Report: San Diego Public Library Giving Up Federal Document Depository Status After 137 Years
From The San Diego Union-Tribune:
San Diego’s downtown public library will end its 137-year tenure as an official depository for federal public documents, library officials said this week.
Head librarian Misty Jones said the change was prompted by most federal documents now being available online, adding that the government documents floor of the city’s downtown library gets relatively little use.
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“I don’t see the necessity to keep physical copies and online copies,” she [Jones] said, noting that only seven of 2,600 questions asked of library staff last October were related to government documents. “It’s really about the usage and the changing nature of libraries.”
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Bruce Johnson, who served as San Diego’s deputy library director during a 15-year career that ended in 2015, criticized the city’s move as a “puzzling and vexing” decision.
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Filed under: Libraries, News, Public Libraries
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.