Winter 1997

Issue no. 76

DANJ 1996 Fall Conference: Transition to Electronic Formats

The Documents Association of New Jersey (DANJ) held its annual conference at the State Library in Trenton on November 1, 1996. More than 40 people from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware attended the conference. Of those who attended, 27 were DANJ members, 25 were depository librarians, 11 worked in public libraries, and 27worked in academic libraries.

The keynote speaker was Mr. Daniel O'Mahony, Coordinator of Government Documents and Social Sciences at Brown University Library, and Chair of the Federal Depository Library Council, 1995-1996. Mr. O'Mahony's speech focused on the electronic transition of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). The updates he brought from the Depository Library Council Meeting at the Salt Lake City the week before included the following basic assumptions and trends for FDLP:

  • Depository libraries will continue to play an important role in providing no-fee public access to electronic government information;
  • While there will always be an important role for printed publications, federal government information will be increasingly disseminated in electronic formats only;
  • The decentralized nature of electronic information in its creation, production, dissemination, and preservation requires new roles for the program's current and new partners.

The transition to an Electronic FDLP, according to Mr. O'Mahony, will focus on services instead of products, and on long- term access instead of dissemination. The primary functions and activities of an Electronic FDLP will be bibliographic control, permanent public access, and centrally coordinated library services such as access, dissemination, standards, and training. The next Congress will bring substantive changes to Title 44. It is time now for libraries and librarians to show interest, provide input, and establish and maintain relationship with our local legislative representatives and staff to insure the public access to government information.

The second guest speaker, Mr. Peter Graham, Associate University Librarian of Rutgers University, addressed preservation of electronic documents, based on the sections he drafted for the white paper developed by the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). He noted the need for preserving electronic intellectual property, types of electronic information preservation, problems and potential solutions, and the roles of librarians. (For more information, see his draft at http://www.cni.org/docs/ima.ip-workshop/www/Graham.html.)

The afternoon featured two panel discussions consisting of speakers from academic, public, and special libraries. The first panel discussed the electronic transition and its impact on the public services in their libraries. The panel raised concerns and provided solutions regarding policies, training, public access, and other issues. The second panel was on topics of creating and maintaining Web homepages for government information. The speakers shared with the audience their ideas and experience regarding homepage design, including contents and arrangement, and time and energy investment.

Wen-Hua Ren, Dana Library, Rutgers University

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