ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 11, Number 61 July 26, 2002 In This Issue: Treasury and General Gov't Appropriations Bill 2003 Committee report language for the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Bill for 2003, says that the Committee "strongly opposes" the OMB Memorandum M-02-07, "Procurement of Printing and Duplicating Through the Government Printing Office" and "directs the administration to abide the statutory requirement that printing be done through the GPO." Senator Dayton (D-MN) hopes to elevate this language to statute by introducing an amendment on the Government Printing Office to the Treasury and General Government Appropriations FY 2003 bill that will come to the floor early next week. CONTACT YOUR SENATORS immediately by phone or fax them a short letter, based on the talking points below, with the following message: 1) express your support of the Dayton amendment (on the GPO) to the Senate Treasury and General Government Appropriations Bill for FY 2003. Phone and fax information for every Senator can be found through http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. TALKING POINTS Statutory Issues: Title 44, Section 501 is the law. Agencies are obligated to comply with it. This law is not rescinded by an OMB memorandum Public Access Issues: The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) Effectively Provides Local Access to Federal Government Information. (a) Approximately 1,300 depository libraries - located in virtually every congressional district - provide citizens with direct, local access and assistance to federal government information. (b) The FDLP is an efficient and effective partnership program between Congress, agencies, and the American public. For every one dollar the federal government spends, local libraries spend an average of $3 to support local FDLP collections and to help the public use this material. (c) For over 150 years, the FDLP has made government information in all formats permanently accessible to the public at no fee through depository libraries. The OMB Proposal Will Reduce Public Access to Government Information. (a) Tangible publications (e.g., print, microfiche, CD-ROMs) produced by executive agencies outside of the GPO most often become "fugitive" documents. Even though these publications are paid for by tax dollars, they are not distributed to depository libraries, nor are single copies provided to GPO for cataloging and indexing. (b) A key factor in the FDLP's success is that it is transparent to the agencies. As agencies requisition printing jobs, GPO is positioned to capture the necessary information to order additional copies for depository libraries - making them physically available at local libraries - and to catalog the publications, which makes their existence and availability known to everyone. The OMB proposal would sever the important, transparent link between the procurement of agency publications and the distribution of titles. (c) While the government has embraced the Internet as a means to disseminate more electronic environment, print and other tangible publications still play a vital role in informing the public. In FY 2001, GPO distributed 5.9 million tangible copies of 14,700 titles to depository libraries. ****** ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff. Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Camille Bowman, Mary Costabile, Don Essex, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell, Claudette Tennant. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.