A new order of things: The political future of documents librarians and a national system of federal depository libraries

This article places the efforts of documents librarians to reform the Federal Depository Library Program (DLP) in an historical and political perspective. As with many other earlier efforts of reform, the recent “Reinventing Access to Federal Government Information,” held in October 1993, would raise doubts, once again, about the public institutions and national information policy arrangements that support the Government Printing Office and its DLP. The specific reforms calling for centralized information should be abandoned. The depository library system's political power and public convictions were never fully expressed through the program's various national administrative incarnations. Its true community purpose flows from the local conditions and information needs of each depository library community. Democratic distribution of public information must begin and end within these local areas and regions.