scholarly journals What Did Your Library Do During the War? A Look Back at Depository Libraries and the World War II War Effort, with a Brief Bibliography

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Lou Malcomb

After some thirty years dealing with the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) as a reference librarian and later as head of Indiana University’s Government Information, Maps, and Microforms Department, I still feel passionate about the role FDLP librarians play in maintaining documents collections and providing easy access to what our governments publish. Throughout my career as a documents librarian, I contended that documents librarians are stuck in the middle: between ensuring access to government information for our researchers and students, and working as an “agent” of the government to protect these collections. I am specifically remembering all the various recalls for specific documents from the Government Printing Office (GPO), a fundamental aspect of FDLP in working with agencies to get depository items. While cleaning up office files in anticipation of retirement a few years ago, I uncovered a few treasures I would like to share with my government documents colleagues.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1411-1434
Author(s):  
Barbara Costello

The implementation of the Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-40) brought the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) fully into the digital age. The transition has created expected and unexpected changes to the way the Government Publishing Office (GPO) administers the FDLP and, in particular, to the relationships between the GPO and academic depository libraries. Innovative partnerships, use of emerging technologies to manage and share collections, and greater flexibility on the part of the GPO have given academic depository libraries a prominent and proactive role within the depository program. Newly announced initiatives from the GPO, the National Plan for Access to U.S. Government Information and the Federal Information Preservation Network (FIPNet) potentially could either increase academic depository libraries' collaboration with the FDLP and the likelihood that they will remain in the program, or accelerate the rate at which academic depositories are dropping depository status.


2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
David Durant

The rise of the Internet has had an enormous impact on library collections and services, and nowhere has this impact been more apparent than to the 1,250 libraries that participate in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). The FDLP has provided the public with free access to government information since the nineteenth century, playing a vital role in helping to maintain the informed citizenry that is essential to our democracy. The underlying principle behind the FDLP is relatively simple:  documents are distributed by the Government Printing Office (GPO) to participating libraries, on the condition that the public is allowed free access to those materials. Just 10 years ago, the FDLP distributed 100% of its items in tangible format (print, microfiche, and CD-ROMs).


Author(s):  
Barbara Costello

The implementation of the Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-40) brought the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) fully into the digital age. The transition has created expected and unexpected changes to the way the Government Publishing Office (GPO) administers the FDLP and, in particular, to the relationships between the GPO and academic depository libraries. Innovative partnerships, use of emerging technologies to manage and share collections, and greater flexibility on the part of the GPO have given academic depository libraries a prominent and proactive role within the depository program. Newly announced initiatives from the GPO, the National Plan for Access to U.S. Government Information and the Federal Information Preservation Network (FIPNet) potentially could either increase academic depository libraries' collaboration with the FDLP and the likelihood that they will remain in the program, or accelerate the rate at which academic depositories are dropping depository status.


Author(s):  
Ian Kumekawa

This chapter recounts Pigou's life in the advent of World War II. Though the war did cement the practical importance of economists as advisors to the government, everywhere else Pigou looked, cherished foundations of his comfortable life were threatened or crumbling. Pigou himself had reached an age at which he found his own energies waning. Nevertheless, with the arrival of war, he began to search assiduously for things to do. So reticent to work for the government during the first war, he asked for “any” job to help the war effort during the second, composing reports for the government and eventually teaching for a stint at Harrow. And as the dust settled over Europe and Pigou confronted a changed Britain, he would find redemption, or at least consolation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Herst

The discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 revolutionized the way infections were treated. In the context of World War II, the government of the United States politicized the production and use of penicillin as yet another weapon to win the war. It was carefully rationed on the home front, while being used with reckless abandon in the treatment battle wounds and venereal diseases on the battlefield. Penicillin was described as a miracle drug that would be able to cure everyone, when in reality it was only being used to benefit the military and the American war effort, at the expense of civilian lives.


2009 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-370
Author(s):  
Peter Hernon ◽  
Laura Saunders

The Government Printing Office (GPO) administers a depository library program that provides the public with access to government publications, including digital ones. For years, the GPO, its Depository Library Council, and documents librarians have discussed the future role of member libraries. This article explores a different, but critical, perspective: that of directors of university libraries within the Association of Research Libraries. Thirty directors reviewed different scenarios and selected the one they envision their university assuming. The findings have implications for librarians in any depository library program and others interested in the future role of libraries as collection and service centers for government information resources.


2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (S1) ◽  
pp. 65-72
Author(s):  
Noah Riseman

Abstract Did you know that a Bathurst Islander captured the first Japanese prisoner of war on Australian soil? Or that a crucifix saved the life of a crashed American pilot in the Gulf of Carpentaria? These are excerpts from the rich array of oral histories of Aboriginal participation in World War II. This paper presents “highlights” from Yolngu oral histories of World War II in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Using these stories, the paper begins to explore some of the following questions: Why did Yolngu participate in the war effort? How did Yolngu see their role in relation to white Australia? In what ways did Yolngu contribute to the security of Australia? How integral was Yolngu assistance to defence of Australia? Although the answers to these questions are not finite, this paper aims to survey some of the Yolngu history of World War II.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-535
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum

During World War II, the Soviet media depicted children suffering as well as children actively participating in the war effort and mothers making sacrifices for them. Such mixed messages served clear political purposes, publicizing Nazi atrocities while deflecting attention from the Soviet state’s failure to protect its children. Historians have tended to approach such images and stories within a framework of trauma that validates stories of children’s suffering, despite their political purposes, while also discounting wartime accounts and postwar (and post-Soviet) reminiscences that highlight children’s strength and recovery. The concept of resilience, as developed in psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology, however, allows historians to understand such material as authentic and vital components of survivors’ understandings and memories of the war.


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