On Friday, March 12, 2003, I convened a meeting of experts on digitization and digital preservation at GPO. The meeting was called as the first activity in an initiative with the federal depository library community to digitize the entire legacy collection of U.S. government documents currently held in depositories, estimated to be about 2.2 million items (excluding microfiche). The intent is to ensure that the collection is digitally reformatted for preservation purposes and that access copies are derived from the digitized preservation copies. GPO is committed to the preservation of this information and to making it available, in the public domain, for permanent public access.
The meeting brought together practicing experts in the field of digital format conversion, as well as representatives of funding and other coordinating organizations, to discuss the current standards and specifications for the creation of digital objects for preservation and to put forward a proposed set of minimum requirements for digitizing documents for this project.
The report is available at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/about/reports/preservation.pdf. Comments can be submitted online at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/about/reports/preservation.html, or by e-mail to jrussell@xxxxxxx. Comments must be received by Friday, May 7, 2004.
This issue is on the agenda for discussion at the Depository Library Council meeting in St. Louis on Monday, April 19, from 8:30 to 10 a.m.
Please post this information to other appropriate lists.
Judy Russell
Judith C. Russell (jrussell@xxxxxxx)
Managing Director, Information Dissemination (Superintendent
of Documents)
U.S. Government Printing
Office
Phone: 202-512-0571
Fax: 202-512-1434