From: James McDonough <epin@access.digex.net>
Date: Thu, 4 May 1995 16:16:16 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: EPIN Summary

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     SUMMARY OF ELECTRONIC PUBLIC INFORMATION NEWSLETTER
                  VOL. 5, NO. 8; April 21, 1995
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INDEX:

1. HOUSE MOVES TO MAKE MORE HISTORY WITH ONLINE INFORMATION
2. OTREMBA: DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM NOT PART OF MISSION
3. PERRITT RECOMMENDS A PILOT PROJECT FOR DATABASE INFO

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1. HOUSE MOVES TO MAKE MORE HISTORY WITH ONLINE INFORMATION:
History of sorts could be made sometime in May, when the
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is scheduled to become
the first House Committee to establish an online tally of Committee
votes. Debbie Marshall of the office of Rep. Vern Elhers, R-IL,
said the Committee is set to establish the new system in a change
of its rules when it meets in May. The Committee is testing a
prototype system that was developed by the House Information
Systems (HIS). According to Marshall, in a recent test the one
major problem encountered occurred at the end of the voting when
the members rushed into the Committee room to cast their votes.
Marshall said the prototype lacked the ability to switch between
members fast enough to keep up with the last minute voting. A new
prototype is being developed to be tested sometime this week.

2. OTREMBA: DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM NOT PART OF MISSION:
Geraldine Otremba, Director of the Legislative Affairs Office of
the Library of Congress (LC), is reported to have told a group of
librarians that the federal depository library program is an
informaton "distribution program" that did not necessarily fit into
the mission of the Library. Daniel O'Mahoney, in-coming Chair of
the Federal Depository Library Council and Documents Librarian at
Brown University, told EPIN the librarians met with Otremba at her
office two weeks. The meeting was requested by Otremba. "She wanted
information about the Depository Library Program," O'Mahoney said.

3. PERRITT RECOMMENDS A PILOT PROJECT FOR DATABASE INFORMATION: The
problem of how to search and use multiple databases that contain
quantitative federal information is taken up by Prof. Henry H.
Perritt, Jr., of Villanova University Law School in a article
appearing in the Bauman Foundation report, "Agenda for Access:
Public Access to Federal Information for Sustainability through the
Information Superhighway." In that report, Perritt explained that
much federal information is contained in databases, whose structure
and definitions are extremely varied and diverse. Such diversity
presents the user with an inordinate number of problems, if the
object is to manipulate and compare information from more than one
database. To deal with such problems, Perritt recommended that the
federal government establish a pilot project utilizing databases
from various federal agencies.


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James McDonough, Editor
Electronic Public Information Newsletter
epin@access.digex.net; Tel:/Fax: (301) 365-3621