Steve Kelman, a professor of public management at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, wrote a piece about google and govt information in last week's Federal Computer Week. In surveying his master's degree students about "e-government", he found some interesting things:

• google was the default search tool.
• all of his students reported visiting a government Web site at one time or another.
• Every student in the class who has a student loan filed the application online.
• only about 10 percent of the students knew it was possible to do all three of the following activities online: reserve a campsite at a national park, find out air pollution by ZIP code and comment on an Environmental Protection Agency regulation. In fact, 25 percent thought those kinds of services were not available online.
• FirstGov, the federal government’s Web portal, is sliding even further into oblivion in student consciousness. Only six of 60 students in the class had ever heard of the site. Only one had ever used it, and she is a former federal employee who used it for benefits information.
I'll leave it to our readers to draw conclusions about Professor Helman's informal survey. Anyone care to comment? Continue reading →

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Thanks to LISNews for pointing us to this October 2005 Survey of Library User Studies by Thomas Mann of the Library of Congress. Mr. Mann's roundup of recent studies of university student and faculty information habits show that printed and other tangible materials continue to play an important part in academic life. The academic users in these studies are not luddites. Most of them use the Internet for quick answers or as a first stab at research, but according to the 2003 study Dimensions and Use of the Scholarly Information Environment, shows that college students still value tangible information:

This study found, based on over 3,200 interviews, that 55.4% of all respondents (and 59.7% of undergraduates) still regard browsing library bookstacks as “an important way” to get information. 1 Two thirds of the faculty and grad students use print resources for research all or most of the time (73% for teaching). 52% of undergrads use print resources for coursework all or most of the time. (The figure was 72% for grad students.) More than 90% of them agreed that print books and journals “will continue to be important sources for me in the next five years.” . . . 59% of undergrads still use print abstracts and indexes, 93% use printed books, and 81% use print journals (97% of grad students use print journals). Only 28% said they “find reading information on a screen satisfactory.” 86% of students feel that “my campus library meets most of my information needs.” 55% still regard browsing the stacks and journal shelves as an important way to get information–and only 35% use the library significantly less than they did two years ago. 14% want more print journals as compared to 11% who want more e-journals–and 89% want more books.

The other studies highlighted show similar results. Perhaps Congress, the Government Printing Office, and even some in the depository library community should be paying closer attention to these conclusions. Or at least, Congress should be funding research to see what people really want and need, rather than simply making assumptions. Continue reading →

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One of my disappointments in missing the Spring 2006 Depository Library Council meeting was missing the opportunity to hear Dr. Joseph Janes, who I was privileged to hear at the 2005 Alaska Library Association conference in Barrow Alaska. Dr. Janes' remarks are not recorded in the official proceedings from the Government Printing Office (GPO), but I had the chance to review an attendee's notes from the speech. In those notes, I noticed three points worth highlighting here, keeping in mind that he might not have put them exactly this way because the following are notes taken from notes of Dr. Janes' speech:

• Mediation is still needed because there is a lot of stuff out there ('net and other places) and some of it is still hard to find despite search engines.
• People need stuff in accessible and usuable formats.
• It is important to build tools that help people w/o direct intervention, like pathfinders, easily understood names and links to services.

I think these points are well made and should be taken to heart by every library that provides services to government information. GPO and federal agencies should pay special attention to the second point before simply dumping information into a digital format. Many times digital will be a good choice, but not always. Given that Dr. Janes had an hour and half to work with, he must have had many other helpful insights. Can someone reading this blog leave some comments about other things that Joe Janes said? Or tell me that the points above weren't what he had to say? Thanks! Continue reading →

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In the GPO Update offered at the Spring 2006 Depository Library Council meeting, an update of the biennial survey was offered that included new data on questions 65 & 66, better known as the "digital deposit" questions. As of March 13, 2006, 1,214 libraries have responded as follows [Number of libraries is my calculation] and was not reported by GPO:

65: My library systematically downloads, stores online publications identified from GPO Access or through GPO-created PURLS, and makes them accessible to the general public from local servers. This past year my library downloaded the following number of digital publication files (this does not include shipping lists, Web pages, or datasets): Percentage of tabulated responses / number of libraries: 0 81.06% 1-25 10.91% / 132 26-100 3.05% / 37 101-500 3.53% / 42 501-1000 0.64% / 8 1001-5000 0.80% / 10 More than 5000 0.00% 66. My library is willing to receive Federal digital publication files on deposit from GPO, store them, and make the accessible to the general public from local servers. My library is willing to receive the following number of digital publication files per year (this does not include shipping lists, Web pages, or databases): Percentage of tabulated responses / number of libraries: 0 72.52% 1-25 15.31% / 186 26-100 4.77% / 58 101-500 3.25% / 39 501-1000 1.93% / 23 1001-5000 1.12% / 14 More than 5000 1.12% / 14

Since GPO only reported percentages and since SuDoc Judy Russell did not bring up this topic in her prepared remarks, I assume that the take home message from GPO is something like, "libraries don't want to maintain local digital collections, get over it." If you look at the raw numbers of libraries responding to this survey, a different picture emerges. I cannot deny that in the absence of any distribution mechanism from GPO, most depository libraries neither locally store and serve electronic documents nor plan to do so in the future. However, even in the absence of such a mechanism, 229 libraries are ALREADY locally storing and serving federal electronic documents. 334 libraries are willing to take at least some federal electronic documents without knowning what the distribution mechanism might be. In short, we have hundreds of libraries with existing local collections of federal digital documents and accompanying expertise and hundreds of libraries willing to rise to the challenge if only they had a distribution channel. This is a testbed that GPO shouldn't dismiss so lightly. If they were more willing to work with these groups of libraries to demonstrate the feasibility of digital deposit, others would follow. Continue reading →

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I believe the Government Printing Office (GPO) has broken a new speed record for posting official Council proceedings. All of the handouts, presentations, and speeches for Spring Council were posted to the proceedings web site yesterday, just two weeks and two days after the closing of Council. Everything except the remarks of keynote speaker Joe Janes, but he probably did not speak from prepared remarks. GPO should be commended for this timely posting of Council items. Continue reading →

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