The primary clientele of most federal libraries and information centers is agency personnel, not the general public. However, as the Commission’s study points out, for federal information on the Web, there is an increasing convergence between requirements for public access and improvements needed to ensure accessibility inside government.

The views I will express today are my own. I do not represent the views of the Library of Congress, nor do my views represent an established consensus of the federal library and information community. My views are based on my knowledge of federal library programs from six years as Executive Director for the Committee and twenty-six years as a federal librarian.

I cannot speak to the draft legislation, which I have not yet reviewed. But I believe the Commission’s findings, conclusions and recommendations as represented in their draft report are generally on target. There is much yet to be done to fully exploit the Internet as a medium for providing access to federal information, not to mention providing access to the federal information that exists only in print form.

The report correctly identifies one of the solutions: Making information dissemination an explicitly budgeted responsibility, for which Congress authorizes resources to agencies to identify, acquire, catalog, index and disseminate the results of government research.

If every agency took responsibility for not only producing information, but also organizing that information, inventorying it, indexing it, and maintaining records of what is available, the job of the agencies with central dissemination responsibility--like GPO and NTIS--would be much easier.

But many agencies execute their dissemination responsibilities only halfway: They consider that their job ends when they acquire the research results, or maybe even when they print them or put them up on the Web. They do not always see federal information from a potential user’s perspective and create systems which ensure that all who want the information will find a path to it.

Nevertheless, most large federal agencies have staff well trained to develop systems to organize content for access: their librarians.

However, agency publishers, Webmasters, CIOs don’t always think of their libraries when they start to create systems for access. In fact, in recent years, some federal libraries have been downsized or outsourced or even closed under the assumption that in the Internet environment, libraries are no longer essential.

It is clear from the state of federal information dissemination, as described in your report, that agencies need more not less talent to organize their information, whether digital or hardcopy.

On p. 54 of the draft report, it states: "In many cases federal agencies have no central information content management organization…." I submit that many agencies have such an organization: It’s their library or information center.

Given adequate resources, information professionals throughout the federal government can help execute some of the recommendations of this draft report to improve access to government information for both internal and external users.

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this hearing.