Publishing trends within state government: The situation in North Carolina

Abstract

The State Library of North Carolina is responsible for ensuring public access to North Carolina state government publications and maintaining a permanent state documents depository collections. Over the last 7 years, state agencies have increasingly disseminated information in digital formats via the Internet, posing challenges for the State Library to collect, manage, and preserve state publications for public access. In order to address these challenges, the State Library initiated a multiyear research project to develop a plan for managing digital state publications for permanent public access. The first year of the project was devoted to gaining knowledge of current publishing practices by surveying state agency staff and reviewing a selection of state agency publications. The article discusses the results of this research, using North Carolina as an example to illustrate many of the challenges of providing permanent public access to digital information, including rapidly changing Web sites, technological obsolescence, lack of standards for preservation and access, complex political considerations, and difficulty obtaining sufficient funding. The article concludes with recommendations for actions that state libraries and other memory institutions should take to adequately preserve and provide access to digital government information.