Your
main difficulty is that the library director does not have the authority to
bind the federal government. Thus, any formal agreements between libraries have
to be passed through lawyers and spelled out pretty completely, much as a
contract to access to a commercial database is spelled out in detail. While the
library director may initiate, negotiate and monitor a contract, it is the financial
officer who signs off on the contract and pays the check.
So,
if the state library agrees to a Farmington Plan to collect materials on caves,
the federal library agrees to collect materials on tunnels with the purpose of
reducing costs and sharing resources, what happens when Congress suspends the
budget of the federal library? Or the federal agency’s mission changes,
and they no longer need information on tunnels, but now have an increased need
for info on caves? Or is this happens to the state library? What happens if the
library is contracted out- does the contractor have an obligation to maintain a
collection agreement with another non-federal library? If so, that will need to
be spelled out in the contract proposal so the costs can be factored in. Is
there a financial liability to continue to collect information that isn’t
mission supported in order to fulfill an older agreement?
Since these actions are
beyond the control of the library director, any commitments should be binding
on the agency or departmental level. Remember also that the primary mission of
federal libraries is to support their agency. The public access is secondary.
Thus, I can go to the Library of Congress and use their collection, but I can’t
take out books and walk home with them. The mission of the Library of Congress
is to serve the Congress- all else, including service to other federal
libraries, is secondary.
When public access is
permitted, it also must be non-discriminatory. Thus, a federal library that
offers a library card or checkout privileges to the public, must make it
available to all the public. It would be difficult to justify giving checkout privileges
to the students of one local school or university, and not to others. Thus,
federal libraries exchange inter-library loans with other libraries, and not to
individuals.
Informal agreements and
policy exceptions are common, but they are also dependent upon certain people
on the staff. When those people leave, retire, transfer or are RIFfed, many
times those informal agreements fall apart. The consequences can then be hurt
feelings (“You always did it this way when John was there.”) and
resentment.
And finally, any
agreements should be to the advantage of the federal library. They should not
be done to increase the stature of one person, or for personal reasons of
friendliness to individual non-federal employees. They should always
demonstrate some sort of advantage to the federal library or its mission, and
should not show a loss.
Gift and exchange agreements
between federal libraries and other organizations can be informal or formal. If
there was a document exchange agreement between a federal agency and another
state government agency, such as between an EPA library and a state EPA organization,
then someone should actually monitor the agreement to insure that other agency
fulfills their side of the agreement. This may not be an equitable agreement,
in that often the federal organization gives out more documents and higher
value documents than they receive in exchange, or vice versa, but it is
important that the agreement be monitored to show that the federal library at least
gets the basic benefit of the exchange of the state EPA documents. This means
that some of the library staff, as part of their duties taken away from other
jobs that need to be done, are needed to check on these obligations, and force
the decision by management to suspend the agreement if the principles aren’t
observed by the other party.
Also, check of the
Handbook of Federal Librarianship at: http://www.loc.gov/flicc/pubs/federalhandbook.pdf
Good luck in your
research. Actually, this is a good subject for a journal review article for
federal libraries.
Lee
R. Lee Hadden
Geospatial Information Library (GIL)
Topographic
ATTN: CEERD-TO-I (Hadden)
(703) 428-9206
From:
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 5:28
PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Question: federal to
state/ local relations
Could anyone recommend training or location of
information regarding public relations between federal and state governments? e.g.
Fed libraries and State libraries. Or just in general.
Thanks,
[log in to unmask]