Noteworthy and newsworthy.

The article discusses the costs of public information. Articles about the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) tend to be rarities in daily newspapers. But, as a recent half-page article, "Chicago Tribune" pointed out that, over the last ten years the sales of GPO printed publications has dropped from more than $100 million a year to a little over $20 million. Clearly, they are dealing with rising costs, decreasing revenues, and proliferation of information. One of the solutions has been to publish increasing numbers of documents on the Internet. However, if government agencies continue to post their documents directly to the Internet, there is no guarantee that they will be preserved, as these agencies will continue to make documents available for the long term. And frankly, the long-term preservation of electronic files is a costly undertaking. Software and computers are updated at a pace the GPO's budget has not kept pace with. Nor is there any safeguard against fraudulent documents being posted to the database.