ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 4 6 8 / C&RL News O M B C ircular A - 1 3 0 revision The long-pending proposed revision of Circular A-130, Management of Federal In­ formation Resources, was is­ sued by the Office of Man­ agement and Budget on April 29 (57 Federal Register, pp. 18296-306). Comments on the pro p o sed revision are due to OMB by August 27. For further information, con­ tact Peter Weiss at OMB at (202) 395-4814. ALA will be submitting comments. Preliminary analysis indicates that the pro­ posal softens the emphasis in the current cir­ cular on maximum feasible reliance on the pri­ vate sector. However, the proposed revision devotes considerable attention to the Govern­ ment Printing Office Depository Library Pro­ gram, but excludes electronic information from the definition of government publications to be included in depository distribution. OMB says agencies “should provide appropriate elec­ tronic information products to the GPO for in­ clusion in the depository library program inso­ far as budgetary resources permit.” Copyright-ERIC D atab ase Language added by Rep. Major Owens (D-N.Y.) to a pending education bill would prohibit any clearinghouse or other entity from copyright­ ing or charging a royalty or other fee for the use or redissemination of any database or other information produced with assistance under the ERIC subsection. The bill (HR 4014) would reauthorize the educational research and dis­ semination activities of the Department of Edu­ cation and is now awaiting floor action. The Owens amendment, which ALA sup­ ported in a May 18 letter, was a reaction to the recent ERIC database copyright established by the ERIC Processing and Reference Facility con­ tractor. The ERIC (Educational Resources In­ formation Center) database, the world’s largest source of education information, contains more than 735,000 abstracts of documents and jour­ nal articles on education research and practice. Carol C. Henderson is deputy executive director, d i d Washington Office, NU_ALAWASH@CUA W a sh in g to n H o tlin e Carol C. Henderson The federal g o v ern m en t subsidizes the entire cost of developing the ERIC data­ base by a contractor who operates the ERIC facility. The contractor requested permission to copyright the database, an action agreed to by Department of Edu­ cation officials. C op yrigh t-leg al com pilations A House subcommittee on intellectual property held a hearing on May 14 on HR 4426, a bill introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to exempt from copyright protection the names, numbers, and ci­ tations of state and federal laws and regulations, and the volume and page numbers of state and federal regulations and judicial opinions. Reg­ istrar of Copyrights Ralph Oman said the Copy­ right Office supported the general principle of the bill, but felt it might be unnecessary since the courts are likely to sort it out themselves over time. West Publishing Company and the Infor­ mation Industry Association opposed the bill; Thompson Electronic Publishing supported it. Laura Gasaway of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, represented the Ameri­ can Association of Law Libraries (AALL) which lent its qualified support for HR 4426, saying the division of text by volume and page num­ bers does not involve any originality and should not be protected by copyright. Citation infor­ mation for statutes should also be in the public domain. AALL did not support the section which would clarify that states may charge “reason­ able fees for services incidental to making avail­ able, as part of the public domain, laws, regu­ lations, or judicial opinions." AALL said that implicitly authorizing governments to charge fees for access to their legal publications was unwise public policy. ALA submitted a state­ ment for the hearing record supporting the AALL testimony. L ib rary o f Congress Fund legislation On May 20 Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) intro­ duced, at the request of the Library of Con­ gress, a new version of legislation to provide LC with authority for the provision of fee-based ( Cont. on page 4 74) 4 1 4 / C&RL N ew s Senegal, and Mauritania. The collection includes m a n u scrip ts from his articles, b o o k s an d speeches, diaries, foreign service dispatches, and co rre sp o n d e n c e from n u m ero u s A m erican statesmen including Dwight Eisenhower, Chris­ tia n H e rte r, H u b e r t H u m p h re y , J o h n F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. M ic ro film runs o f th e m a jo r n e w s p a ­ pers o f record produced by the Chicago gay and lesbian community betw een 1973 and the present have been donated to the Chicago His­ torical Society by Robert B. Marks Ridinger of Northern Illinois University in memory of the late Joseph Gregg, head of the Henry Gerber a n d P earl M. H art Library a n d A rchives. G regg d ie d o f AIDS in 1987. T h e d o n a ­ tio n in c lu d e s full ru n s o f The C hicago Gay C rusader, G ay Life, W in d y City Times, an d C hicago O u tlin es. The e n tire b o o k collection fro m A llian ce College o f Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, has been donated, u p o n the college’s closing, by the Polish National Alliance to the Hillman Library at the U niversity o f Pittsburgh CUP). The collection of 35,000-45,000 items consists mainly of Polish-language books on the his­ tory of Poland, Polish literature, and the his­ tory of Poles in America. A small part of the collection contains English-language books on the same topics. To help catalog the collection UP has hired a full-time cataloger, and the Pol­ ish-American Kosciuszko Foundation is send­ ing an exchange fellow from Poland to work for ten months beginning in the fall. Eleven ink, pencil, a n d w aterco lo r d r a w ­ ings of the “Yellow Kid’’ by artist Richard Felton Outcault (best know n for his later creation, “Buster Brown”) have been discovered in the archives at Syracuse U niversity Library. The “Yellow Kid” was America’s first comic strip superstar according to Brian W alker o f the Museum of Cartoon Art. The 11 illustrations are believed to be designs for the Yellow Kid magazine. The Yellow Kid character was a bald, beady-eyed street urchin with two teeth, large ears, and bare feet, dressed in a formless yel­ low nightshirt. Papers o f th e B a rb a ria n Press, a sm all press in British Columbia, have been donated to the U niversity o f B ritish Colum bia (UBC). The press had a varied output from fine mono­ graphs, miniatures, and pam phlets, to typo­ graphical oddities, broadsheets, keepsakes, and business cards. The papers include project files, financial records, and sample presswork. UBC also received an addendum to the papers of Nan Cheney (1897-1985), a noted landscape and portrait painter, and the first medical illustrator at UBC (1951-1962). The addendum includes editorial pages generated by the publication of Emily Carr’s letters to Cheney (UBC Press, 1990) and a large collection of medical drawings span­ ning Cheney’s career. Actor, w rite r, an d director Crane W ilbur's papers have been acquired by the U niversity o f Southern California Cinema-Television Li­ brary. C orrespondence, scrapbooks, p h o to ­ graphs, diaries, and scripts are included in the collection which covers a 58-year show busi­ ness career encompassing motion pictures, tele­ vision, radio, and the Broadway stage. Wilbur first gained recognition on the stage, then rose to international fame as Handsome Harry, Pearl White’s leading man in the 1914 movie The Perils o f Pauline. He also produced a script for the 1953 3-D chiller “House of Wax.” ■ (W ashington c o n t.fro m page 468) library products and services. S. 2748, the Li­ brary o f Congress Fund Act of 1992, replaces the earlier S. I4 l6 . While the new bill includes some improvements suggested by ALA’s Com­ mittee on Legislation together with the Asso­ ciation of Research Libraries and the American Association o f Law Libraries, problems remain. Improvements include a clearer delineation of three different kinds of LC products and ser­ vices— core (no cost), national (distribution cost only), and specialized (full cost recovery). Pro­ tections have been added concerning deposi­ tory library distribution, copyright, and recip­ rocal exchange agreements. Problems include inclusion o f both direct and indirect costs of distribution, a broad and inclusive list of distri­ bution cost elements, and a too-limited protec­ tion against redistribution fees. An overarching problem is the difficulty of drawing the line betw een core and fee-based services, made even more troublesome by LC’s late addition of “electronic access to the contents of the col­ lections” to the list o f specialized full-cost re­ covery services. At this writing, ALA’s Commit­ tee o n Legislation w as en g ag ed in further analysis of S. 2748. ■