On a sad note from North Carolina State University:

Folks,

The time has come for me to end my employment at NCSU. Today is my last day of work. There are no plans to continue the Congressional Bibliographies. There has been but one nibble of a suggestion from another library to continue this work, and I have heard nothing from that institution since an initial exchange three months ago.

The Congressional Bibliographies has always been a one-person project (with a bit of occasional help from computing staff, and weekly assistance from work-study students). Its files are now static. How long NCSU will provide access to them, I do not know. Access to Congressional Bib pages via the Internet Archive is incomplete. I have requested that IA crawl the Congressional Bibs for the Wayback Machine.

My last updates are only these:

- 111th Congress (2009) House and Senate Digest files. Updated through April 29. I'm sorry that the site will not include today's Digest entries.

- 110th Congress (2007-2008) Hearings files. I added 298 hearings on April 8.

I urge you to look at the listing by Committee at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/congbibs/senate/110hrc.html
and observe these matters:

Banking - 2 hearings reported
Commerce - 9 hearings
Environment - 1 hearing
What's going on here? These three committees aren't publishing their hearings. Why not?

I wish I could be encouraging about the future of the Congressional Bibs, but I can't. The NCSU Libraries is, I fear, in serious trouble.

Four reference librarians have been told their contracts will not be renewed in the coming fiscal year - 2 night reference staff, the Biology librarian, and myself. Instead of retaining experienced employees, the director prefers to hire "enthusiastic" new library school graduates.

Reference and instructional services, it appears, are among those the director has declared "dying or dead." She dismantled the government documents department years ago. It appears she will close the Natural Resources Library, and the main library's Media/Microforms room. She has reassigned supervisory staff from the Digital Media Lab to other departments. At the same time she has opened an ice cream parlor in the main library.

The time has come for me to leave what has become a sad, sick parody of a research library. This ship is sinking fast.

I opened my first depository box in 1965. It was like opening a Christmas present. I have not had a documents librarian's duties for ten years, and the Congressional Bibs has been the only way I've been able to contribute to the documents community. I'm sorry to leave this dedicated group of professionals.

Should anyone wish to contact me, this NCSU email address will remain active.

Best wishes.

Jack McGeachy

--

John A. McGeachy
Social Sciences Reference Librarian
Research & Information Services Department Campus Box 7111 North Carolina State University
Raleigh, N.C. 27695-7111

(919) 513-0444 phone
(919) 515-8264 fax

Jack_McGeachy@ncsu.edu
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/jam3

How has the current economic downturn changed what's happening at your library? Have your patrons needs changed? Staff needs? Your own personal/professional needs? The Library Research Service wants to know (and plans to share what they find). They just launched a 60-Second Survey - Libraries and the Economic Recession.

Please take a minute to respond at:

http://surveys.lrs.org/respond.php?sid=56

"Digital Archives That Disappear"


Google purchased "Paper of Record," a Web site popular with historians and other scholars. Now the site is gone, and although it may be about to return, researchers are furious.

Try Earthday.gov, A portal for U.S. Government information and issues

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CIC-Google Government Documents Project

The libraries of the CIC universities are partnering with Google to digitize a comprehensive collection of U.S. Federal Documents. It is believed this collection will comprise between 1 and 1.5 million volumes.
The workflow and scanning process for the initiative is being tested by the University of Minnesota, which is sending Google a substantial number of duplicate holdings from its St. Paul campus. Digital facsimiles of successfully scanned Federal Documents from Minnesota -- and eventually other CIC institutions -- will be returned to the HathiTrust Digital Repository, where public domain material can be universally accessed.

This project is part of an overarching CIC Library Director-led initiative to assess the opportunities HathiTrust might provide for more cost-effective management of less frequently used print resources. With three CIC universities designated as comprehensive Regional Depositories for print documents (Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin), it is anticipated the Selective Depositories might be in a position to make coordinated decisions about print retention. The U.S. Federal Documents collection is one of several categories of material where our libraries believe they can achieve efficiencies by better managing the relationship between digital and print resources, with assurances that an adequate number of print copies are available for future use.

The CIC Library Directors have charged the CIC Steering Committee on Federal Documents Digitization with responsibility to plan this initiative.
A principles document has been developed to provide additional information on the project basics. Comments and questions are welcomed and may be directed to the Steering Committee co-chairs, Kirsten Clark
(clark881@umn.edu) and Marianne Ryan (marianne@purdue.edu), or other members of the committee.

Nevada Library Legislative Day