Maryland: "Timely Government Info Will Now Cost $190"
As publishing becomes easier and cheaper the State of Maryland begins charging for a publication that was free. What’s going on in Annapolis?
From The Daily Record:
Instead of a service that was once free, Maryland citizens and businesses will now have to pay a $190 annual subscription fee to the Secretary of State’s office if they wish to access the most timely government information published by the Maryland Register.
Updates to current and proposed state regulations, hearing notices, executive and legal opinions, and more, were available online to the public every other Friday for free, and had been for years.
Now, due to procedure changes at the Register — a bi-weekly, state-run regulations publication — those who can’t or won’t subscribe will have to wait about five extra days to view information that had been available in real-time for years.
The Register also eliminated an easy-to-use HTML viewing option that free users easily accessed. Users will now have to scroll through a roughly 60-page document to find an individual piece of information by using the remaining PDF option.
Read the Rest of the Story (It’s a Good One)
Filed under: News, Patrons and Users, Publishing
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.