The budget bill, which was passed last week by the House appropriations subcommittee for energy and water development and was expected to be endorsed by the full appropriations committee, is likely have a chilling effect on other government-operated services, including the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central, according to some observers.

The proposal arose after a lobbying campaign aimed against PubScience, spearheaded by the Washington-based Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) on behalf of for-profit and non-profit member companies including Reed Elsevier, ISI, Chemical Abstracts Services and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. PubScience provides a service similar to products offered by the association's members, and "makes it increasingly difficult for these private-sector companies to continue offering their products". He says that government initiatives should confine themselves to providing access to government information, and not act as secondary publishers.

Source: Declan Butler, Nature, June 28, 2001. For a time, the article will be available at http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/ according to David Cornwall, Alaska State Library, via GovDoc-L, June 28, 2001.

The Chronicle of Higher Education is also covering the development.

"A Web site operated by the U.S. Energy Department that allows scientists to search journals for citations and abstracts in the physical sciences is in jeopardy because of a bill approved by the House of Representatives. The bill (H.R. 2311) is accompanied by a report that recommends eliminating the service. PubScience allows researchers to examine more than a thousand peer-reviewed journals free and at the same time, instead of searching multiple Web sites, publications, and references."

Source: "House of Representatives Seeks to Close Free Bibliographic Database", Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 2, 2001. For a time, the article will be available at http://www.chronicle.com/free/2001/07/2001070202t.htm according to Gary Price, the Virtual Acquisition Shelf and News Desk, July 2, 2001.

The fate of PubScience -- the U.S. Department of Energy's Web portal that allows scientists to search journal abstracts in the physical sciences -- looks brighter following Senate approval last month of a spending bill for the agency. The bill is accompanied by a report that does not recommend eliminating the service.

When FirstGov debuted last September as the one-stop shop for access to government services and information, 95 percent of all e-mail correspondence consisted of compliments and recommendations. Now, 70 percent of FirstGov's e-mails are queries that need to be routed to the appropriate agency and responded to, according to Deborah Diaz, deputy associate administrator of the Office of FirstGov, which is a part of the General Services Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy.

"Many citizens just don't know where to go for answers to their questions about the federal government," said Diaz."The number of feedback e-mails has diminished, while the number of queries looking for responses has increased."

Diaz said the flood of e-mails is a positive, if unforeseen, step in FirstGov's evolution. "This is a transformation of the citizens," she said. "People want more out of their government and want to use the Internet to make that happen."

FirstGov does not have the systems in place to handle the crush of e-mail. So the FirstGov team is looking for ways to route citizen e-mails to the correct agency. Diaz and her staff also want to ensure that agencies respond to the forwarded e-mails so that citizen questions are answered in a timely and appropriate manner.

• Federal agencies still resist obeying the letter of the law, especially the required response time of 20 working days (on one Archive request filed in 1990, the CIA took 9 years to deny 22 documents in full, and another 7 months to deny the appeal);
• Public use of the Freedom of Information Act continues to rise, with 1,965,919 FOIA requests filed with federal agencies in fiscal year 1999, the most recent data available from the Justice Department;
• Direct cost to the taxpayers for administering the FOIA amounted to $286,546,488 in fiscal year 1999, or about one dollar per citizen, according to the Justice Department data;
• Documents released under federal, state and local freedom of information acts sparked more than 3,000 news stories in 2000 and 2001 (according to the Archive's searches of on-line databases), exposing data of major public interest such as excessive mercury levels in canned tuna, enormous geographic variations in the prescription rates for Ritalin, a projected $4 billion cost overrun on NASA's space station, and the internal policy debate over intelligence sharing with Peru prior to the shootdown of an American missionary plane.

The documents are available at the following URL: http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB51.

The University of North Texas Libraries created the virtual cemetery in 1997 to house the Web pages of defunct agencies for use by researchers and public officials.

The university is the final resting place for such bygone organizations as the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, the first tenant to take up eternal residence in 1997.

At the Cybercemetery, visitors can browse the pages of the National Civil Aviation Review Commission, which went down for the big sleep in December 1997 after telling Congress that unless it gave the Federal Aviation Administration billions of dollars in special funding, the nation's skies would turn into the equivalent of the Los Angeles freeways at rush hour.

Like thousands of pilgrims paying homage to the grave of Jim Morrison in Paris, graduate students, scholars and government officials from around the world have visited the site to gather data, read white papers and learn more about the way some agencies used to operate, said Cathy Hartman, head of government documents for University of North Texas Libraries.

For the full article, see http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0701/070601h1.htm.

Sharon Hogan, Director of Libraries at the University of Illinois in Chicago, testified on July 11th before the U.S. Senate Government Affairs Committee on behalf of S. 803. Hogan emphasized:

"Our Nation's libraries are key access points for the American public and already are and should be members of e-government teams at the federal, state and local levels. We cannot have an effective e-government without effective access to government information and coordinated information policies. . . the move to an e-government has not been accompanied by the development of a comprehensive policy framework focusing on the life-cycle of electronic government information."

Hogan's testimony indicated that the library community supports the

"overall information access policies through a Chief Information Officer for the executive branch. Too often access to Federal government information has been disorganized and untimely. . . .We need a policy framework that addresses information from its inception and acquisition to its organization and cataloging, and from its public accessibility to long term permanent public access and preservation. Lack of adequate funding has compromised information access and frustrated a reasonable transition to electronic dissemination. Funding is necessary."

The full text of her statement on behalf of ALA. ACRL, and AALL submitted for the record, the verbal testimony given on July 11th and a related ALA press release are available at: http://www.ala.org/washoff/hogantest.pdf and http://www.ala.org/washoff/egovpress.pdf.

Additional transcripts from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on on July 11, 2001 are available at http://www.senate.gov/~gov_affairs/071101_witness.htm.

In response to a letter sent to the Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, some 1, 245 feet of HUAC records containing correspondence, unpublished executive session transcripts, special investigative files relating to individuals and organizations dating from 1945-1975 (some 444 feet of records) will now be open to public scrutiny. Also unsealed is a unique and large collection (75 feet) of pamphlets and other periodicals gathered over a period of thirty years that were deemed "subversive" by the Committee. Collectively, the records are preserved and stored by the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) Center for Legislative Archives in Washington D.C.

HUAC was created in 1945 and abolished by Congressional action in 1975. Records of the House of Representatives investigative committee that proceeded HUAC - the Select Committee on Un-American Activities (the so-called Dies Committee (1938-1944)) - have been open to the public for sometime. Some of the records of HUAC, however -- infamous for its unrelenting pursuit of communists, espionage agents, homosexuals, subversives, and others often deemed as "security risks" -- have been closed for over 50 years.

Included in the Committee records now subject to public access are hearings into atomic espionage, previously closed transcripts and materials relating to landmark investigations including the Alger Hiss case. The collection also includes documents relating to the so-called Hollywood Hearings -- a nine-day "inquisition" into of Hollywood producers, writers, actors, and others affiliated with the movie industry who allegedly were connected with an international communist conspiracy. Records involving investigations into the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazis, civil rights and anti-war activists of the 1960s are also in the collection.

According to Dr. Bruce Craig, Director of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History (NCCPH), "HUAC has a reputation and legacy unparalleled in American history for abuse of power and disregard of individual rights. With these records, for the first time, historians will be able to get a much clearer picture of the internal workings of America's own 20th century inquisition." The NCCPH is a national coalition of historical and archival organizations that filed the request that resulted in opening the records. The NCCPH had been seeking the release of these documents since 1998.

Requests to gain access to the records should be directed to: the National Archives, Center for Legislative Archives, (202) 501-5350.

The bookstores are closing due to significantly reduced sales resulting from the public's increased ability and preference to access government publications over the Internet for free - including the more than 2,000 government titles currently available on the GPO's web-site GPO Access (http://www.gpo.gov/gpoaccess). With book sales continuing to decline nationally, GPO is making changes in its sales program for its 23 operating bookstores.

Even though GPO had to close down the San Francisco, McPherson Square, and Boston bookstores, residents in those cities will not be deprived of access to U.S. Government publications. Those who want to purchase government books and publications can still do so by linking to the U.S. Government Online Bookstore at http://bookstore.gpo.gov.

The Online Bookstore's Sales Product Catalog includes all titles available for sale in GPO Bookstores and can be searched by publication, title, subject, and keywords. All titles can be securely ordered online using a major credit card. U.S Government books can also be ordered by calling a toll free number, 866-512- 1800, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. (EST). You may also fax your request to 202-512-2250, or mail it to the Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954.

Residents can also continue to locate U.S. Government books and other online government materials at your local Federal Depository libraries -- which are free of charge and open to the general public.

The plan would allow users to search the NTIS database on its Web page for all documents entered into its collections since 1997 when NTIS began preserving documents electronically. The bibliographic records displayed would include the abstract.

When available, an identified document will include a digital object identifier (DOI) which would both point to the site of the originating agency and to the NTIS site. The user could opt to download full-text from the agency site or, for a nominal fee, from the NTIS site. The user could also order in alternative formats of choice such as paper, CD ROM, microfiche from NTIS for the standard NTIS fee.

This announcement was made on August 14th in the Federal Register. The announcement also asks that the public forward comments on this proposal to Mr. Walter L. Finch at NTIS, 5285 Port Royal Rd., Springfield, Virginia 22161, or via email at wfinch@ntis.gov. Comments must be received no later than Sept. 13, 2001.

Many larger university libraries such as Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, MSU and Northwestern have purchased retrospective collections of CRS publications. You can always check their online catalogs for holdings information. The title to look for is Major Studies of the Legislative Reference Service/Congressional Research Service. The original microfilm collection covers reports from 1916-1975, and annual supplement collections have been released since then. The following indexes come with the set.

• Major Studies and Issue Briefs of the Congressional Research Service, 1916-1989 Cumulative Index, covering the almost 5,000 documents reproduced in the original microfilm collection. Contains a bibliographic entry, brief abstract, and indexes by subjects and names, titles and report numbers.

• Major Studies and Issue Briefs of the Congressional Research Service, Bibliography and Indexes to the . . . Supplement, separate bibliographies released with each annual supplement collection. These index are arranged by titles, report numbers and subjects and names. Each bibliographic entry provides title, date, document number and a brief descriptive abstract.

There are many other additional web sites that have begun selectively listing copies of CRS reports and issue briefs on the web. One of the most extensive collections is one provided by the National Library of the Environment. The web page provides a search engine as well as a directory of 28 different topics to choose from if you like to browse. A few of the titles spotted include:

• Countries of the World and International Organizations: Sources of Information (5/2/01, ~23p.)
• Public Printing Reform: Issues and Actions (4/5/01, ~14p.)
• Federal Statutes: What They Are and Where to Find Them (1/16/01, ~12p.)

• Intelligence and Related Issues
• Military and National Security
• Nuclear, Chemical and Missile Weapons and Proliferation
• Space and Science Documents

The decisions by these agencies and others have "reopened the delicate question about how much people ought to know about the safety of hazardous chemicals in their communities before knowledge begins to comprimise national security."

For a more extensive review, see "Agencies Scrub Web Sites of Sensitive Chemical Data: Government Debates Safety Versus Security" by Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post, Oct. 4, 2001, p.A29 temporarily available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2738-2001Oct3.html.

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