STS Government Information Committee [Conference Report] Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship Summer 1999 DOI:10.5062/F4Z31WNG URLs in this document have been updated. Links enclosed in {curly brackets} have been changed. If a replacement link was located, the new URL was added and the link is active; if a new site could not be identified, the broken link was removed. Conference Reports Government Information Committee Susan Norrisey Texas Tech lismn@lib.ttu.edu Government Information Committee The committee will begin work on a Web site that will report on news regarding government information. Members will continue to monitor various electronic discussion groups pertaining to government information and will send brief reports to STS-L. During the conference, members of the committee attended information sessions held by the GODORT Federal Documents Task Force, GODORT Legislative Committee, and the ALA Washington Office. Some developments of interest are listed below: Two separate database protection bills have been introduced in the U.S. House. The library community supports H.R. 1858, the Consumer Investor Access to Information Act of 1999 because this bill is more narrowly focused and thought to provide a more balanced approach. H.R. 1790, the Chemical Safety Information and Site Security Act of 1999 proposes that federal depository libraries provide access to risk management plans of chemical manufacturing plant. The US EPA had planned to make those plans available online in June, however, some federal enforcement officials fear the potential risk of making that information available to terrorists. The Copyright Office released its recommendations regarding use of copyrighted materials in support of distance education, see {http://www.loc.gov/copyright/cpypub/de_rprt.pdf}. More information on these issues is available from the ALA Washington Office Web site at {http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/wo.} We welcome your comments about this article.