Present: Robin Clausen (Pierce County Library), Carlos Diaz (The Evergreen State College), Jean Hartman (Spokane Public Library), Cass Hartnett (University of Washington), Herrick Heitman (Washington State Library), Peggy Jarrett (University of Washington Law Library), Jan Jorgensen (Central Washington University), Justin Otto (Eastern Washington University) Judy Solomon (Seattle Public Library), Janice Thomas (University of Washington), Marilyn Von Seggern (Washington State University)

Host Merri Hartse, Electronic Resources Librarian, Chastek Law Library provided a tour of her facility for all attendees. The first floor of the library contains the offices for staff and in the public areas the Greenan Reading Room (reference and practice materials), Kelley Reading Room (tax materials and Washington State materials), Boise Cascade Rare Book Room, circulation desk, IT help desk, reference desk, computer lab and moot court facility. On the heavily used second floor is another computer lab, study rooms, federal, state and regional materials, advocacy materials, and microforms. Additional study rooms are located on the third floor along with the American and foreign law materials, oversized collections, periodicals and indices and older state materials. Many older items on this floor are stored in compact shelving. Photocopiers for the public are located on each floor in separate rooms to accommodate the quiet study atmosphere of the facility. The library has been the recipient of countless monetary donations and to honor these alumni and donors almost all of the rooms are named for these individuals and have plaques acknowledging their contributions.

The Chastek Law Library opened in 2000 and offers wide expansive views of the Spokane River and downtown Spokane. All of its federal documents collection is cataloged and accessible through the online catalog. It was noted that one of the law school requirements is that all of the first year students must learn their legal research through the print materials and then they are allowed to use the electronic resources in their second year. Consequently, there are a lot of the print documents. In addition, the general public can use the library's resources and receive assistance from reference staff.

• Carlos A. Diaz: noted that their current dean will be leaving at the end of this year. The facility is currently undergoing remodeling and the building will be entirely closed from June 14-29. The remodeling plans include the removal of the large staircase, the building of a new staircase, and the addition of a forty-inch television behind the government documents area which will to be used to promote the collection and to televise the upcoming elections.
  
  
• Herrick Heitman: spoke on the plans for the new heritage building including space allocations. He noted that the plans look good for the collections, preservation and shelving. The individuals who spoke at the last NGIN meeting on preservation activities at the Washington State Library had recently made a video production of their tips and techniques for preserving documents which was submitted to GPO for comment. The production entitled, 'Conservation Kitchen' was well received by GPO. He further noted that Wayfinder, the OCLC catalog, is now being utilized by WSL and that staff members have received training on it.
  
  
• Marilyn Von Seggern: noted that there are several new administrators on the campus including a new president and a new dean of libraries. In addition there are other positions that need to be filled. This means a new change in emphasis and new directions for the library and the entire institution.
  
  
• Jean Hartman: reported that the library has a new home page. She has initiated a blog for federal documents and legal resources. Early one morning when no one was inside the building, an automobile hit the exterior wall of the Technical Services department which caused extensive interior damage. This resulted in the shifting of staff and work areas to accommodate the required repairs. She is contemplating the centennial of the institution's depository status in 2010 and is working on collecting ideas for the event.
  
  
• Robin Clausen: announced that she is no longer with the Tacoma Public Library as she accepted a new position at the Sumner Library two months ago. TPL is undergoing many staffing changes and she is uncertain who will replace her.
  
  
• Cass Hartnett: announced that the state consortium had decided to eliminate the ProQuest databases and replace them with the ones provided by Ebsco. As such all state colleges and universities will be making this transition. UW has also implemented the new Wayfinder catalog. It was reported that the students love it and the staff hate it. The digital serial set, a Readex product, is available for access at both the Bothell and Tacoma campuses. She also commented about her most recent government documents class of library school students and the wonderful projects they prepared as part of her curriculum. Cass will be assuming the ALA chair of the Government Documents Roundtable on July 1. Congratulations and applause were extended to Cass. She also noted that Marilyn and Justin Otto are very active in GODORT. Marilyn is on the Nominating Committee and Justin is the Federal Documents Task Force Coordinator.
  
  
• Justin Otto: noted that everything is new to him as he just started his new position in September. Only fifteen percent of his work assignments and areas of responsibilities are allocated to government documents work. He has been working with Sue Anderson on the collection but EWU is only a sixteen percent selective as they simply do not have the space. His concentration is on supporting the curriculum, tightening the emphasis and focusing on regional offerings. He, too, noted the transition to Wayfinder and Ebsco and indicated that everyone needs to be trained. Jan Jorgensen (Central Washington University) has been working on a thorough weeding as CWU is running out of space and the entire collection has never been weeded before. Her goal is to get many of the uncataloged items entered into the catalog. Over the past several years the institution has experienced a significant vacancy rate at twenty-five percent due to inadequate leadership. This has lead to stressful situations and dissention between the tenured and non-tenured faculty. Hopefully, a new dean will be in place by October 2008. She has been asked to perform a program review in the library and sought input from those in attendance. Marilyn offered that they had completed a library program review at WSU and that she would send Jan the report.
  
  
• Peggy Jarett: commented on issues surrounding the implementation of the new catalog, the increased acquisition costs of law materials and the subsequent challenges with a static budget. She noted that the Washington State bills are no longer being printed and the efforts that the UW Law Library staff has gone to in their attempts to purchase them with little understanding from the head of the bill room at the state level. The library was closed from a month due to serious threats and they have now noticed that the patrons who returned are only law students and staff. The undergraduates and the general public have not returned. Instead, the general public moved to the social work library which is now causing problems for them. The 2008 American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting and conference will be held in Portland on July 12-15. Peggy noted that while the conference is expensive it is a good one as it includes programs on federal government updates.
  
  
• Judy Solomon: indicated that 2008 is the one hundred anniversary of her institution's designation as a federal depository. Library Director Deborah Jacobs will be leaving at the end of the bond work. They have been working to eliminate the storage collection of federal publications currently at 11,000 linear feet. As there are only six hundred shelves allocated for these publications within the Central Library the remaining items including the serial set will be offered to other institutions.

Herrick gave a short presentation on a training program for non-government librarians. The grant-funded program, Government Information in the 21st Century which runs out in September 2008 was initiated and developed by long-time University of Colorado at Boulder regional depository librarian Tim Byrne for the five-state area (AZ, CO, NM, UT, WY), is based on the 'train the trainer' philosophy and includes very broad training modules such as business, immigration, basic legal resources, etc. The program will be available on Web Junction.

NGIN Business Meeting:

Approval of Fall 2007 Minutes: Following lunch at the student cafeteria, President Judy Solomon called the business meeting to order at 1:30 p.m. The minutes of the last meeting had been posted on the NGIN web site for several months and copies were also distributed by Secretary Robin Clausen. Carlos moved and Marilyn seconded the approval of the minutes. The motion passed.

Fiscal Year vs. Calendar Year: It was reiterated that at the last meeting it was decided to change the NGIN fiscal year to a calendar year beginning in 2008.

Financial Statement: In the financial report Treasurer Jean Hartman noted a balance of $866.08 as of 4/15/08. The expenses during the month included a new receipt book for $3.89. Jean was asked to prepare and send the honorariums to each of the presenters at the two NGIN co-sponsored programs at the recent OLA/WLA conference. In addition, she was to check on any expenses related to the rooms for the programs. New memberships have been received from individuals in Portland and Alaska along with Justin Otto. Robin moved and Jan seconded the acceptance of the treasurer's report. The motion passed.

President Elect/Program Chair Election: Judy noted the vacancy in the President-Elect/Program Chair position and that elections are to be carried out during the spring meeting. A brief discussion followed regarding the requirements for the position and that most current NGIN members had already served in that capacity. Justin Otto volunteered to accept the position. No other nominees were presented from the floor. Robin moved and Cass seconded the motion to elect Justin Otto to the position of President-Elect/Program Chair. The motion passed.

Next NGIN Meeting and GPO Meetings: It was announced that the fall meeting would be held on the campus of Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. Rob Lopresti will be hosting the event and presenting 'the scene of the crime' regarding the recent theft of books, documents, and maps, the discovery of some of the items for sale on eBay and the resulting arrest of the individual involved. The fall meeting and conference of the Federal Depository Library Council is scheduled for October 19-22 in Washington, D.C. and the spring meeting will be held in Tampa, Florida.

State Plan: Herrick Heitman talked briefly on the state plan and apologized for not getting it out in 2007 or early 2008. He felt that due to the fact that there will be many changes in library directors across the state this year and that waiting for signatures from these new individuals would be more beneficial he will be holding off the distribution of the state plan until after the fall 2008 NGIN meeting.

Regional Librarian Report: Herrick relayed his thoughts from the recent FDLC meeting and felt that the new Public Printer Robert Tapella is trying to build bridges and, to-date, no replacement has been named for the acting Superintendent of Documents Rick Davis, who has already turned down the position several times. GPO took over project management from the Harris Corporation for the FedSys project while the Harris Corporation will continue to provide software improvements and updates. The web-harvesting project has become labor intensive as GPO staff must look at each document for completeness, fit to the program, appropriateness for public distribution and issues of privacy. He commented on an example where over two hundred minutes of staff time were spent on one document. Recent statistics on the project noted that 62% percent of the items were new publications, 18.5% of the items were already cataloged, 3% were distributed in tangible format, 2% were out of scope.

A question was asked regarding the reporting of lost documents to GPO. Carlos stated that he has made a real effort to report them and Peggy commented that the UW Law Library has also reported lost documents and others nodded that they, too, have used the services. She further noted that it is important to be very specific in your emails and to provide as much information as possible. Peggy asked who is working on retaining, printing out and cataloging these and other electronic documents. She stated that the law school staff members have taken on some of these duties, in particular, for the Washington State legal materials.

At the regional meeting, the topics presented and issues discussed included: regional staff changes including seven new regional depository librarians, small attendance at the spring meeting, a pilot project being conducted by the University of Montana on utilizing a wiki to discuss recon projects, training of new depository librarians, Microsoft Live presentation, and the GPO letter/survey to regional library directors. Herrick commented that both he and Washington State Librarian Jan Walsh felt that the letter and survey had a negative slant and that they, at times, struggled to complete the questionnaire.

Comments from Members:

• Cass Hartnett commented on the changes felt throughout the profession with regards to reference service. The easy questions have left the reference desk as they are now being researched or answered online by the patrons themselves. In academic libraries the reference questions have become real multi-day research questions which makes it difficult to train new librarians. The UW is still involved in retrospective cataloging of documents and it may take another two to five years or more to complete.
  
  
• Marilyn Von Seggern: stated that she and Sue Anderson were talking about the possibility of NGIN joining WLA as an interest group. The history of the formation of NGIN was revisited and members were asked to think about the issue of becoming WLA members.
  
  
• NGIN Brochure and Business Cards: The idea of NGIN business cards and brochures was presented and Carlos volunteered to develop templates and route it to the general membership for comments.

NGIN Sponsorship at OLA/WLA 2008: Carlos commented on the positive responses to the NGIN programs from the 2008 OLA/WLA conference. The 2009 Washington Library Association conference will be held in Spokane and members should begin thinking about programming opportunities for this event. NGIN co-sponsored two programs with the Oregon Library Association's Documents Interest Group of Oregon (DIGOR):

• Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: See how libraries are putting locally relevant web-based information into the hands of Oregon and Washington communities. Explore how libraries can work together to make the documents and statistics of cities and counties easier to find and use. This program will examine current cooperative projects at the UW and UO, and recommend other fruitful areas of collaboration.
  Janice M. Thomas, Ted Smith, Pam Roberts, Fred Ward
  
  
• Welcoming Those Who Cross Our Borders: Resources for New Immigrants and Refugees An increasing number of government services are being offered exclusively via the Internet, and many agencies are encouraging citizens to go to their local library for assistance. New immigrants, who come to this country in all ages, races, and languages, are in particular need of assistance in identifying resources for obtaining citizenship, options for education and financial assistance, and information about community services. Ed Sale, from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will provide an overview of the services and resources offered by the agency. Jane Salisbury from Multnomah County Libraries will join the discussion and offer creative alternatives and suggestions for libraries to use these and other resources when seeking to improve their outreach and services to immigrants.
  Ed Sale, Jane Salisbury
  
  Comments on the NGIN Programs were submitted to the NGIN members in attendance.

Word of Appreciation: A word of appreciation was extended to Gonzaga University School of Law, Chastek Law Library for hosting the event and, in particular, to Merri Hartse (who had excused herself earlier in the day) for conducting the tour and responding to questions

The business meeting adjourned at 3:17 p.m.

Next meeting:
Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington
Fall 2008

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