2. A Brief History of Federal Government Information
The Rise of The Google
The Response
FDsys
MetaLib
Future Focus
3. Constitution
Printing and Distribution Laws
Madison – 1822
Serial Set
Government Printing Office – 1860
General Printing Act – 1895
Monthly Catalog
Expansion of the Federal Government
*Forte, E. J., Hartnett, C. J., & Sevetson, A. (2011). Fundamentals of government
information: Mining, finding, evaluating, and using government resources. New York:
Neal-Schuman Publishers.
4. Depository Library Act of 1962
1976 – GPO uses LCSH, MOCAT into OCLC
Paper work Reduction Act of 1980
GPO Access Act of 1993
Other issues
Freedom of Information Act of 1966
9/11
Government-funded Research
Permanent Public Access
*Forte, E. J., Hartnett, C. J., & Sevetson, A. (2011). Fundamentals of
government information: Mining, finding, evaluating, and using government
resources. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
7. One search to rule them all, one search to find them,
One search to return them all, and in the results hide them
Annual Number of Average Searches Per *
Year
Google Searches Day
2011 1,722,071,000,000 4,717,000,000
Issues Benefits
• Page Ranks • Easy
• Algorithms • Results!!!
• Google Bombs • Everything (?)
• Content Farms • Integrated
• Advertising • Bells, Whistles, Doodles
• Authority
*http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/
Editor's Notes
Introduction Google was a game changer. This session will take a look at government resources that both emulate and respond to the Google search interface and results.
Federal Government Information Through the Ages Congressional Journals through GPO Access, MOCAT through CGP – huge amounts of information – Agency-based GPO and FDLP – Print based until recently The Google – Transformative product that changed things The Response FDsys Closed system – less noise Secure – to the point of being legal documents. Important for researchers and attorneys Process and relational data – not just a ‘hit’ MetaLib Federated searching across various agencies GPO - Official Digital Secure
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 5, Powers of Congress – states: Clause 3. Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal. There were some laws, but it wasn’t a priority. 1813 law required 200 extra copies of Journals to be printed and distributed to state legislature, college, and historical society. Print quality was poor. Most government information was distributed in newspapers. Madison’s letter to W. T. Barry is still touted by people involved with Government Documents: A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. Keep in mind, there was not a whole lot of federal government going on, back in the day. Much of what was produced came about as reports to Congress. Executive agency reports, communications from the President, and reports by Congress. Exploration of the land – agriculture, water, geology…The Serial Set consists of internal and external reports for congress. GPO was created in 1860 to improve the quality of printing by cutting out the competing private printers. Representatives and Senators could designate libraries and have extra copies sent there. 1895 - Streamlined printing process and required the ongoing bibliographic catalog – MOCAT – which allowed users to search for publications by date, and agency. Great Depression and New Deal lead to expansion of federal government and the amount of information produced. Federal Register as an example – government couldn’t keep track of itself.
The FDLP had grown large and many library designations were political, or the collection was not particularly well housed, or public service was not particularly good. Population centers had changed, etc. Depository Library Act is still the guiding legislation, although it is up for review. Cutting back on government info, costs. Moving to high tech formats such as microform and CD for distribution GPO Access Act mandated that GPO provide electronic public access to key government info. Shortly thereafter, Mosaic ushered in the era of the WWW. This led to many agencies publishing information directly from their own web pages. This makes it harder for info to get identified, cataloged, and distributed. Other issues involved in government information include: FOIA – Government Records as opposed to published government reports. This made it more difficult to restrict access (See initial Constitution line last slide…) 9/11 – What is sensitive and why? Military secrets or embarrassing info? Enemy accessing our info? Federal government spends millions of dollars a year on research. Access to this info we paid for? Cost of scientific journals? How can we make all this info available?
… was GPO Access. Rooted in the U.S. Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act (Public Law 103-40) of 1993, GPO Access came along in ‘94 to provide electronic access to the government information GPO was making available in print and other formats. GPO focused on providing online versions of documents, in PDF format, which maintained the print formatting and allowed for easier ‘browsing’. As time and technology moved on, there was a need for an expanded and improved resource that could do more than access congressional content. In January of 2009, much had changed. GPO announced it was working on a new and improved approach. Over the next 3 years, a complete transition was made…
Google was created in 1996, incorporated in 1998, and had its IPO in 2004. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with keywords. By 2011, 96% of its revenue comes from advertising programs.
Research has shown that people interpret Google search results as reality, and top results as the ‘best’ Algorithms are step by step procedures for calculations. Google’s PageRank algorithms are proprietary and constantly changing. We often don’t know why we get, what we get. Location, cookies, past searches, etc. Google Bombs are ways of creating large numbers of links to a site which drives up traffic, and therefore ‘value’ in the PageRank. There are ways of manipulating results for others, so that there PageRank drops Content Farms are low quality websites that create a lot of textual content based on hot search terms, in order to bring traffic (and advertising revenue) to a site. Often times you will see several similar sites with the exact superficial content. Advertising is where Google makes 96% of it’s income. So how can you feel better about getting government info?
What about FDsys? Access is free. *About 50 different collections of Federal Government information are available. FDsys is easy to use. *FDsys offers authentic, digitally signed PDF documents. Information is preserved for permanent public access. *Search multiple publications at once. Conduct complex searches. *Narrow, sort, and filter search results. *Access documents in multiple file formats. Access metadata in standard XML formats. Browse by collection, Congressional committee, date, and Government author. Utilize a searchable online help system.
More and varied resources are available, and you are provided with the parameters of the collection. The tabs at the top also allow you to browse information by Congressional Committee…where most of the action/information occurs in Congress. Date…past year, past 6 months, past month, past week, past 24 hours Or Government Author….which may be an office or agency, or a special commission
If you click on the seal, you get confirmation that the document is certified, up to the second… If things aren’t as they should be, you will see the status reflected on the PDF… This authentication allows users to be confidant that what they have accessed is legitimate (and legal).
With the increasing amount of information being transitioned online, the U.S. Government Printing Office's (GPO) MetaLib allows Federal depository libraries to minimize the time spent researching and identifying Federal resources by utilizing the collections that have been assembled by the GPO MetaLib team. Use MetaLib's federated searching to retrieve reports, articles, and citations by simultaneously searching across multiple databases (including reference databases, digital repositories or subject-based Web gateways). With MetaLib, GPO expands the searchable universe from FDsys to include the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications and beyond…
The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) is the finding tool for electronic and print publications from the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the U.S. government. These publications make up the National Bibliography of U.S. Government Publications. The CGP contains descriptive records for historical and current publications and provides direct links to those that are available online. More than 500,000 records generated since July 1976 are contained in the CGP and it is updated daily. The catalog will grow to include records for publications dating back to the late 1800s, making the CGP the central point for locating new and historical Government publications. For publications issued prior to 1976, the printed Monthly Catalog should be consulted. Print editions of the Monthly Catalog and many of the publications indexed in it were distributed through the Federal Depository Library Program.
After searching the “GPO Resources” predefined search set, the “clusters and facets” module, available on the righthand column of the screen, allows users to narrow their search by categories, such as topics, dates, authors, and resources.
General Resources include – description details…
Advanced Search expands the breadth and depth of resources as well as options from more complex search strategies
Expert Search allows you to create your own customized searches by topic or agency
General search – discuss results, alternatives, help, etc… Topic from audience? Obamacare?
