A kind FGI reader (thanks Peggy!) sent in an email about this interesting article that highlights the same types of remixes (which the article calls "composite applications") that we've been collecting on the FGI Remix page. Remixes are an exciting new area for libraries. As more and more FDLP libraries are focusing on services in the digital world (as opposed to collections), it would be great to learn more about how to facilitate govt information users' building of "composite applications." Librarians will not only need to know how to find govt information online, they'll need to know how to use govt information and how to help users "roll their own" Web applications. Read on... At your service: Forget buying software; build your next application from existing components. By Joab Jackson, Government Computer News, 4/24/06. Continue reading →

Continue Reading →

According to their web site, "The mission of the Library of Parliament is to provide Parliament, in a timely fashion, with comprehensive and reliable information, documentation, research and analysis while maintaining extensive and pertinent collections to support the functions of legislation and representation; and to provide information about Canada’s Parliament to the public." With so many parliamentary publications available electronicly, how will the Library of Parliament assure preservation? In an April 26, 2006 response to a recent query on this topic to the Infodep mailing list, Cynthia Hubbertz, Chief, Collection Development of the Library of Parliament said:

At the Library of Parliament , we are actually building a print preservation collection precisely because we believe, as many do, that print has no equal for long term preservation, and that, as publications go WEB only, we have a duty to preserve them in print.

You should be able to eventually find the entire e-mail in the Infodep archives. Kudos to the Library of Parliament for thinking long-term. Continue reading →

Continue Reading →

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 →

Continue Reading →

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 →

Continue Reading →

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 →

Continue Reading →