since late 1995, information from FBIS and the Joint Publi- cations Research Service (JPRS) translations (also a CIA prod- uct) has been made available on the World Wide Web through World News Connection, a new fee-based subscription service from NTIS. Although most of the content of FBIS is available through WNC, some publications included in the Daily Reports

are not because of continuing negotiations with publishers. WNC plans to provide two years’ content on a rolling basis online, and although there has been some discussion of making archival material available for purchase either on CD-ROM (requiring yet another technology for access) or by creating a separate database, as of this writing, a final decision has not been made. ’

Subscribers to FBIS Daily Reports were recently notified that production of both the paper and microfiche format will cease by the end of September 1996, three months earlier than previously announced, leaving no option for access other than to subscribe to World News Connection.3A

WNC offers three search options to suit user preferences: free text, region/topic, and a more traditional structured boolean search. Subscribers can use any of these search options to create customized “profiles” of their information interests. The same search is then performed every “government business day” and the results are sent to the subscriber’s Internet e-mail address. Those searching for a specific event or topic will do better with the boolean search options, but browsing can be accommodated in the region/topic search by choosing a region, leaving the “topics” empty and limiting by the desired dates. This would somewhat accommodate the user accustomed to browsing sev- eral months of issues at one sitting, not at all an uncommon occurrence. The WNC Latest Headlines option retrieves the previous day’s articles for each region.

Page 2: Changing lanes on the government information highway

However, there are still some snags to be smoothed out. On one recent day no documents could be retrieved from any of the eight regions using the WNC Latest Headlines option, (although they did reappear the following day), and even though the date limitation boxes are labeled “date after” and “date before” on the search screens, searches often retrieve arti- cles inclusive of the dates entered. This could be confusing to the user.

If networked access is unavailable, libraries that are heavy users of the Daily Reports will likely have to resort to sign-up sheets limiting use of WNC to a specified time period. Faced with the limited time available, the user will need to make deci- sions quickly about what to read, print, or download.

While online access to this electronic resource is not cheap (subscription prices range from $21 for seven days of unlimited searching to $100 per month for unlimited searching plus five “profiles”), the price of a one-year subscription to the paper version would buy the equivalent of seven subscriptions to WNC (at $50 per month for unlimited searching with no pro- files). This assumes, of course, that the library has the resources to provide the hardware, browser software, Internet access, and the staff or personal expertise needed to make WNC an efficient tool for patron use.

Online full-text reports offer the advantage of bringing this resource directly to the user’s desktop without the intermediate stops to first search an index and then gather the specific issues. Users scrolling through sets of articles retrieved from a search either click on the title to bring up individual articles or mark the titles for retrieval as a set. Use of the profiles as a current awareness tool is also time efficient since the results of the pro- file searches are delivered directly to the user’s Internet e-mail account.

STAT-USA/Internet STAT-USA/Internet, an electronic fee-based service of the

Department of Commerce, provides business and economic information to businesses and the general public. STAT-USA databases include the National Trade Data Bank (NTDB), one of the most widely selected CD-ROM titles in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), the Economic Bulletin Board, a comprehensive source for government sponsored eco- nomic releases and business leads; GLOBUS (Global Business Procurement Opportunities); and Bureau of Economic Analy- sis economic information, including news releases, Suwey of Current Business articles and detailed data files.

One of the most welcome benefits of the Internet product is the full-text search feature, which is far easier to use (and to teach to novice users) than the complicated search mechanism found on the NTDB CD-ROM product. Still, it behooves the user to read the HELP files before starting a search. Users assuming that they will find the entire contents of the NTDB CD-ROM will be disappointed to find that trade data are the only matrix data available and no time-series have been posted on the Internet site. Only the information from the most current version of each product is maintained on the Web site, and doc- uments dropped from one issue to another will be lost unless libraries make other archival arrangements.

One of the most critical issues libraries must contend with is this lack of access to data removed from online databases. While most text and data documents from the (now discontin- ued) National Economic, Social, and Environmental Data Bank (NESE) are still available electronically from STAT-USAhter- net, it was disconcerting to discover the following entry on the

list of files currently available from the STAT-USA/Znternet site: “Note that NESE on CD-ROM was discontinued effective with the August 1995 issue and this portion of the Internet site will gradually fade away.“5

STAT-USA/Internet does have the advantage of daily updates which allows for faster access to data. There is a wealth of information brought together in one resource tool, and again as with WNC, it is available at the user’s desktop.

IMPLICATIONS FOR REDEFINED ACCESS

These two resources, however, do serve to illustrate the implications of limiting access to government information. In a sense, World News Connection and STAT-USA/Internet repre- sent a microcosm of two larger issues: (1) a changing national information policy particularly in light of the NII and the NPR; and (2) how this dynamic policy affects “local” policy and deci- sions.

NATIONAL INFORMATION POLICY ISSUES

“Libraries both affect and are affected by information poli- cies developed at the national and local levels. Information pol- icies, in turn, affect the degree to which people have access to the ex tion.” B

anding universe of traditional and electronic informa- McClure goes on to say, “Librarians cannot afford to

ignore information policy developments as such changes affect how libraries evolve, the services that libraries provide, and the resources available for national services, and a range of other issues.“7 In short, there is a synergistic relationship between libraries and federal information policy.

Today there are increasing pressures to reinvent government (in other words to downsize and to economize) so that the fed- eral bureaucracy operates more efficiently and effectively. There is also a parallel incentive for agencies to participate in the emerging NII.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular No. A- 130 delineates how agencies are to manage their information and, in turn, how to make this information available to the pub- lic. The Circular encourages the use of electronic information dissemination products as appropriate. Electronic dissemina- tion of information is a timely, cost-saving alternative for an agency to distribute its publications.

STAT-USA and NTIS are each mandated to be self-funding agencies, both within the Department of Commerce, and as such need to recover dissemination and development costs by charging fees for the use of their information products. The Government Printing Office (GPO) has worked hard with STAT-USA to provide single-user, no fee access to the STAT- USAhternet service. Although this arrangement does facilitate free access to this important information resource, it does raise two questions: (1) will the products that appear on Stat-USA/ Internet eventually only be available electronically thereby hin- dering access to users who are (either individually or institu- tionally) not connected to the Net?; and (2) in the networked environment, which has the potential of broadening access to information without regard to geographic boundaries, is it fea- sible to require the user to be physically tied to the library?

These two questions apply equally to WNC, except that we already know the answer to the first question-the product will only be available electronically. Tangential to this is the issue facing NTIS of possible copyright restrictions on these com- piled news service materials. Thus, two outcomes are possible: copyright permission will need to be obtained with the result that the subscription fees could soar; or the product will be dras-

September 1996 379

Page 3: Changing lanes on the government information highway

tically streamlined and could be eliminated entirely. Access to these sometimes hard-to-obtain and ephemeral news sources would then be further restricted.

The library and the user are caught in the middle of the fed- eral policy dilemma concerning the economics of information dissemination. The seeming trend toward cost recovery opera- tions is both a contentious and a complicated issue. Although discussions will continue at the national information policy level, the reality for the user is that access to government infor- mation is being redefined and could potentially be hindered unless libraries, which have facilitated the free flow of informa- tion, face up to this challenge of redefined access.

LOCAL ISSUES

Libraries have always served as that bridge between users and the information they seek. With respect to government information, libraries have also been the “safety net” for ensured citizen access to the public information-the very foundation of a democratic society.

Libraries purchase information resources annually to sup- port their educational, research, or civic missions of meeting the information needs of their clientele. This is not a new phe- nomenon. The acquisition of materials is an ongoing process and a planned part of the institution’s budget. In fact, many libraries already expend part of their materials budget to sup- port access to and availability of federal information. The Con- gressional Information Service (CIS) and Readex are just two of the commercial publishers that offer value-added products that provide enhanced access to government information. Libraries whose clientele need access to the FBIS reports in a more expeditious manner than the microfiche distributed by GPO have purchased these printed reports from NTIS. There- fore, even the highest cost individual subscription from WNC would be a cost saving for those same institutions.

Although not a new issue, it is the notion of cost-shifting that rankles information providers. Why pay for access to otherwise free information? However, government information provided through the FDLP has never been free, as pointed out in the arti- cle, “Costing Out a Depository: What Free Information?“8 A significant portion of the library’s budget goes to support a gov- ernment information collection and it will, no doubt, continue to do so in the networked environment.

STAT-USA/Internet and WNC subscriptions are available either for free or for a relatively low cost for single user access. It will be local user needs, however, that will drive institutions to re-examine their collection policies in this era of redefined access. In fact, library use has always determined what services an institution offers its clientele. If need warrants, institutions will find a way to network these two products. The technology already exists to network sources; the costs to make this a real- ity will need to be budgeted. Libraries need to adjust to this cost-shifting reality and plan for it in order to remain key access points for government information. A different strategy to find that balance between a library’s responsibility to its clientele and its tight budget would be to explore consortia1 relation- ships. To provide broad access to these resources, partners could pool funds to mount the products. Successful library con- sortia have existed for a number of years, so it seems logical to extend the model to embrace government information products. As Sulzer notes, “[Llibraries must be organized in such a way that they can individually meet new public needs locally and

yet function as part of a national network, or ‘virtual depository program.’ “9

OTHER IMPLICATIONS

STAT- USA/Internet and WNC present two other vexing prob- lems as electronic tools-usability and preservation. These issues extend to other electronic information products as well.

For many users, a component of the search and discovery process is browsing. Who has not been looking through a resource or browsing library shelves and serendipitously stum- bled upon some piece of relevant information that might not otherwise have been found? WNC offers only diminished possi- bilities in this respect due to the awkward means of retrieval of older material. This is particularly unfortunate because of its preponderance of narrative prose material. Networked informa- tion discovery and retrieval (NIDR) systems are not yet sophis- ticated enough to support adequately browsing and this inhibits the product’s usability.

STAT-USA/Internet is a compilation of the most recent offer- ings of other STAT-USA products. As such, it represents a snap- shot of each. However, some of the most valuable statistical information is not available on this Internet site. As previously noted, there is no time-series data and only limited matrix data for trade statistics. Although downloading and data extraction are possible, there seems little point since the very data that the user would most want to manipulate are unavailable.

A more serious issue is that of archival preservation. NTIS says that WNC will have a rolling two year file of information available. It is unclear what will happen to older material. STAT-USA advises purchasing subscriptions to its CD-ROM equivalents because older reports will not be provided through the Internet service. It should be noted here that some products on STAT-USA/Internet are unique and do not exist in other for- mats. This problem will be further exacerbated if the printed or CD-ROM equivalents are discontinued ala NESE. What would be the implications for users trying to do statistical analyses and regressions?

In the enthusiasm and accelerated efforts to go online, many valuable resources are already being lost for research and con- sultation. It is uncertain what steps the government is taking to preserve this information. Federal information policy regarding preservation of electronic information is increasingly challeng- ing and complex. Will libraries step into this archival chasm to again provide the “safety net” for ensured access to our nation’s resources, or is a “transient” collection acceptable? Will the commercial sector repackage this information and sell it back to libraries? These are yet more cost-shifting examples with far- reaching implications for institutions.

At the close of the 20th century, STAT-USA/Internet and World News Connection are two products that represent the uncertainty of present day federal information policy. There is a critical need for libraries to develop a new collection paradigm that addresses this reality of redefined access to government information.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. 1995 subscription cost for all eight regional reports was $4,575. 2. George Ralis, “FBIS Daily Reports/Word News Connection” (1996, May 30) Government Document Issues Discussion List. Online. Available at: [email protected]. 3. Ibid. 4. Depository libraries were recently notified (in a message from GPO disseminated through the GOVDOC-L Discussion List) that FBIS has

380 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

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informed the Library Program Service of GPO of its intention to provide a CD-ROM version of the FBIS Daily Reports (replacing the microfiche product) through the depository system. The print version will still be discontinued. 5. “Internet Coverage; What’s on the Internet vis-a-vis Other STAT- USA Products?,” Online. Available at H’ITP://netsite.esa.doc.gov/ statinfo/2666,html. 6. Charles R. McClure, “Libraries and Federal Information Policy,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 22 (May 1996): 214. 7. Ibid. 8. Robert E. Dugan & Ellen M. Dodsworth, “Costing Out a Depository Library: What Free Government Information?,” Government Znformation Quarterly 11 (July 1994): 261-284. 9. Jack Sulzer, “U.S. Depository Librarians in Reality and Myth: A Framework for a Future Government Information Program” Journal of Government Information 23 (May 1996): 3 11.

September 1996 381