A Case Study of the Librarian-Initiated Publications Discovery Activities in State Level Digital Depositories in the United States

This article describes the novel phenomenon of librarian-initiated publications discovery (LIPD) in state-level digital depositories in the United States. LIPD is a series of actions taken by digital depository librarians to discover and inspect government Web sites and select Web content qualifying as government publications for inclusion in the state depositories. In a current popular model in which states employ OCLC Digital Archive for the depositories, the power of content selection has shifted from government agencies (content producers) to digital depositories. This study systematically documented and compared the LIPD actions in four case states and developed a LIPD process model for descriptive and analytic purposes. It also discusses the impacts and challenges facing the changing practices in preserving government information as historical record. [Article content in Chinese]