ASERL Wins IMLS Grant with UK as Partner

ASERL has been awarded a $328K IMLS National Leadership Grants to support ongoing development of ASERL's Collaborative Federal Depositories Project. Here the description from the award announcement:

The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL), in partnership with the University of Kentucky and the University of South Carolina, will create collaborative centers of excellence among federally designated regional depository libraries to improve access to federal government publications and create a model for improving depository library services and operations. Working within the current legal mandate and policies of the Federal Depository Library Program, ASERL and its partners will test a plan to create a comprehensive collection of tangible, legacy federal documents in two subject areas, with cataloging and provision of expert subject-based reference support services. The University of Kentucky will focus on Works Progress Administration documents; the University of South Carolina will address Department of Education documents. The project will document and test the feasibility of a model that could lead to the creation of subject-based centers of excellence among all depository libraries and seeks to provide workable solutions to address the increasing cost of managing, preserving, and providing access to large collections of federal government publications. This project will provide a model for the future development of shared current and digital federal depository collections and related services, and aims to influence the development of policies and workflows of shared legacy print archives of nongovernment material.

Details about the CFDP Project can be found via the ASERL website, www.aserl.org (click on the link in the listing on the left. Sandee McAninch will be spending about 15% of her time on this project as will other staff in the CTS division.

FDsys Goes Live

From American Libraries Direct

FDsys goes live

Miriam A. Drake writes: “The U.S. Government Printing Office hit the switch in early February and brought up its new digital system, FDsys, that will ultimately replace GPO Access. FDsys is an information management system that enables GPO to gather, process, preserve, archive, and make U.S. government information available to the public. It currently provides access to more than 154,000 documents. Document migration from GPO Access is expected to be completed by mid-2009 when the system will provide access to more than 300,000 documents.”... Information Today, Feb. 17