The Gazette joined newspapers across the country this week in marking Sunshine Week. It's not a tribute to the coming of spring today, and the welcome increase in daylight hours. Sunshine Week celebrates - and defends - the public's right to know.

Why defend a right already protected by state and federal laws?

It's a case, we believe, of use it - or lose it.

Despite legislation that empowers citizens and news organizations to obtain many paper and electronic documents generated by government, winning access isn't always straightforward. Inside government, understanding of public records laws can be spotty, in part because citizens do not often avail themselves of their rights.

More and more officials speak of safeguarding "transparency" in public affairs. Nothing keeps the windows of government wiped clean as well as the routine exercise of public access.

This month, Gazette reporter Dan Crowley audited local government compliance with the state's Public Records Law. He sought access to a common employment contract (school superintendents), to a commonplace but rarely viewed municipal document (the daily calendars of administrators), routine inspection reports (of restaurants in a sampling of communities) and executive session meeting minutes.

Sunshine Week is a national initiative that highlights the importance of open government and access to information. In designing our Sunshine Week series, which concludes today, Crowley and his editors wanted both to highlight the importance of public records and dig into the substance of what this variety of requests revealed.

Today, his reporting documents the alarming finding that the city of Northampton has fallen so far behind on restaurant inspections that some eateries have not been visited for routine checks since 2008. The town of Amherst, records show, has been able to keep close track of the commercial kitchens in that community, carrying out inspections that exceed the state's requirements.

On Wednesday, his Sunshine Week coverage revealed that many communities are failing to routinely release information on closed sessions, as the law requires, after the reason for excluding the public from those meetings expires.

On Monday, he compared the pay and benefits provided to school superintendents in the region, after obtaining copies of their contracts.

Time and again, public documents tell the story that officials themselves may be loath to narrate.

In Massachusetts, Sunshine Week stories come as state rules governing citizen access are changing. On July 1, the state attorney general's office takes over from local district attorneys the responsibility for investigating possible violations of the Open Meeting Law. The new law will affect how government posts meetings, how executive sessions are handled and the complaint procedure for alleged Open Meeting Law violations, among other modifications.

Locally, people seem to be taking a closer look at what their governments are doing, and achieving, on their behalf. Officials in the Valley, meantime, are promising to work harder to give the public ways to participate.

When Northampton's deal with a hotel developer fell apart, Mayor Clare Higgins promised to build public comment into a renewed effort to find uses for city-owned space at the rear of Pulaski Park.

Of course, being "transparent" means nothing if no one looks.