GODORT Education Committee
Minutes

Arlene Weible, Chair
Michael Oppenheim, Recording
1996 Annual Conference Meeeting, New York City, NY
Sheraton New York, Liberty Suite 4
Sunday, July 7, 1996, 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Attending: Tricia Cruse, Sally Lawler, Kate Lee, Mary Mallory, Jan Oberla, Michael Oppenheim (Secretary), Betsy Richmond, Judy Solberg, Amy Spare, Wen-Hua Ren, Sandra Webber, Arlene Weible (Chair)

Arlene Weible called the meeting to order at 2:05. Attendees introduced themselves.

I. In part because the minutes of the 1996 Midwinter meeting in San Antonio have not yet been published in DOCUMENTS TO THE PEOPLE, approval of those minutes was postponed until the Midwinter meeting in Washington, D.C., in February 1997.

II. Liaison Reports

A. ALA Library Education Assembly

Liaison Mary Mallory reported on Saturday's ALA Library Education Assembly meeting. Topics raised there included credentialing of graduates of non-U.S. and Canadian library schools; a proposed ALA Education Committee program for 1997 Annual in San Francisco on trends in library schools; other ALA committees' interests in compiling recommended course syllabi for library schools (the Education Committee may wish to consider reviewing existing syllabi for government information courses, particularly with respect to their distance education potential); and ACRL's interest in preserving and more widely disseminating educational materials used at ALA Pre-Conferences and programs. Mary informed the Assembly attendees about the Education Committee's Handout Disk Exchange, the GODORT Pre-Conference, and Jack Sulzer's $2,000 gift to GODORT for distance educational projects (see also "New Business," below).

B. Federal Documents Task Force

Liaison Michael Oppenheim reported on the Federal Documents Task Force Sunday morning Work Groups/Business Meeting. Four Work Groups (Pathways Services focus group, led by Maggie Parhamovich; Title 44 Revision, led by Dan O'Mahony; Bibliographic Control, led by Steve Hayes; and Service Issues, led by Sherry Mosley) convened for one hour and 45 minutes, then presented their major points to all assembled. (The Title 44 Revision Work Group will address GODORT at the Business or Second Steering Meeting.) One very common concern raised was the need for GPO to establish and mainain "persistent uniform resource locators," or PURLs, for agency web sites/publications. Other FDTF business included the passage of motions to request GODORT letters of thanks for various efforts and other forms of support, to ACE (Americans Communicating Electronically); to Public Printer Michael DiMario and (1) Maggie Parhamovich and Raeann Dossett and (2) EIDS; and to ALA President Betty Turock.

C. International Documents Task Force

Liaison Kate Lee reported on the International Documents Task Force Saturday afternoon meeting. Spearheaded by Mercedes Sanchez, IDFT is eager to revitalize the International Agency Liaison Program, and an "InterDoc" listserv for international documents issues is also under development at Northwestern University by Mike McCaffrey-Noviss, who also expressed willingness to consider establishing an IDFT home page. GUIDE TO COUNTRY INFORMATION IN INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION PUBLICATIONS, edited by Marianne Shaaban, has just been published (two copies are on display at the CIS Booth). The new edition of GUIDE TO OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES still needs contributors to work on 76 countries; 100 have been completed thus far. Helen Sheehy, recently elected Secretary of IFLA's Government Information and Official Publications Section (GIOPS), reported in great depth and detail on the recent European Documentation Centers (EDC) meeting in Brussels. New products and services were described by Diane Smith (CIS), Peter Van Leeuwen (Readex), and Alex Briels (United Nations).

D. State and Local Documents Task Force

Liaison Sandra Webber reported on the State and Local Documents Task Force Saturday afternoon meeting. Topics discussed included the Center for Research Libraries' ongoing work in local documents' bibliography; progress being made in LC's ongoing digitization project (state documents per se are not being included, though certain relevant historical materials are); and the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign's ongoing librarians-and-students project to "replace" LC's defunct MONTHLY CHECKLIST OF STATE PUBLICATIONS with a single web site, including links to states' electronic sites. Some 20 states are already included; the URL is http://www.law.uiuc.edu/library/check.htm.

III. Old Business

A. Arlene reported for Larry Romans on the progress at this Conference, so far, of Handout Disk Exchange sales, which were "OK" at the Saturday morning Fed Docs GPO Update. (Thanks to on-site sales people Mary Mallory, Amy Spare, and Michael Oppenheim, and Brian Carpenter's poster and poster program.) Disks--now expanded to a set of two for $7.00--will be on sale again Monday morning, before the GODORT Program at the Waldorf-Astoria. In terms of the future, Larry will pursue the popular idea of having the GPO take over disk producton and dissemination (ideally, in shipment boxes). Larry, or some worthy successor, would continue to solicit and organize the contributions. GPO already very willingly distributed a preliminary version of the 1996 disk at last April's Federal Depository Conference in Washington. (Continued selling of the disks by GODORT, also, would by no means be precluded.) Notwithstanding the posting of the most recent two years' worth of the exchange materials on the University of Michigan's DOCUMENTS CENTER web site, the floppy disks themselves still appear to be in demand--and their availability needs to be made known beyond the documents community. Accordingly, information about the disks and the University of Michigan web site will be posted to such listservs as BI-L, BUSLIB-L, LIBREF-L, and others (attendees--primarily general reference librarians--of the Pre-Conference workshop DEMYSTIFING DOCUMENTS also each received a set of the 1996 disks).

B. Wrapping up Friday's sold-out Pre-Conference, DEMYSTIFYING DOCUMENTS: FINDING FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, Arlene officially thanked (again) everyone on or closely associated with the Committee who contributed their time and efforts. (The Javits Center employees who provided computer and AV assistance were also extremely attentive and helpful.) Evaluation forms were turned in by virtually every attendee; Arlene will compile the information contained therein into a report she will distribute to all Education Committee members and other concerned parties. Comments were predominantly highly positive, with many attendees urging the Committee to "Do the same thing again!" The subject-specific sessions (on business, the federal legislative process, and social/public policy issues) were especially well-liked; perhaps any similar future endeavors should also concentrate on specific topical areas (and include exercises, more of which were also requested). Arlene will also attmept to "codify" the many challenging procedural matters she encountered in organizing the Pre-Conference, for the benefit of future Pre-Conference planners. Additional thoughts for the future: (1) whether or not the Pre-Conference might be repeated in San Francisco at 1997 Annual, it could, and should, be "conceptually regionalized," using the original handouts/bibliographies as a springboard, and having area documents librarians as presenters (under the aegis of state or regional library or government documents associations, for example); (2) next time a library might make a better, more "user-friendly" Pre-Conference site; (3) consider presenting a "consciousness-expanding" program or workshop (re: government information creation and dissemination) for journalists and other media people, or community activists; (4) emulate some of the country-wide training activities the Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries Association regularly undertakes; and (5) hold another Pre-Conference to generate money to add to Jack Sulzer's $2,000 gift to GODORT for educational/training initiatives aimed at librarians.

IV. New Business

Following a short break (at 3:20), the meeting reconvened at 3:40 in Liberty Suite 3 with Government Information Technology Committee (GITCO) members and other interested parties for a joint brainstorming session, led by Arlene Weible and GITCO Chair John Shuler, to consider how best to use Jack Sulzer's $2,000 donation to GODORT of the stipend he received as this year's winner of the CIS/GODORT "Documents to the People" Award. The money is intended "to provide the seed capital to establish a GODORT government information transition education fund (GITEF) [as a line item in the GODORT budget]...to be used for the support of a project or projects to develop electronic and distance education resources" (as Jack wrote in an e-mail proposal to the ALA/GODORT Steering Committee, dated July 5, 1996, copies of which were distributed at this meeting). Jack was present to clarify statements made in his proposal. Following much spirited discussion of such issues as intended audience (all librarians, or documents librarians only), finding ways to generate "matching funds," and potential program content and objectives ("training the trainers" needs were much debated, and Jack explained his own hope for projects that would confront "higher level" issues involving administration and management of government information in the rapidly evolving new electronic world), this decision emerged: to develop a task force, composed of volunteers who signed up at this meeting, to hammer out proposals--geared to address both public AND technical services needs--to be presented, by Midwinter 1997, first to GITCO and the Education Committee, and then to bring to the GODORT Steering Committee. The Task Force will define its primary contacts within itself. The communication vehicle will be e-mail, and the Task Force will definitely solicit ideas widely (via GOVDOC-L, for example). Joint GITCO and Education Committee meetings will also continue.

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