It is a pleasure to inform you that the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) was introduced in Illinois on Friday, February 15 by Senator John G. Mulroe, a Democrat from the 10th District of Illinois. The bill that was introduced, SB 1941, is the culmination of nearly six years of work that began in Illinois in April, 2007, when a National Summit on Authentication of Digital Legal Information was convened by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). Fifty stakeholders from state and federal government, the legal community, and other interested organizations joined with AALL leaders to discuss the issues of authentication, preservation, and permanent public access to primary legal material in digital form. One of the delegates was a member of the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) and Minnesota Revisor of Statutes Michele Timmons, who led the committee that drafted a uniform law approved by ULC in July 2011. UELMA has already been approved in Colorado and California, and is now being considered in six other states besides Illinois: see the bill tracking page maintained by the AALL Government Relations Office.

UELMA provides a framework for ensuring that online legal material is capable of authentication, preserved in all versions, and permanently accessible by the public. The Act was written to be technology-neutral so that as technology advances, new methods can be used to ensure permanent access.

We will be contacting Illinois law librarians soon so that you can help us ensure passage of this important legislation!

More information about Senator Mulroe is available on the General Assembly website.

Keith Ann Stiverson
Director of the Library
Chicago-Kent College of Law
and former AALL Observer to the UELMA Drafting Committee

Building on last year’s successes in Colorado and California, advocates for more trustworthy online legal materials have introduced the Uniform Electric Legal Material Act (UELMA) in five more states so far in 2013. UELMA holds state governments accountable for the preservation, authentication, and permanent public access of state legal materials if published only in electronic form.

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) has created a collection of UELMA resources that provide all the background information you need to learn about the issues and join the effort to get UELMA passed in your state. Included is a bill tracking chart to follow the progress of all the UELMA bills currently pending.

Chapter 1: Introduction to U.S. Legal System by Konya Lafferty

Chapter 2: How to Read Legal Citations by Maribel Nash

Chapter 3: Statutes by Ramsey Donnell

Chapter 4: Cases by Jamie Sommer

Chapter 5: Administrative Law by Deborah Darin

Chapter 6: Municipal Law: The City of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois by Walter Baumann

Chapter 7: Researching outside of Illinois: The Laws of Indiana and Wisconsin by Heidi Frostestad Kuehl

Chapter 8: Free vs. Fee-based Resources by Tom Keefe

Chapter 9: Avoiding the Unauthorized Practice of Law by Tom Gaylord

Chapter 10: Where to Seek Additional Help by Victor Salas

Chapter 11: Recommended Publishers and Resources by Joseph Mitzenmacher

Census Director Robert Groves appears in this video to make a strong case for the ACS, claiming that the measure to eliminate it “devastates the nation’s statistical information about the status of the economy and the larger society.” He concludes: “Modern societies need current, detailed social and economic statistics; the US is losing them.”

I was critical of the Census Bureau for serving up the Statistical Abstract of the United States as a sacrifice to the austerity gods in its 2012 budget request, but it’s good to see the agency fighting for the survival, and integrity, of the ACS.

When FDLP document distribution was entirely tangible, the terms of the bargain and the benefits for both libraries and government were clear. FDLP libraries got rich collections of government documents for their users, and the prestige of being recognized as government information experts and stewards of information collections vital to our democracy. Government agencies got front-line armies of librarians to provide street-level information assistance to citizens, heading off countless government information inquiries without taxing the limited resources of government agencies.

In the digital environment, the bargain is murkier, and the relationship between depository libraries and the federal government, GPO in particular, is more nuanced. Wide access to online sources of government information blunts the role of libraries in general, and depository libraries in particular, as critical entry points to document collections. When citizens do seek government information assistance at libraries, they are less likely to perceive much difference between depository and non-depository libraries, as the nearly equal universe of born-digital documents available in each raises the possibility of “every library a depository.” Meanwhile, as existing print collections lose currency and their use declines, physical documents collections are increasingly viewed by library administrators as more of a burden than a benefit.

From a government official’s perspective, the provision of government information services in libraries is seen as increasingly untethered from an anachronistic system of documents distribution, as the number of libraries with access to born-digital government information now far outpaces the number of depository libraries in the print era. So while the provision of government information services in libraries remains valuable to government, the FDLP is seen as less critical to that provision.

Against this background, three vital elements of the long-standing partnership between government and libraries are too often overlooked and deserve more emphasis in our long-range planning: the expertise on tap at depository libraries, the role of librarians in the development of government information policy and delivery afforded by the FDLP, and the continuation of the FDLP’s long-standing role of providing transparency for and access to the information tools of our democracy.

Expertise

Along with access to document collections, the FDLP has always provided the public with another essential resource: librarians. An understanding of how government works informs an understanding of the publication and dissemination patterns of government bodies, which is often critical in finding government information. If the massive online distribution of born-digital documents has made them more available, it has also made their navigation more difficult than ever. The FDLP has developed a cadre of government information experts who are available to provide training to staff in non-depository libraries, including staff who may work with government information only occasionally or as one of many duties, as well as reference assistance to users who may or may not visit the library in person. The FDLP needs to emphasize library-to-library training efforts like Government Information in the 21st Century, and reference services like those provided by the Government Information Online (GIO) partnership between libraries and GPO.

Information policy

The history of the FDLP demonstrates that government information policy outcomes are better when government and librarians work together. The assertion that libraries have ceded their special role in providing government information now that “it’s all on the Internet” overlooks many issues that we know are important to the needs of our users, like discoverability, preservation, version control, and authentication. Working together, libraries and GPO are beginning to make progress toward solutions to these problems for born-digital documents. The value of bringing GPO staff and depository librarians together is manifested in all kinds of ways that even we in the documents community sometimes overlook. The Federal Digital System (FDsys), for example, would not be what it is, work as well as it does, or promise as much for the future without this close partnership. It’s also unlikely that authentication would have been on anyone’s radar at GPO without the collaboration of the libraries in the FDLP.

Transparency and access

In the print era, the FDLP established itself as the most comprehensive and most successful government transparency program ever implemented, long before transparency became the operational mandate that it is today in government. One lesson from the earliest days of the FDLP is that public access to government information is better secured when libraries, not government, are the stewards of that information. That lesson may be more relevant today than ever before; studies like the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group’s “link rot” reports show that born-digital document collections hosted on government websites are apt to disappear at alarming rates. Access today, if provided without thoughtful management, does not guarantee access tomorrow, much less for the long term. Government information belongs to the public; assuring that access cannot be left to government agencies working independently. Through the FDLP, important rules were established to require agencies to deposit documents to make them publicly available, and while fugitive documents have long undermined those rules, the vigilant oversight provided by librarians and GPO working together remains a critical and effective counterweight to the risk of agencies exercising too much control over the provision of public information.

One stress point posing a particular challenge to FDLP planning is the heavy burden borne by Regional libraries. Adequate distribution of redundant physical copies remains essential, but the model of several dozen massive physical collections held in perpetuity has been overwhelmed by financial and organizational realities that are unpleasant but can’t be wished away. The FDLP needs to respond by providing reasonable assurance that enough comprehensive collections will always be preserved, and the same access whether users are two hours away or twelve hours away from the nearest Regional. Digitization on demand services provided by Regionals, along with a means to provide access to the digital copy through GPO’s Catalog of Government Publications, is one possible alternative.

Colorado has enacted the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act, setting an important example for other states looking to address permanent public access to official, authentic online legal materials. Governor Hickenlooper signed HB 1209 on April 26 after it reached his desk with full support from the House and Senate. Kudos to incoming AALL Government Relations Committee vice chair Susan Nevelow Mart, who worked closely with Senator Morgan Carroll, the majority caucus chair of the Senate and chair of the Judiciary Committee, to ensure passage. Colorado UELMA covers the Constitution, Session Laws, Revised Statutes and Agency Rules.

UELMA is also moving quickly in other states:

In California, Michele Finerty, Judy Janes, David McFadden, Larry Meyer, and other law librarians and allies continue to advocate for passage of UELMA (SB 1075). The Council of California County Law Librarians included UELMA on their list of lobby day priorities, and NOCALL, SANDALL, SCALL and CCCLL sent letters of support to Judiciary Committee and Rules Committee chairs in March. The bill was placed on the consent calendar for the Judiciary Committee and Rules Committee and passed unanimously on April 18 and April 25, respectively. The Senate Appropriations Committee will soon consider the bill. SB 1075 covers the Constitution, Statutes and Codes.

In Connecticut, AALL president Darcy Kirk, SNELLA president Camilla Tubbs and SNELLA Government Relations chair Jonathan Stock and others continue to advocate for Raised Bill No. 418. The bill passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously last month, and it has been placed on the Senate calendar. Raised Bill No. 418 is the most comprehensive of all current UELMA bills, covering the Constitution, General Statutes, Regulations and Reported decisions of the Supreme Court, the Appellate Court and the Superior Court.

To keep track of UELMA in the states, please see our state bill tracking chart.

Cherie Givens, Assessment Specialist Librarian at the Government Printing Office (GPO), provided details about the effort to build a foundation for a national plan for the FDLP and explained why it’s important for all depository libraries to participate. GPO is collecting information now to discover, document, and represent the views of all library types in the program; that data will inform decision-making to craft a national plan most beneficial to both users and libraries.

That information is being collected over three stages. First, each FDLP library is encouraged to complete the library forecast questionnaire sent out by GPO in February. The questionnaire asks for feedback on preservation plans, education needs, and economic and demographic factors affecting depository collections and activities at the individual library level, as well as opinions on the relative value of planned and ongoing initiatives conducted by GPO’s Library Services and Content Management (LCSM) team. Cherie noted that GPO has never before conducted a research effort that surveyed the depository community with as many open-ended questions as this one.

Second, FDLP libraries are taking their completed library forecasts to the state level to develop state forecasts that document the needs, vision, and environment at which FDLP libraries operate locally, and to try to build a consensus on the needs and future roles of depositories in the state. GPO is giving each state considerable leeway about how to conduct its own forecast; while quite a few state efforts are being coordinated by their regional depository libraries, states are free to come together through state government documents groups or any other model that suits them. Peggy Jarrett, Reference & Documents Librarian at the University of Washington Gallagher Law Library, presented a short session about how depositories in the State of Washington are organizing their effort around an ad hoc committee of four librarians in the Northwest Government Information Network (NGIN).

Third, each state will work from its state forecast to develop a state focused action plan, documenting the top five goals and initiatives to be undertaken by depository libraries statewide. GPO staff will look at those state plans to see “where we see great things happening” and how GPO can complement those efforts, Cherie said. GPO asks all that all three stages be completed and submitted by June 30, 2012.

All three streams of data – the individual library forecasts, state forecasts, and state focused action plans – will inform a national plan for the FDLP to respond to the most pressing needs of both users and libraries. Along the way, GPO will author a series of white papers that address some of the issues that arise, and conduct additional online forums to seek comments and continue discussions with the FDLP community. Progress reports will be posted in GPO’s monthly newsletter, FDLP Connection.

Quantitative survey results will be analyzed in house by GPO, and Cherie anticipates that by the time the Depository Library Council meets in October, that data will be available to present to the community; she hopes to have at least some of the qualitative data available to discuss by that time as well. The information gathered “will help us to document the need for change” and to demonstrate that the national plan “represents what the community wants,” she said.

“All of this is designed to shape the direction for our future,” Cherie said. “What we need is to pinpoint where change is needed, and to chart a course to make those changes – to make the changes that would be most beneficial to the users and to our FDLP libraries.”

If those changes require amending the Title 44 mandates governing the program, Cherie said that “GPO will work with the Joint Committee on Printing to make changes where they’re appropriate and to see how we can be as flexible to meet your needs as we can be.”

David Walls, Preservation Librarian for GPO, said that “as you might expect from a document that was last amended or updated in 1962,” Title 44 does not provide any guidance on depository library operations in a digital environment. One of the changes to anticipate is “to specify that we’re talking about information dissemination and not publication distribution,” he said.

Sally Holterhoff, Government Information & Reference Librarian and Associate Professor of Law Librarianship at Valparaiso University Law School and chair of the recently formed AALL Task Force on the FDLP, opened the session by reminding attendees of the close connections between law libraries and the FDLP. In the 1978 House report accompanying the bill that would become PL 95-261, which made academic law libraries eligible for depository status, “Congress took note of the natural fit between the service and research missions of law libraries and the goals of the depository program” Sally said. “The federal government is the source of official, authentic versions of the primary law on which our legal system is based, as well as a wealth of other vital government information. Our vital stake in the program makes it important for law libraries to play a part in the forecast of the future of the program.”

Law librarians have been fighting this battle for a long time, and it’s exciting to have our first victory within reach! Five other states currently have UELMA bills pending.

While it may be the most egregious case so far, it’s not the first time we’ve seen cuts to the public’s access to government information made in the name of fiscal responsibility, and it won’t be the last. I take issue with two assumptions that seem to feed the rationale for cuts like these: first, that the market can do it better, and second, that all the data is out there already and findable on the web.

Regarding the first assumption: the pricing model for the new, privately published version remains to be seen, but the printed version of the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract sold for 40 bucks. (Get your collector’s edition now!) The online version was free. I think we all understand that it costs much more than that to produce it, or else its elimination wouldn’t have been at issue. Unless ProQuest chooses to give it away at a loss, some of those who relied on the former, taxpayer-supported version are likely faced with a loss of access.

So the question boils down to whether we think it’s worth three million dollars a year to place this information in the hands of everyone, or only those who will be able to meet the (presumably) higher price tag of a privately published replacement. In other words, does society have a role in paying for a basic set of statistical data to make sure it’s available to everyone, whether it be for your high school kid’s homework, or a solo practitioner, or someone launching the next startup out of his or her garage?

I’ll leave it to others to decide whether a “no” answer to that question reflects more of a small-government zeal or an elitist one, but I think we’re a smaller, more backward-looking society to conclude that public investments like this don’t pay us back many times over.

Regarding the second assumption: the prefaces to the recent print editions of the Statistical Abstract said that both government and private sources contributed to its mix of data. I checked on what that would mean if we had lost the publication, and found out that about 100 of those private sources, which contributed to 179 tables in the book, required copyright permission, meaning that almost 13 percent of the tables in the book were copyrighted. All but a few of those tables were approved for the online and CD-ROM versions. If ProQuest had not stepped in, that large chunk of copyrighted data would no longer have been publicly accessible by any means, short of separately negotiated agreements with those approximately 100 private sources.

However well the transition to the new version of Statistical Abstract works out – and again, three cheers to ProQuest for keeping the series alive, by whatever means – the administration’s decision to kill the Census Bureau’s version remains indefensible, and sets a miserable example. Like anyone else who has looked at the numbers, I am horrified by the state of our public finances and the threats they pose to our future, but I don’t think that the places where government provides business and the taxpaying public with the most fantastic returns on comparatively miniscule investments are the places you look to first for cuts. Here’s another case to demonstrate that unraveling good government doesn’t yield small government, it yields bad government.