Since 1995 GPO Access has been the online platform on which the federal government has made information accessible on the Internet. GPO Access relied on WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers), an antiquated pre-web technology that made it difficult for the average user to search and locate information. At the end of 2010, GPO will sunset GPO Access and migrate its content to the Federal Digital System (FDsys – pronounced effdeesis). FDsys, an advanced digital system that will enable GPO to manage Government information from all three branches of the Federal Government, will be a powerful tool to access online Federal information as well as a preservation repository for Federal agencies.

FDSys makes electronically accessible the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Compilation of Presidential Documents, Congressional Bills, Congressional Documents and Prints, the Congressional Record, the Congressional Directory, the Economic Report of the President, the Federal Budget, Public and Private Laws, and the United States Code, and more. The new platform will offer greater functionality than GPO Access, including the ability to search across multiple collections with keyword searches. GPO promises that all the data in FDSys will remain freely electronically accessible.

For information on how to use FDsys, select the Help link to the right of main search box or see the PDF copy of the 97-page Federal Digital System (FDsys) Search User Manual. There are also video tutorials on how to use FDSys:

• FDsys Overview – This video is a brief overview on the background of FDsys.
• FDsys Simple Search – This is a video tutorial on how to perform simple searches within the system and filter your results.
• FDsys Advanced Search – This is a video tutorial on how to perform advanced searches and citation searches within the system.
• FDsys Browse – This is a video tutorial on how to browse for government publications within FDsys.

If the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission is successful with one of its latest proposals, there will be a new Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District in Downtown Brooklyn adjacent to Brooklyn Law School. This map of the proposed district shows that the law school directly borders the area.























Unlike other recently landmarked brownstone Brooklyn areas, this new district will have buildings within its boundaries that are multi-story office buildings, if not skyscrapers. The Landmarks Preservation Commission says the proposed Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District, with approximately 20 properties, “is characterized primarily by tall commercial buildings erected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Designed in a range of styles from the Romanesque-Revival to the Beaux-Arts to the Modern, the structures in the study area represent the work of an impressive group of architects including Helmle, Huberty & Hudswell; McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin; George L. Morse; the Parfitt Brothers; Schwartz & Gross; H. Craig Severence; and Starrett & Van Vleck. It contains many of the borough’s most architecturally distinguished business buildings, as well as its two most significant civic structures—the Brooklyn Municipal Building and the individually-designated Brooklyn Borough Hall.” The district, not yet formally designated, was an item proposed for the Commission‘s calendar at Public Meeting Item No. 2 on October 26, 2010.

The Brooklyn Law School Library has in its Reference collection Guide to New York City Landmarks by Andrew Dolkart (Call #F128.18 .D65). The publisher is the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, the New York City agency responsible for protecting and preserving New York City’s architecturally, historically, and culturally significant buildings. The Commision, established in 1965 after the destruction of the original Penn Station, has 11 commissioners, including at least three architects, a historian, a realtor, a planner or landscape architect, as well as a representative of each borough. Litigation regarding the actions in the Penn Central case reached the US Supreme Court in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978), a landmark decision on compensation for regulatory takings.