Libraries and government information: the past is not necessarily prologue

• Published in: Government information quarterly Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 1 - 7
• Main Author: Shuler, John A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 2002
• Subjects: Depository libraries; Documents; Electronic publishing; Government Agencies; Government information; Government Policy; Influence on; Information; Information work; Libraries; Records (Documents); Technological Innovations; USA
• ISSN: 0740-624X; 1872-9517
• DOI: 10.1016/S0740-624X(01)00099-5

This special issue of Government Information Quarterly considers how libraries, while they cope within a complicated information policy environment, will seek to collect, organize, distribute or preserve "information artifacts" born from a public record that is increasingly digitized. The traditional librarian perspectives of government information collection development/service need to change as public authorities continue their decade-long integration of sophisticated information technologies within their bureaus. The result of this information uplift is a policy/administrative framework less "governmental" & more comparable to the corporate world. Librarians, for the most part, still place the tangible "document" of "publication" as the bibliographic centerpiece that sets the stage to understand a governmental process or event. Because of this perspective, librarians support an information policy that assures free & open access to all types of public documents organized within "public" depository library collections. These libraries are further sustained by a national system of indexing & or bibliographic control that favors centralization. Public managers & elected officials seek to build & sustain a process that ensures fairness, accountability, privacy, security, efficiency, as well as preservation of the public record. Through this sustainability, they promise citizens immediate access & knowledge about government activities, & consider this as the proper foundation for a rational information policy. Public managers, when endorsing the implementation of electronic government initiatives, see the advantages of information technology more & more as an enhancement to citizen services first, & improvement in public administration second. Adapted from the source document.