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Library Associations Thank House Committee for Supporting Free Access to Government Documents

fdsys-logoOn May 30, ARL joined the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), American Library Association (ALA), Medical Library Association (MLA), and Special Libraries Association (SLA) in a letter (PDF) to the Committee on House Administration, thanking the committee for rejecting the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) recommendation that the US Government Printing Office (GPO) consider charging public user fees for access to government documents via the Federal Digital System (FDsys).

The letter begins: 

We write to thank you for your letter to Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks dated May 21, 2013, expressing your support for the Government Printing Office’s (GPO) role in providing no-fee permanent public access to government information and rejecting a proposal by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to charge end user fees for FDsys content. Members and staff of our associations participated in the Congressionally-mandated NAPA study of GPO which resulted in the report, “Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age.” As library associations committed to public access to government information, we strongly opposed NAPA’s suggestion that GPO charge the public fees for access to FDsys content…

Read the complete letter (PDF).


The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.

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