First, let me say how pleased and honored I am to be asked to participate in your spring program. Your theme, "The State of Federal Libraries in the 21st Century," is a reflection of the same basic concern that is facing all types of libraries, as well as society as a whole. How technology is changing how libraries provide services to their respective communities, is certainly an overarching and abiding concern of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.

Not only it is a question of technology that is driving the other changes. The very role of libraries in society in general, and in local communities in particular, is changing quite dramatically. The Commission's concern in this respect manifests itself in terms of the different instruments we employ to advance our goals and aims. For example, we have launched several major, government-wide studies on matters of importance to the entire Federal Government.

For example, in 1999 we completed a two-year study of how preferred government information product formats and mediums are shifting dramatically. Federal agencies are moving steadily to put more and more of their government information products and services online for both public and agency use. Just a few weeks ago we completed the first phase of study for the Congress and the President on the far-reaching consequences of the Department of Commerce's announced plans to close the National Technical Information Service, NTIS, and transfer its resources and functions to the Library of Congress. In 1998 we held a public hearing on the "perils and promises" of kids on the Internet. These are just a sampling of the official government studies, background research, public hearings, and other activities in which the Commission is currently engaged.

In terms of the basic issues facing the provision of library services, there is really very little difference between federal libraries and non-federal libraries. Both provide reader advisory services, reference services, life-long learning, research, and children's' services. In other words, the same services provided by public libraries and school libraries. The major differences between federal and non-federal libraries have to do with funding, specialization and customization of services to specific patrons. Furthermore, the public has changing expectations toward the traditional roles libraries have played in their communities

It is exactly this changing role of librarians I wish to emphasize this evening. There was a time in the early days of library and information science when early pioneers such as Professor Marta Dosa of Syracuse University's Library School, and Professor Anthony Debons of the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Information Science, pointed out that librarians should also be seen as "information counselors." A role, in my view, that has never really been fully defined or fully appreciated. However, with the advent of the newer technologies, and the ubiquitous growth of the Internet, it is time to revisit this role and I'd very much like you to think about this in the context of my remarks.

I was asked to comment on the Commission's plans and programs, and how they will impact federal libraries. What I have to say I hope will help you to understand the role the Commission is coming to play not just on the library stage, but also on the national and international stage.

My emphasis will be on the role of the Commission from the standpoint of the end user of library and information services. As this audience well knows, there are many different types of federal libraries so there is no standard "cookie cutter" approach that can be taken. Moreover, it is more constructive, I believe, to address the roles of Federal libraries not so much from the point of view of the conventional missions and functions of federal libraries, but from the point of view of how federal libraries can better serve the information needs of the nation socially, culturally, economically, and, yes, even politically. You then will help our leaders fulfill their governance mandate by being more informed.

I think that perhaps the best way I can shed light on these matters is by citing three specific examples of the Commission's work

First, I think it's important to acknowledge that federal librarians deal with both the internal data, document, and literature needs of their own agency staffs and decision-makers as well as the external information and knowledge needs of your patrons. Federal librarians have both internal and external information roles. And those roles are sometimes in conflict with each other in terms of which of your". Masters" you are serving at a given time - - budgetary masters, policy masters, program masters, and the masters who fill out your performance evaluation reports! While you must be effective in meeting the information needs of your internal agency managers and support staffs, you must also keep in mind that government information is a public good as well as a public asset, and our citizens own public information. Public access to this information is therefore a primary responsibility of federal libraries. Therefore, you must be knowledgeable for the full range of government information. Your role as an information counselor and information intermediary between your holdings and your patrons is vital.

In this regard I would like to urge you to be more pro-active in helping to keep your agency decision-makers, including your chief information officers, more informed so that they can make enlightened decisions. You should consider yourselves to be on the offense team, not just the defense team. Because so much data, documents, and literature crosses your desks every day, you are in a much better position than most agency officials to cull the intelligence wheat from the data and information chaff, and bring this information to the attention of your agency program officials. In so doing, you are a key player on your agency's corporate team.

I want now to bring your attention to several specific Commission activities to underscore even more concretely some of the points I've been talking about. First, the two-year study the Commission began in 1997 at the request of the Government Printing Office, and completed in the spring of last year, entitled "Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products." The preliminary findings of this report are intended to help federal libraries. Our final policy recommendations, which will be forthcoming after we complete our work on our study of the closure of the National Technical Information Service, will have an impact on all libraries, but perhaps the greatest impact will be on federal libraries

Key findings from this assessment revealed that, in terms of policy and long range planning issues, there is an overall lack of government information policy planning and control relating to seven key issue areas:

1. overall departmental and agency information dissemination policy leadership, day-to-day management, and individual product level controls are somewhat haphazard at best.
2. federal electronic publishing policies and controls, (and, I would say, there is an almost frightening lack of guidelines and standards in this area) Public information products are, quite literally, put up on federal agency web sites one day and taken down the next. Indeed, it does not exaggerate to say that in some cases not only does the product disappear, but the site itself disappears;
3. lack of a common understanding of what is meant by "permanent public access," procedures identifying which materials should be permanently accessible, and which should not;
4. lack of a common understanding of what is meant by "permanent records retention," and how federal records relate specifically to "government information products for the public"
5. lack of agreement of what, how, and when to preserve government information products, products that should remain indefinitely available to the public;
6. lack of a common understanding of how to differentiate between truly authentic government information, and unofficial, information where the reliability and credibility of the source is not the critical issue; and
7. how all the stages and phases of the overall government information life cycle fits together, beginning with the creation of the new public information product and continuing through all the other stages of storage, retrieval, uploading and downloading, communicating and recommunicating, archiving, and preservation.

The Commission has yet other documented concerns in this study. The one I've just listed are the most critical in terms of the roles and missions of federal libraries

A second very large and government-wide study the Commission is currently engaged in relates to the announced plans by the Department of Commerce to close the National Technical Information Service and transfer its collections and functions to the Library of Congress. The Commission stepped into this picture last August, within days of the Secretary of Commerce's announcement. We held three public meetings involving nearly 100 stakeholders, all of whom had great concerns in this matter, including federal R&D contractors, small and medium sized enterprises, corporations across the country, federal agencies, state and local level governments, foreign governments and enterprises, and scientific and technical research institutions both in academia and in not-for-profit settings. We played the role of honest broker in bringing these groups together in a free and open format to build a public record of the view and concerns of all stakeholders. Identified are some eleven possible alternatives in our report to the President and the Congress released just a few weeks ago. (both this study on NTIS, and the earlier one done at the request of the GPO to which I alluded, are available on GPO Access and our own Commission web sites. Which, if I may say so does not ever disappear).

The Senate has just asked us to continue with our investigations on the issue of the closure of NTIS and to come up with a preferred course of action by narrowing down the list of theoretical alternatives. We are about to embark on that second phase now. Hopefully, our work will be completed by the end of this fiscal year. Once again, this study has profound impacts for federal librarians because these scientific and technical reports produced by federal R&D contractors flow into your libraries and into federal depository libraries. How they flow, where they are held in custody, by whom, and how they are made available and accessible, in what alternative formats and mediums, and at what costs both to the agencies and to the consumer publics the information is intended to serve, are all critical policy matters.

Finally, the third Commission activity I would like to mention is the issue of Kids and the Internet: The Promise and the Perils. I have with me some copies of our report available with me, and copies are also being distributed to all agency libraries and all depository libraries. We held a public hearing on November 10, 1998 at which the Commission listened carefully to the testimony of experts, librarians, public interest groups, parents, teachers, and others who are gatekeepers of information passed on to children on the Internet. Based on the input from the hearings, plus the research the Commission undertook on the background to the problem, we prepared a set of specific guidelines for parents, teachers, and librarians. These guidelines have been widely distributed. Again, federal libraries have a key role to play in this area, partly because lower levels of government look to the federal level for guidance, precedence, and policies. And partly because the policies and practices followed by the Federal Government have an enormous impact on the nation's libraries.

Needless to say all of these issues and concerns have a profound impact on the quality and quantity of your work, not only in terms of the management of your information and knowledge resources, but also from the standpoint of how you manage your libraries' staff allocation and other budgetary considerations for such things as line charges, technology maintenance costs, replacement and upgrading of hardware and software, and so on. As more and more library resources are transferring from traditional ink-on-paper and microform mediums and formats to the Internet and World Wide Web, the cost of maintaining all of the underlying infrastructure can be staggering. Not to mention the problems of bibliographic control of an increasing quantity of gray literature because of the absence of effective policies and procedures. If there is little or no standardization, you will need both unique, specialized hardware and software and training skills for the many mediums and formats. Not to mention as yet unknown technologies that have not yet even emerged but are certainly inevitable. If there is no standardization, no policy, no control, then how can you realistically plan and budget?

The three activities I've covered raise some important corollary issues we could talk hours on, such as the need for greater information literacy skills by all segments of society, but especially among information and library professionals, community service and support institutions of all kinds, parents, teachers, and the average citizen as well who expects and demands greater practical utility from accessing information using modems and a computer.

In short, it is not enough just to be wired and connected. It is also vital that library patrons know how to use electronic products to help cope with and resolve the many personal, family, social, economic, and other challenges with which they are faced every day. As you know, in the Federal Government we see the "Digital Divide" as the gap that separates the information literate from the information illiterate. As federal librarians you've know all of your working lives about the gap between what we used to call the "information haves," and the "information have-nots." Simply relabeling the same old wine in a new bottle is not going to make the problems disappear. The Commission hopes federal agencies, both individually and using existing mechanisms such as the Federal Library and Information Centers Committee, FLICC, will joint with it in a strong partnership so that we can together do things we might not otherwise be able to do so effectively if we acted alone.

I sincerely appreciate your invitation to me to share my thoughts with you today, and I hope in the months and years ahead you and the National commission will work together to address the increasingly critical problems facing citizens in the Information Society to which we are so rapidly being propelled.

Thank you!