2005 FLICC Forum

FLICC/FEDLINK Video Presentation

statue in great hall

2005 FLICC Forum on Federal Information Policies
"Evolving Information Policy:
Open Access and New Constraints"

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This two-session video presents the 2005 FLICC Forum in its entirety.

Forum Call
The increase in electronic publication and the availability of the World Wide Web provide new opportunities to expand access to literature resulting from federally funded research and archive that material to ensure its long term availability. Like open access initiatives in academia and publishing trends in both the commercial and nonprofit sectors, the Federal Government is exploring ways to enhance access to valuable scholarly information resources.

Though the argument for broad access to health and medical research funded by taxpayers is particularly compelling, similar arguments could be made for most government research: Should the public have to pay a private sector publisher to learn from research supported by tax dollars?

At the same time, the threat of terrorism and other security issues have motivated new exemptions from open access. In addition, Executive Order 13233, issued by President George W. Bush in November 2001 to implement the Presidential Records Act, authorizes indefinite restriction of public access to archived presidential documents that, under previous rules, were largely available to the public after 12 years. The President and Congress continually struggle to achieve the proper balance between citizen rights in accessing information and government responsibility in protecting certain categories of information.

What are the implications of these divergent initiatives, which on one hand promise unprecedented access to information generated by government funding, while on the other, take from the public purview information historically accessible to all?

Session 1

This first session features the opening of the forum with Kathryn M. Mendenhall, Interim Executive Director, and Dr. James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, presenting the annual FLICC Awards for Federal Librarianship to the Federal Library and Information Centers of the Year, the Federal Librarian of the Year, and the Federal Library Technician of the Year.

The awards program is followed by a keynote address by Elias A. Zerhouni, National Institutes of Health. Zerhouni addresses the new NIH policy to make the final versions of peer-reviewed manuscripts that report results of research supported in whole or in part by NIH funding available through its digital repository, PubMed Central.

The morning panel discussion reviews the arguments for and against broad and open access to health and medical research funded by taxpayers. Jane Bortnick Griffith, assistant director, National Library of Medicine, moderates the panel. Sharon Terry, president and CEO, Genetic Alliance, Brian Nairn, CEO, Elsevier Health Sciences Division, and David Stern, director, Yale Science Libraries & Information Services, are the panelists who explore whether the public should pay a private sector publisher for research supported by tax dollars.

Session 2

The afternoon sessions begins with an executive keynote address by J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). He will discuss the struggle to balance a citizen's right to access with the government's responsibility to protect certain categories of information.

The afternoon panel of Sharon Fawcett, the deputy assistant archivist at NARA, Michael A. Domaratza, Co-Chair, Homeland Security Working Group, Federal Geographic Data Committee, U.S. Geological Survey, and Elizabeth Withnell, the chief counsel of the Privacy Office at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), discusses initiatives to protect information. The panel is moderated by Kathy Eighmey, coordinator of Library Services, Department of Homeland Security.

Following the panel, Jeffrey Seifert, Analyst in Information Science and Technology policy in the Congressional Research Services at the Library of Congress ask participants to explore the implications for federal librarians in an evolving information environment that offers unprecedented access to information generated by government funding but denies access to information historically available to all.

May 2005