ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 9, Number 21 March 13, 2000 In this issue: [1] Final Draft of NTIS Closure Report Available for Comment; Action Needed Before March 15 Deadline [2] Reed Amendment Voted Down on Party Lines; Action Needed [1] Final Draft of NTIS Closure Report Available for Comment; Action Needed Before March 15 Deadline As reported in the March 6 ALAWON (vol. 9, no. 19), comments were sought in response to the position paper, "Emerging Consensus Position Paper Proposed National Technical Information Service Closure and Transfer." The paper was approved by National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) on February 17, 2000 for public review and comment; the deadline for comments to be received by NCLIS was March 10. On March 13, the final draft of the NCLIS report "Preliminary Assessment of the Department of Commerce Proposal to Close the National Technical Information Service and Transfer its Functions to the Library of Congress" was released. This document replaces and updates the "Emerging Consensus" position paper, the name we gave to an earlier version containing essentially the same substantive contents of the NTIS closure/transfer matter. ACTION NEEDED: NCLIS has received and incorporated many comments since the earlier versions of the position paper document. G Government information library supporters are urged to review this current document very carefully (at http://www.nclis.gov/info/ntis/preside2.html). Moreover, a number of stakeholders have forwarded additional comments for posting on the NCLIS; these supplementary documents are available at: http://www.nclis.gov/info/ntis/ntis.html Since NCLIS is committed to transmitting the report to the President and the Congress by March 16, the deadline for feedback is close of business on Wednesday, March 15. The Final Report will be posted on March 16. -Lynne Bradley [2] Reed Amendment Voted Down on Party Lines; Action Needed On March 9, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) offered his school library amendment (the substance of S. 1262) at the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee markup of S. 2, the major Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization. Unfortunately, the amendment failed on a party line vote (8 to 10) with the majority Republicans voting against it and all minority Democratic members voting for it. The ESEA reauthorization act (S. 2) was approved by a vote of 10 to 8. "I am deeply disappointed by the wholesale retreat by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act," said U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. "I will certainly recommend that the President veto this unfocused and undemanding piece of legislation." (For the full text of his statement, see http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/03-2000/0309.html.) Thanks to all of the many school library supporters, particularly the Maryland school library media specialists, who made special efforts to contact their Senators by letter and e-mail. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) recently joined on as a sponsor of S. 1262. It is expected that the ESEA reauthorization (S. 2) will come to the Senate floor for a vote soon after the Senate recess ends March 17. During the upcoming floor debate on S. 2, Sen. Reed intends to offer S. 1262 as an amendment to the bill once again. ACTION NEEDED: Please contact your Senators in their local offices while they are on recess. Use the ALA Legislative Action Center (http://congress.ala.org) for local contact information. Explain the importance of providing dedicated funds for purchase of school library material. S. 2 includes a new Title VI block grant which would allow purchase of school library materials, but as one of 15 different choices. In current law Title VI offers nine choices. It is too important to the students of today and the workers of tomorrow to ignore their basic information needs. It is unfair to provide them with old, inaccurate and out-of-date school library materials. We will keep you informed as the floor schedule is made available. Thanks for your help. If you have any questions, or if you want to share feedback from your congressional office, please contact Mary Costabile, associate director for ALA's Office of Government Relations, at 800-941-8478 or mcostabile@alawash.org. -- Mary Costabile ****** 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; Editor: Deirdre Herman. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Mary Costabile, Peter Kaplan, Miriam Nisbet and Claudette Tennant. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell and Saundra Shirley.