Notable government documents 2003: Electronic moves center stage

This past year, as the very nature of government information and its distribution continues to evolve, government agencies, publishers, libraries, and the public have searched for creative ways to deal with change amid diminished budgets and stretched resources. Challenges include new titles issued in electronic-only format, initiatives to digitize older collections, authentication strategies for electronic materials, privatization of government information, disappearing documents, and information on web sites that are temporarily unavailable. The imperative to adapt is struck home by the sobering estimate that within the next five years 95 percent of the current material in the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) will be electronic