GoPIG Minutes July 26, 2002 UNC, Michener Library In attendance: Louise Treff-Gangler (Auraria), Sharon Partridge (JCPL), Mark Anderson (UNC), Venice Beske (WY State Library), Dianne Koshak (Adams State), Rob Jackson(DPL), Chris Brown (DU), Leanne Walther (CU), Joanne Dugan (CU Law), McKinley Sieflaff (CC) and Tim Byrne (CU) presiding. Guest: Bruce Montgomery, Curator, CU Archives. Mark Anderson distributed copies of the state plan. We welcomed McKinley back into the world of docs in Colo. There were no announcements. 1. Bruce Montgomery, Curator of the CU Archives, presented a fascinating history of the battle over presidential records. Until Nixon and Watergate, the president's papers were treated as private property and the outgoing president was free to destroy, donate, and even sell his papers. In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services that the president did not have an "absolute right" or "executive privilege" to his own papers. Nixon had cited both of these principles as well as the "separation of powers" and the historical precedent of personal property. The 7-2 ruling found that "executive privilege" was a qualified right. Berger and Rehnquist wrote dissenting opinions. In 1978, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA) to bolster the court ruling. The act states that the presidential papers belong to the country and give the president the right to suppress records, for any reason, for a time not to exceed 12 years. The Archivist of the US is expected to suppress any records falling within national security constraints. Ronald Reagan, in 1985, tried to override the PRA on Nixon's behalf. The Justice Dept. presented a case based on the dissenting opinions of Berger and Rehnquist. They argued that the decision had a chilling effect on the honest opinions offered to the president. The court denied this argument. George H. Bush decided that the PRA did not include electronic communication. In American Historical Assoc. v. Peterson (Archivist) that argument was overruled. George W. Bush has issued Executive Order 13233 to try to return control of presidential records to the executive branch. His E.O. states that in the "absence of compelling circumstances" both the past and current presidents have to agree to release the records. This control is extended to the vice- president's records and falls to the executors and/or family of a deceased president. The Horn bill has been introduced to repeal the E.O. and Public Citizens' Group v. Executive Order 13233 (a group of historians, librarians, and other interested citizens) has been filed. It is expected that the Supreme Court will again find in favor of open records in Public Citizens Group v. Executive Order 13233 but, since Rehnquist is now the Chief Justice and the court makeup is more conservative, this is not a given. It is a virtual certainty that whatever is decided, the principle will be argued continually. There was some discussion about Congress passing a law that doesn't apply to the congressional records and about the lack of the bipartisan participation in the executive branch that exists in the legislative and the judicial branches. 3. We did not have a tour. 4. Minutes were approved. 4. Future Meetings: Sept. 13 - Wyoming State Library and State Archives Sept. 27 - Special meeting of the State Plan committee at JCPL 10:00-4:00 Oct 17-20 is the first meeting of the combined CLA and CEMA= CAL (Go DIG?) Nov. 1 - Front Range Dec. 6 - Broomfield Jan. 10 - JCPL 5. ALA Conference Report Louise presented her notes on ALA. She attended the pre-conference on Census. She had many handouts about using Excel with census data. Mark announced a couple new census workshops at UNC. Aug. 12 - Understanding Race and Hispanic Data and Understanding SF3 Data. Hopefully, the SF3 data will be released by then. MPLA will have a census program on Oct. 2 in Fargo, ND. Case-Western has become a Census partner and is making the census files available in FTP, comma-delimited format. Indiana University is partnering to make a historic file of all the floppy disc data. Tim asked all of us to write to Charles H. Taylor, Chair of the House Subcommittee on Legislative Appropriations to encourage the funding of replacement for GPO's WAIS software. Fedreg.gov is going to make it possible to offer and view public comment online for Federal Register responses. (I tried to get into the site but it requires a password. It may still be in the development stage.) GPO is going to be distributing ebooks via CD-ROM. The UN depository system includes 15 libraries without Internet access and 50% of the members are in developing countries. Louise and Tim discussed the vast amount of information on the UN site. Andrew Card of NARA issued a letter to the agencies stating that there is no definition of "sensitive" information. Agencies are supposed to be careful about releasing such information. Sharon pointed out that one of the item numbers is 0429-X-27 E 1.143: Report on Inadvertent Releases of Restricted Data and Formerly Restricted Data Under Executive Order 12958. The Census DVDs will include the 1990 Tract Maps and by fall, we will have more flexibility in data manipulation. We are urged to use WebClaim at the FDLP site. Sharon has and it is easy to use. Louise reported that GPO will be adding the Congressional Record from 1800 to present to GPO Access but Tim was unsure this would really happen. We discussed online vs. tangible permanent access. The Federal Data Quality Act has passed. If data is questioned, it will be removed for review. There were so many questions about this that it was tabled for more discussion at the next meeting. GPO will pick up NASA microfiche from where they ceased cataloging, to catch up now that they have hired more catalogers. McKinley asked and we had a lengthy discussion about the pros and cons of Marcive Shipping List and Bibliographic records and using smart barcodes and labels. EPA is doing metadata for everything on their site and doing such a good job that they are setting the standard (de facto). The 2001 [Catharine J. Reynolds] award was given to Debora Cheney in support of her work to create a new, comprehensive style manual entitled, Citing Government Information Resources. This will represent the 3rd edition of The Complete Guide to Citing Government Information Resources: A Manual for Writers & Librarians. The revised edition of The Complete Guide was published by Congressional Information Service in 1993, and is now out-of-print. The 3rd edition will include a wide range of formats; it's scheduled for publication in July, 2002. Tim said this is out now and urged us to buy a copy. Louise took time to have fun touring Margaret Mitchell's house. 6. Fugitive Documents Project: Susan Simmons has created a spreadsheet for the fugitive documents project showing our department assignments. She said that including our guess on the item number and SuDoc stem for any fugitives we find will greatly increase the chance of GPO cataloging the site. Project participants should report our finds to Susan and she will forward them to GPO. The suggestion was made that a web form mimicking the GPO form be created for us to send our finds to Susan. Everyone is reminded that they are looking for Colorado AND Wyoming. 7. Regional Resources Web Pages: The new regional resources web page was available to preview. It is at but may be moved. It includes all the information we've sent to Tim and a link to Chris' Item Selection Tool. Chris is planning to update it when the new selection changes are released. 8. USA Patriot Act Workshop: There was a workshop on the USA Patriot Act and we were given a handout 9. CAL Program/CAL Website: Susan sent the information that there was a problem with the CAL census program proposal that we sent. Apparently, the original request was mislaid and we were only scheduled for a one-hour program rather than the time we originally requested. Susan is hopeful this will be fixed. She also asked if there was anything we thought might be added to the CAL website for gov docs. We suggested adding a link to the GO PIG site. 10. Unfinished Business: There was no old business. 11. New Business: Sharon asked that we send a letter of support for the Colorado State Publications Library regarding their staffing shortage. Louise and Sharon will write the letter. We will invite Maureen Crocker to one of our meetings in the afternoon to discuss priorities. We will also invite the other state depositories and Virginia, the cataloger for state pubs. We particularly want to discuss the removal of publication records from the database and a possible sharing of retention responsibilities. The National Library of Medicine is working with Utah to id and catalog electronic state publications. A possibility for Colorado? 12. Library Significant Events: DPL is waiting for the Alliance to load its first batch of Marcive records. They are also working to become an official city depository. They have had to cut $100,000 from the reference budget so they will no longer be getting ASI or the CIS microfiche (but will keep getting the indices). The cataloging staff has been cut by a third. DU - Chris brought a copy of his book, "United Nations Centre for Regional Development Publications"! He's noticed that there is no copyright date and said that it will probably not be sold in the US. We wondered why since it is in English and covers economic development, a topic of concern here too. Auraria - Desperately seeking a 6-month temporary part-time reference librarian. Aug. 26 is the deadline for early-bird registration for MPLA. Nan Myers will be doing a Patent and Trademark presentation and Donna Koepp has a program on the Congressional Serial Set maps. CU has a new person, Susan Xue, who will be working with foreign and state documents and working with electronic resources. Respectfully submitted, Sharon Partridge, secretary