F. Woody Horton, Ph.D.
Director
National Commission on Libraries
and Information Sciences
1100 Vermont Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20005-3552

RE: Comments on the Draft Final Report: A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination

Dear Dr. Horton:

First, I wanted to congratulate the Commission on a methodical and extensive review of this policy area. The draft report contains a number of important recommendations, and truly new thinking on this subject.

Not to diminish the positive aspects of the report, I am submitting these comments to address a factual issue we believe needs correction. The section in question is section 10.D. Joint ventures and private sector partnerships are often a preferred modality, rather than government trying to “go it alone” on page 86.

The text discusses the U.S. Industry & Trade Outlook (USITO), which is jointly produced by The McGraw-Hill Companies and the U.S. Department of Commerce. The pertinent part of the section states, “However, the mix of public and private (copyrighted) information in the publication made it difficult for users to know what information was protected by copyright and what was in the public domain.”

Just as in the report, the importance of this issue was recognized during the prepublication discussion of the USITO. The McGraw-Hill Companies has a long-held policy position that supports open access to government information. The Corporation took several steps to address the copyright issue. First, the following statement appears in the first pages, co-located with the copyright notice: “Portions of this publication contain work prepared by officers and employees of the United States Government as part of such person’s official duties. No copyright is claimed as to any chapter or section whose designated author is an employee of the United States Government, except that copyright is claimed to tables, graphs, maps, or charts in any chapter or sections in the publication if the sole designated source is other than the United States Government.”

Additionally, each chapter designates its author and the author’s organization. This information is located at the end of the chapter. This designation signifies that if a chapter was produced by a government official then copyright is not claimed, whereas a chapter produced by an employee of The McGraw-Hill Companies is covered by copyright. For example, in the 1999 USITO, chapter 4 was written by Neal C. Davis of the U.S. Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration), whereas chapter 5, Electricity Production and Sales, was written by Paul Kemezis of Electric Utility Week, a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies. Along with these designations, each chart, graph or other illustration clearly identifies the source of the information and thus its copyright status. I have attached several pages from the 1999 USITO that demonstrate this fact for your review.

With this information in hand, I hope that the Commission will strike this erroneous text from the report, or make a modification to reconcile it with the effort undertaken to avoid the situation described.

If you have any questions or need for additional information please contact me at (202) 383-3702 or paul_degiusti@mcgraw-hill.com.

Respectfully,

Paul A. De Giusti
Director
Washington Affairs