It appears that
tomorrow the
House Committee on Administration will hold a
hearing on the effort to reform Title 44 and the Federal Depository Library system. As you may know, any reformation of Title 44 could have significant effects on the public's right to accessible, free government information. You may also know that the effort to reform Title 44 has gotten *very* little public attention, and very little input from the library/archives community.
I'm attaching, here, a list of the members of that committee, as well as a list of the Senators who sit on the related
Joint Committee on Printing.
If you live in Minnesota, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nebraska, or in Philadelphia, Durham, Northern Virginia, Northern California, Champaign-Urbana (Illinois), or Atlanta (among other places), you have a representative on one or both of these committees.
Perhaps you would like to
call or email them today to tell them your thoughts about Title 44 and the importance of a legal guarantee to free public access to government information? If you do, you may wish to
urge them to ensure that all changes to Title 44 be directly tied to one or more of the four principles put forth by experienced government documents librarians and freegovinfo.info, which are:- The law should ensure the privacy of users of government info.
- The law should address the long-term preservation challenges posed by born-digital government information.
- The law should protect free access and free use.
- The law should modernize the scope of government information covered by chapter 19 for the digital age.
For more info about Title 44 and the threats facing it, see:
- The DLF's open letter to Congress about reforming Title 44;
- Freegovinfo.info's writings about the importance of Title 44 (see here, for instance);
- This post on the DLF blog about threats to Title 44.
Please feel free to share the text of any emails you send, or the outcome of any conversations you have with your representatives and their staffers, with the rest of us!
Be well,
Rachel
+
Members of the House Committee on Administration:
- Gregg
Harper (R-MS)
- Robert
Brady (D-PA)
- represents central and South Philadelphia
- Rodney
Davis (R-IL)
- Represents areas including Bond, Champaign, Madison, McLean and Sangamon counties, and all of Christian, Calhoun, De Witt, Greene, Jersey, Macon, Macoupin, Montgomery and Piatt counties, as of the 2011
redistricting which followed the 2010 census. All or parts of Bloomington, Champaign, Decatur,
Godfrey, Taylorville and Urbana
- Zoe
Lofgren (D-CA)
- represents San José and Santa Clara County
- Barbara
Comstock (R-VA)
- represents Northern Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley
- Jamie
Raskin (D-MD)
- represents Carroll, Frederick, and
Montgomery County
- Mark
Walker (R-NC)
- represents the north central portion of the state; parts of Guilford,
Alamance, Durham, Granville, and Orange counties, and all of Caswell, Person,
Rockingham, Surry, and Stokes counties
- Adrian
Smith (R-NE)
- Barry
Loudermilk (R-GA)
Senators on the Joint Committee
on Printing:
- Senator Richard Shelby,
Alabama
- Senator Pat Roberts, Kansas
- Senator Roger Wicker,
Mississippi
- Senator Amy Klobuchar,
Minnesota
- Senator Tom Udall. New
Mexico
