[LINK] Rational Government Archival Practice?

[Anthony Hornby]

Hi All,
I hope this is useful. As far as I know there isn't any uniform
approach to published government reports. Please, please, prove me
wrong !! It would make my day ;-)

My university is a member of the Library Deposit Scheme
http://tinyurl.com/4vmgcs as a "Free Issue" library where most state
libraries are deposit libraries.

Now in this day and age we would like a simple way to link to the
electronic versions of the reports in a way that is stable for the
long term, plus include the most relevant ones to us full text in our
digital repository (on the LOCKSS principle). Currently we get sent a
copy of every report that the LDS gets sent in print delivered to us
in boxes (this is not all reports, just those where departments are
organised enough to do what they are supposed to). We then have to
check this off and decide what it is that is relevant to us (as a free
issue library we thankfully don't have to keep all of it, only the
deposit libraries have that responsibility). About 20% of it is
relevant, the rest we have to discard and then notify the
administrator of the scheme of the items we have discarded. This is a
large waste of resources when you look at roughly 40 free issue
libraries all doing what we do, all those reports being printed,
delivered to LDS, sorted boxed, shipped, delivered to the end use
library, checked, assessed, processed or discarded. Personally I think
for the cost of that scheme you could employ a few people to get
copies of the electronic versions and place them somewhere stable the
rest of us could link to (with some clear copyright statement
accompanying each) plus pay for digitising those only available in
print.

Below is the test of an email I sent to NLA on this earlier in the
year and have received no reply:

<snip>
Hi XXXXXXX,

Thanks this is useful information :-)
However, the NLA cataloguing service doesn't really address the need
for a digital copy of all of these publications online with permanent,
stable URLs. The problem with URLs to online resources provided by
government departments is they break regularly as departments
amalgamate and change etc. Given all universities now have
Institutional Repositories via the RQF and now ERA federal Government
reporting requirements we all have vehicles for storing these
publications digitally and providing that stable access. Obviously it
would be better if the State and Territory Libraries took on this
role, but I haven't heard of any moves from them to do this sort of
thing. At CDU we have considered collecting the digital copies where
available and putting them in our repository to provide stable online
access to the ones most relevant to our region and came across these
discussions on this topic from ALIA:
http://conferences.alia.org.au/seminars/digital.amnesia2005/outcomes.html.
I have contacted ALIA to find out what if anything they are doing on
this issue (major points from their conference below).


<snip>
Publication of information online rather than in print is now the norm
for many agencies in Commonwealth, State and Local Government
Libraries have a key role to play in this environment. They can
contribute to access to government information by:

   * recording information about government online information to
enable the online resources to be found;
   * providing access though community information discovery services
such as library catalogues and online resource discovery services;
   * developing and implementing standards for resource descriptions
and storage of online e resources;
   * supporting community access through information services from
public, state and national libraries;
   * working with information policy agencies such as the Australian
Government Information Management Office to create awareness of the
need to record and maintain availability of online government
information resources; and
   * providing long term access through online archives maintained by
the national and state libraries.

At a seminar on 21 April 2005 the key issues of identifying, providing
access to and maintaining government publications were highlighted as
requiring immediate action. ALIA will pursue the following agenda
items:

   * working with the Australian Government Information Management
Office and National Library Australia to develop better mechanisms for
sharing information on government online resources;
   * working with Australian libraries and government agencies
towards long term access solutions for these resources;
   * working at national, state and local government levels to
address these issues; and
   * promoting the role of libraries in providing access and support
to Australians to ensure utilisation of online government resources
and information services.

</snip>


Does NLA keep copies of all the online government publications online
via PANDORA? If so it could be useful to include a link to the PANDORA
version in the catalogue record – we could then link to that with some
certainty it is going to be stable and persistent.

 Any suggestions or further information you have on this is very
welcome. I am still learning about all of this and may well be
misinterpreting or missing things!!

 Thanks again for your assistance :-)


Regards Anthony

</snip>

I haven't received any response from ALIA yet either.
There is some hope here if the government adopts some of the
recommendations about opening up access to government information in
the recent "Venturous Australia" report on innovation.

Personally I think there should be a central repository of electronic
reports that is mirrored at a few key cultural institutions and the
rest of us are also free to also preserve locally whatever we want. I
am sure within each department there are the records management
systems keeping records (TRIM and their ilk), but my understanding
from looking into what the NT government does here is that the
approach to this is up to departments and not part of any overall
coordinated effort, and in particular how those are made available to
the public is not clear from my limited investigation. I have no
understanding of how this is managed federally or in other states or
territories.

If Linkers know anything different to what I have above I am very
interested to learn more ...

Regards Anthony

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 2:25 PM, Tom Worthington
<Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:
> At 01:27 PM 18/09/2008, Roger Clarke wrote:
>>>... Publications and reports previously published by the department have
>>>been archived on the National Library of Australia PANDORA Web
>>>Archive....
>>
>>I do hope it's been standardised. ...
>
> If someone could point me to the Australian Government policy on
> e-archiving it would be very useful. I am supposed to be teaching
> this to students at the ANU, including federal and state public
> servants. But I can't find a clear statement of what the policy is.
> In the absence of one I will have to make it up and that will become
> the government policy by default. ;-)
>
> ps: I have had a few visits from senior public servants recently
> asking me to put things in courses, so that they are adopted by the
> government. Seems a bit sneaky.
>
>
>
> Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
> Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
> PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
> Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University
>
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