Tue 1 Mar 2005
What we are learning is astounding. I never heard of “fugitive documents.” This refers to the more than 50% of tangible federal agency publications that are not sent to the Government Printing Office (GPO) and therefore do not get indexed and cataloged or sent to libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).
In addition, while reading the govdocs-l electronic list, I read that agencies publish documents on the Web and then may remove them or alter them. The pre-Web way was to have a complete paper trail. Now, our paper trail of what government is up to seems to be disappearing, never appearing, or can be easily altered without comment.
Background:
The GPO, acting under U.S. Code Title 44 and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, are charged with the right and responsibility of collecting, cataloging, printing, and distributing qualified federal agency publications. As American citizens, it is our right, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to have access to non-classified publications from federal executive agencies.
Relevant links:
FDLP Desktop: About the FDLP
1997 Administrative note, Fugitive Documents: Scope and Solutions
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
Federal Government Resources [Frame Enhanced] This is a very good starting point for accessing various types of government information.
March 2nd, 2005 at 8:33 am
Hi, Heather.
I finally got a chance to check out your blog. It occurred to me it might be a fun thing to use this as a class resource since we are not using blackboard. There are times I wish we could post comments and questions to get feed back from the other students.
This issue about government “web scrubbing” - deleting government e-documents is an important one. I first became aware of it while researching a paper on the National Information Inftrastructure, and learned much information was lost during the transition from the Clinton to the Bush Administration. (And this is in addition to the normal fugative documents that just never make it from agencies to the GPO.)
For another aspect of restricted public access to government information, check out Executive Order 13233:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2001_register&docid=fr05no01-104.pdf
This is a Bush EO which restricts access to Presidential and Vice Presidential papers.
This coupled with the replacement of the National Archivist, changes in GPO distribution, and the pulling of documents from Federal Libraries, and pulling reports from agency sites (eg. the Civil Rights Commission) show an alarming direction with regard to restricting public access to government information.
Rhonda
March 3rd, 2005 at 5:57 pm
Thank you, Rhonda, for the additional link and discussion on this issue.
On the issue of using this Weblog for library 221, the primary problem is that I would have to open discussions. If this were a forum product or a Wiki, others could open discussion items. Thank you for suggesting it. If someone wants to propose a discussion, I am happy to post it and open it for comments.