Building a Digital Collection: The Making of Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights

This article briefly explores the technical and administrative tasks required to create a digital resource devoted to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

Law and Letters: A Detailed Examination of David Hoffman\u27s Life and Career

David Hoffman (1784-1854) has been cast as America\u27s first legal ethicist and as the founder of one of the nation’s first original methods of legal instruction. While these interpretations of his life are certainly true, Hoffman’s life and career encompassed so much more than that. With few exceptions researchers have focused on Hoffman’s legal career and have left historians to wonder about his other pursuits. This article will review, in individual sections, the many facets of Hoffman\u27s life and career in an effort to provide a more complete picture than has previously existed

Now You See It, Now You Don’t—NARA’s Response to Reclassification: a Summary with Commentary

In a New York Times article published in February 2006 journalist Scott Shane drew attention to a little-known document “reclassification project then underway at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). While the reclassification program conducted by a number of military and civilian intelligence agencies began during the closing year of the Clinton administration, the program, like so many other changes in access to government information, had grown dramatically since 9/11. Responding the public and congressional pressure resulting from the news story Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein, temporarily halted the program and called for a review of the various reclassifications. This piece, prepared as a column for the Government Document Roundtable of the American Library Association, examines the report and some of the issues surrounding the reclassification program

David Hoffman: Life, Letters and Lectures at the University of Maryland 1821-1837

David Hoffman was a prominent pioneer in the establishment of university-based legal education. He helped to found the University of Maryland Law School in 1816 and was its first professor. His A Course of Legal Study (1817) and Legal Outlines (1829) played a critical role in the development of law school curricula and provided guidance to hundreds of antebellum law students and attorneys

American Broadsides and Ephemera Series I, 1760-1990

Review of an electronic database of rare broadsides and ephemera from the colonial period through the end of the 19th Century

This Page Intentionally Blank - Writing the Next Chapter in the Future of the Federal Depository Library Program

This paper reviews the history of the FDLP and offers suggestions on how best to position the program and prepare librarians for the future of government information

It\u27s not all on the net: Identifying, preserving and protecting rare and unique federal documents

The notion that all the government information that researchers will ever need is available, or shortly will be, in a user friendly, electronic form on the Internet, is a far cry from the reality facing most government information professionals. Paper and microfiche, the familiar, tangible products of the Government Printing Office, remain a substantial part of most federal document collections. Although GPO is on the path to a “more electronic” environment it is not likely to become a paperless agency anytime in the next several years, if at all. This paper will offer a brief introduction on means to identify rare and unique federal documents, will discuss some of the preservation options currently being utilized in document collections and will consider if the current interest in digitization offers government information professionals a viable means of responding to the growing preservation problem that rare or unique paper documents present