The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) regularly evaluates the needs of libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and develops solutions to improve services. As part of funding received in March 2009 from H. R. 1105, the Omnibus Appropriations Act of FY 2009 (P. L. 111-8), a portion was allocated to support GPO’s Cataloging and Indexing (C&I) program and an initiative to distribute cataloging records to depository libraries.

In October 2009, GPO announced the launch of a one-year pilot project to address the need for the distribution of cataloging records produced by GPO to libraries in the FDLP. The pilot project would test the MARC21 record distribution process and determine compatibility between catalog records and FDLP workflows. GPO contracted with MARCIVE, Inc. using MARCIVE’s existing MARC record distribution infrastructure to deliver cataloging records from GPO’s Integrated Library System (ILS) to 48 participating depository libraries.