Passing the Buck on Electronic Content Stewardship
In the middle of a very nice summary of the state of university library services in Iowa, the Library Journal notes that the the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), which sponsors the Federal Depository Library Program, is pushing a curious concept. Faced with the prospect of 95 percent of government documents going electronic, the GPO is suggesting that the regional depository libraries should be dealing with the issues of managing the permanent storage of electronic content via an unfunded mandate. Moreover, they are suggesting that commercial distributors may be appropriate for "value added" content distribution. While markets such as finance have benefitted greatly from commercial parties distributing government information such as Securities and Exchange Commission filings, free access in these instances to full permanent archives is provided as a fully funded mandate. There's no rational reason that the government should not maintain one well-managed permanent electronic repository - but whoever said that politics were rational?