GoPIG Minutes
Colorado State University Library, Pueblo
Sept. 24, 2004
In attendance: Susan Xue (CU), Sharon Johnson (USAFA), Jeanne Entze (USAFA),
Sharon Partridge (JCPL), Louise Treff-Gangler (Auraria), Chris Brown (DU), Dan
Sullivan (CSU-Pueblo), McKinley Sielaff (CC), Judith Rice-Jones (UCCS), Doug
Ernest (CSU), and Tim Byrne (CU-Chair) 2.
Announcements: Auraria is offering its extensive collection of NTIS
microfiche from the 1970s that they got from the RTD library. CU has hired
Jenny Gerke from Indiana University to be the Electronic Government Information
Librarian. CC hired a new government documents coordinator from Berkeley.
1.
We had a tour of the CSU-Pueblo Library, which is an unusual library
in layout because it is in a vertical building that houses a lot more than just
the library. This means that the documents collection and the documents staff
office area are not close. The other unusual feature is that the microfiche,
bound periodicals and current periodicals are all shelved together. Their
students are used to it and they don't have to notice the format of their piece.
Dan expressed his gratitude to CSU for the donations that have helped the
library budget. We got to see Dan's very clean office but we decided since he
was new, it could be excused. They are doing a massive
weeding of the topo maps.
3.
There was no GoPIG meeting in August as some of us attended the Five
State Government Documents Conference in Santa Fe. The July minutes were
approved.
4.
Next meeting place and date
Oct. 22 - Meeting during CAL/MPLA conference (It is not on the CAL agenda
and you don't have to be a member to come.)
Nov. 19 - UNC Greeley
Jan. 7 - Broomfield
Feb. 11 - DU
March 25 - Auraria
Apr. 22 - JCPL
May/June or July - CSU
5.
Five State Government Documents Conference Report: We had brief
reports on the highlights of the 5-state conference. Judy Russell was there but
didn't have a lot of new information. She did attend many of the programs and
gathered lots of comments and opinions. The quality of the
programs was good and it was nice to see how other states do things.
There
were participants from more than the five states. Four of the presentations
were by people from GoPIG and, except for Tim's beginning documents librarians'
program, were repeats of presentations done at our meetings.
Tim pointed out that Leanne Walther's program on "gum-shoe librarians" was
one of the most highly rated ones of the whole conference.
The
presentation on the National Trails System was also very good and was done by
Park Service staff rather than librarians. They said nice things about
librarians.
Tim told us that he has agreed to make Colorado the host state for the next
conference in 2006. We talked about possible sites and some of the comments
included that Auraria might be a good site but the nearby hotels were expensive.
Judy was a proponent of Golden because it is near the Federal
Center and would have more reasonable accommodations.
Sharon said that the
JCPL annual meeting of all the staff had been held at Green Hall on the Mines
campus for years and worked because it has a large room and several relatively
smaller ones. Colorado documents librarians who don't regularly
attend GoPIG will be expected to do presentations.
6. GPO Reorganization: GPO's reorganization leaves us without any Library
Program Service staff. Right now Larry Blevins is covering most of the work
that Robin Haun-Mohamed did. This lack of continuity and the choice of a new
hotel is the reason the FDLP conference is disorganized. The customer service
sections have merged and the sales personnel are generally lower level positions
the depository services personnel. Many of the former Depository Services staff
have moved to other parts of GPO. Tim is concerned that Bruce James may not be
committed to the FDLP providing service to depository libraries and may be
expecting the regionals to take on that role. GPO may see itself more as a
clearinghouse for projects done by the depositories.
7.
GPO Consultant Proposal: The proposal for consultants has gone
forward but with only 4 positions that are positive with two possible additions.
Colorado's proposal is number 5. The four consultants that are verified are
going to 1) NC, SC, and GA 2) CA 3)New England and 4) MI.
8.
CLA Report: The CAL conference doesn't have any depository programs
and little to appeal to academics. There seem to be far less programs than
in a normal year and this year includes all of the MPLA members.
We think
there may have been problems with the location having enough conference rooms to
allow more than a few concurrent programs. McKinley will be the chair of the
Gov Docs Interest Group next year.
9.
Item Deselection: Dan Sullivan described how CSU-Pueblo has been
informed by Marcive that their item selection has exceeded 3000 which will cause
a significant jump in heir Marcive subscription. To avoid the additional
charges, Dan is faced with deleting items from his Marcive profile. He was
interested in input from the group as to item numbers he could drop with the
least amount of impact. Even though GPO is distributing less in tangible format
the number of items continues to grow. This is because GPO will add a new title
to an existing item number and then spin it off into a new number. Libraries
selecting the initial item number are instructed to drop the new item number if
they do not wish to continue to receive it. Many libraries don't always catch
these notices. A helpful tool for item selection is Chris's "Item Selection
Tool for Colorado Area Selective Depository Libraries" at
<http://www.virtualref.com/colorado/>. It not only shows you what other
libraries are selecting (where it is
out-of-date) but it also links you to the records in MoCat that came out under
that item number. Some of the titles of the items are not very helpful, but
clicking on the link allows you to see what kind of stuff arrives and how much.
Since Dan is trying to cut his item selection, we offered some of our favorite
types of items such as posters, bibliographies and laws and regs.
10.
Tim showed us some of the new pay subscriptions available at CU.
The World Bank e-Library includes all of the publications and the policy
research working papers. If you are looking for a particular publication, CU
may be able to email it to you. The World Development Indicators and the Global
Development Finance, two statistical databases from the World Bank were also
demonstrated. United Nations Common Database, also new at CU, contains
statistics on merchandise trade, national accounts, demography and population,
energy, status of women and industrial commodities production.
Tim was enthusiastic about all of these but everyone asked for particulars about
the Congressional Research Service Reports database. It is produced by a
combination of Gallery Watch and Penny Hill Press. Tim said CU had been paying
$3,900 for the UPA microfiche of the CRS reports but the database is $2900 with
an introductory price of $2450. It included full-text for reports back to March
of 2001 and citations for reports back to 1995. It allows full-text searching
and has new reports within a few days of release.
We ran out of time before we could finish the agenda.
Dan took people on a tour of the GSA Federal Citizen Information Center, which
really turned out to be totally operated by GPO.
Respectfully submitted,
Sharon Partridge