Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Government Information Quarterly 25 (2008) 61–65

Coming Soon to a Location Near You

Amy West

10 Wilson Library, University of Minnesota, 309-19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0414, USA

Available online 19 November 2007

Abstract

The future of government information specialists lies in taking government information and puttingit in front of users so that no matter how they conceive of their information needs or what search toolsthey use, it will show up in their search results. This paper discusses steps government informationspecialists can take to achieve success.© 2007 Amy West. Published by Elsevier Inc.

The future of government information specialists lies in taking government information andputting it in front of users so that no matter how they conceive of their information needs orwhat search tools they use, it will show up in their search results. According to Dempsey(2006b, 2007), our future lies in building services around the user's workflow by embeddingour content and ourselves within the larger information landscape. Those users might be othergovernment information specialists, non-specialist librarians, students, or the general public.

By contrast, Dempsey (2007) describes the traditional approach to government informationas one in which users built their workflows around the library. Absent the nearly ubiquitouspresence of the Internet (Census Bureau, 2007), government information was foundmost easilymost of the time in highly structured collections in local libraries. For users, going to the libraryrepresented the easiest way to get the information they needed, provided that they knew that thelibrary could help, because it effectively aggregated supply and demand in a predictablestructure, e.g., the U.S. publications are in the basement, arranged by Superintendent of Docu-ments classification system and here's a guide explaining how the classification system works.

E-mail address: westx045@umn.edu.

0740-624X/$ - see front matter © 2007 Amy West. Published by Elsevier Inc.doi:10.1016/j.giq.2007.09.004

62 A. West / Government Information Quarterly 25 (2008) 61–65

True, the user had to learn how to use the library and its collections, but the payoff was that theuser got the information she needed.

1. What is the user workflow now?

Hennig et al. (2006) and Liao, Finn, and Lu (2007) show that users start research using theWeb with a preference for the major search engines. From there, they show no specialpreference for or knowledge of library resources. Belden (2007) and Lally and Dunford(2007) indicate that Wikipedia is becoming a very frequent destination of choice for users.Dempsey (2005) captures the popularity of all-electronic research when he notes, “What theWeb does is give us an integrated discover–locate–request–deliver experience.” To put itanother way, in a single search a user can discover that something exists, locate it, request itand have it delivered because the locate, request and deliver steps are compressed into the actof clicking on the link in the search results. The reliance on a few all-purpose resourcesreflects the importance of trusted networks of people and tools. Hennig et al. (2006, p. 10)noted that when students were faced with a search for something about which they knewlittle, they relied on resources that had been useful in previous searches, regardless of theappropriateness of the resource and despite a lower rate of success. Moreover, therecommendation of someone they trusted also carried substantial weight. Griffiths andBrophy (2005, p. 5) indicated that academic staff exercised more influence over studentsearching than librarians. As one might imagine, users ranked ease of use as the mostimportant factor in an information search tool according to Hennig et al. (2006, p. 14).Finally, Spink, Wolfram, Jansen, and Saracevic (2001) noted that Web searches typically usevery few terms and users generally take the results they get without modifying the search.

2. What are the implications of these user studies for government information specialists?

• Users are unlikely to seek out new resources when faced with unfamiliar informationneeds.

• Users want help at the point of need and will ask for it from a trusted source.• User benchmarks for ease of use make it highly unlikely that library resources as currentlymanaged will ever get much use.

3. What can we do to align government information and user behavior?

First, we can syndicate content with tools that disclose the existence of said content.Dempsey (2006a) describes disclosure by saying

So, if I want the stuff in my library to be discovered by those to whom it will be useful, I have to disclose its existence inthose discovery environments that people actually use. Now, yes, it is true. I can expect some of them to find their way tomy door – the library catalog or Website – but if people are having discovery experiences elsewhere what should I do?

Even though he is speaking here specifically to physical items in libraries, one need not stopthere. Much of what users might find useful is not in any library, but the need for it remains.

63A. West / Government Information Quarterly 25 (2008) 61–65

Adding local holdings to OCLC is a classic form of disclosure, but there's plenty ofgovernment information not captured in catalogs that needs disclosing too. A selected list ofdisclosure tools includes Web feeds (also known as RSS), Web logs, and social bookmarkingsites. All of them encode information with metadata that enables the reuse of the information inmultiple venues. This is one of the least-effort steps in that setting up feeds, blogs, and socialbookmarking accounts takes very little time and is free. For example, the University ofMichigan Documents Center maintains a Web feed on their Web site to display new gov-ernment information, but users who do not have a need to go to theWeb site itself regularly canstill benefit from the feed because they can subscribe to it and have its content delivered tothemselves in whatever way they prefer.1 Librarians across the state of Montana maintain theblog Government News for Montana.2 By working collaboratively, these librarians reduceduplicative effort while disclosing locally specific government information. Another variationon this theme would be the use of social bookmarking software. At the University ofMinnesota, the government information librarians use del.icio.us to manage governmentinformation not listed in the library catalog. While the list was created as a tool for staff, the listis public and available to all users of del.icio.us.3

Second, we can leverage discovery environments, defined by Dempsey (2006a) as

1 M2 G3 R

…a phenomenon that is increasingly important, where one leverages a discovery environment which is outside yourcontrol to bring people back into your catalogue environment. Think of Amazon or Google Scholar. Now this may bedone using fragile scraping or scripting environments, as for example with library lookup or our FRBR (FunctionalRequirements of Bibliographic Records) bookmarklets. Here, a browser tool may, for example, recognize an ISBN in aWeb page and use that to search a library resource. The broader ability to deploy, capture and act on structured datamay make this approach more common: the potential use of CoINS (ContextObject in Span) is a specific example here.Basically, an application needs a hook which can connect to the local environment. How this will happen moresmoothly is an intriguing question for discussion elsewhere.

While Dempsey is speaking specifically about catalogs in this case, there are other appli-cations of this concept worth considering that could be specific to government information. Forexample, Belden (2007) at the University of North Texas added links to CongressionalResearch Service Reports that they host into over 600Wikipedia articles and found that in a yearthey gained 400,000 unique users. Another way one can leverage discovery is through widgetsusers can install on their computers. Jacobs, Jacobs, Yeo, Cornwall, and Staub (2007) at FreeGovernment Information have developed a toolbar a user can install to a Web browser. Onceinstalled, the toolbar becomes a part of the user's regular activities by virtue of being tied to thebrowser.

Third, we can give users a reason to consider us a trusted resource. Libraries can buildrecommender programs that work based on user data captured by resources we control likethe catalog, but given the limited amount of government information found in our onlinedatabases, such tools might not yield as many benefits as for, say, English literature. Given

ichigan Documents Center. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/.overnment News for Montana. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from http://mt-govinfo.blogspot.com/.etrieved September 3, 2007, from http://del.icio.us/bgi.

64 A. West / Government Information Quarterly 25 (2008) 61–65

that government information in general is a poorly understood area, even for non-specialistlibrarians, let alone users, we can reasonably expect that searches for it will be conducted viatrusted resources. One type of resource that clearly resonates with (mostly young) users isthe social network. Farkas (2006) discussed how to use social networks effectively in a Weblog post in 2006 and noted that the value of libraries working within social networks wasthat

… in this case, the library is coming into the students' space and is saying “we want our collections to reflect what youneed and want. We care about your opinion.” This way we are giving students a safe place to speak their mind. I wouldlove to see a library using Facebook and MySpace to get other sorts of feedback from students about services, libraryhours, collections, etc. By coming into their space to ask their opinion, we're telling them that they really do have avoice in the future of the library.

Using social networks in combination with content syndication and leveraged discoveryenvironments discussed above gives us a powerful suite of tools with which to engage ourusers. Together they capitalize on the strengths of the online environment while bringing backthe personal connection that made us a trusted resource in the physical world and which ismissing from most library Web sites as currently constructed.

Fourth, rather than explaining to users how to use a problematic resource, we should employtechnology to make it better. To quote Roy Tennant (2005), “I wish I had known that thesolution for needing to teach our users how to search our catalog was to create a system thatdidn't need to be taught”. This is probably the single least explored element of any discussed inthis paper. Yet, combining data mining techniques and Web technologies with content holdssignificant potential to create new and more intuitive methods of interacting with andunderstanding government information. Mehta's (2006) US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloudis an exciting example of using technology to enhance content. The developer downloaded allof the presidential speeches he could locate and combined them with a program that determinesword frequency. Then, he used another program to display words as a tag cloud in which wordsize indicates frequency. Larger words were more frequent. As a last step, he used an additionalprogram to allow users to move a slidebar through time. The result is that a student can get anoverview of topics important to presidents over time in an intuitive and straightforward way. Arecent request to the author for “a simple way to determine the 10 peer cities for St. Paul bytomorrow” resulted in a lengthy e-mail describing all of the methods of getting something notquite like what was asked for. That e-mail could be saved and reused as a user guide, but surely abetter approach would be to take the available data sources and combine them with a programthat allows a user to select one or more characteristics onwhich tomatch, select a target city, andthen deliver the 10 other cities above and below that most closely match the target. This isanother way of meeting users on their own ground because we are using our expertise to craft aresource that works with their ways of visualizing information, whatever those might be.

In conclusion, successful government information librarians will be those who actively usetechnology to create a connection between users and the government information available tothem. She will meet the user on the user's terms and she will prioritize her activities in favorof the user's workflow. Rather than wait for users to come to her, she will broadcast newsabout government information. She will act to disclose local library holdings into as many

65A. West / Government Information Quarterly 25 (2008) 61–65

other discovery environments as possible. She will engage with users in locations of theirchoosing. She will not limit herself to explaining why government information is difficult touse but will actively develop more intuitive versions of it. With any luck, she'll have a lot offun too.

References

Belden, D. (2007). Are you using Wikipedia to draw users to your online materials? Library 2.0 Ning RetrievedAugust 25, 2007, from http://library20.ning.com/group/governmentdocuments/forum/topic/show?id=515108%3ATopic%3A29392

Census Bureau. (2007). Table 1137—Internet Access and Usage and Online Service Usage: 1997 to 2005, andby Characteristic, 2005 and Table 1136—Public Library Use of the Internet: 2004. Statistical Abstract of theUnited States Retrieved August 25, 2007, from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/information_communications/

Dempsey, L. (2005). Discover, locate,… vertical and horizontal integration. Lorcan Dempsey's weblog RetrievedAugust 25, 2007, from http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000865.html

Dempsey, L. (2006a). Discovery and disclosure. Lorcan Dempsey's weblog Retrieved August 25, 2007 from http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001084.html

Dempsey, L. (2006b). Lifting out the catalog discovery experience. Lorcan Dempsey's weblog Retrieved August25, 2007 from http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001021.html

Dempsey, L. (2007). From discovery to disclosure: Putting library resources in the flow. Retrieved August 25,2007, from http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/CenterForLibraryInitiatives/Archive/ConferencePresentation/Library-IntheFlow_Conf2007/lorcan.pdf

Farkas, M. (2006). Libraries in social networking software. Information wants to be free Retrieved August 25, 2007from http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2006/05/10/libraries-in-social-networking-software/

Griffiths, J., & Brophy, P. (2005). Student Searching Behavior and theWeb: Use of academic resources and Google.Library Trends, 53, 539−554.

Hennig, N., Gabridge, T., Gaskell, M., Bartley, M., Duke, D., Quirion, C., et al. (2006). User needs assessment ofinformation seeking activities of MIT students—Spring 2006. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33456

Lally, A. M., & Dunford, C. E. (2007). Using Wikipedia to extend digital collections.D-Lib Magazine, 13, 5/6(Retrieved August 25, 2007 from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may07/lally/05lally.html.)

Liao, Y., Finn, M., & Lu, J. (2007). Information-seeking behavior of international graduate students vs. Americangraduate students: A user study at Virginia Tech 2005. College & Research Libraries, 68, 5−25.

Jacobs, J. A., Jacobs, J. R., Yeo, S., & Cornwall, D. (2007). FGI Community Toolbar (computer software).Retrieved August 25, 2007, from http://fgi.ourtoolbar.com/

Mehta, C. (2006). US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud (computer program). Retrieved August 25, 2007, fromhttp://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/

Spink, A., Wolfram, D., Jansen, B., & Saracevic, T. (2001). Searching the Web: The public and their queries.Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52, 226−234.

Tennant, R. (2005). What I wish I had known. Library Journal.com Retrieved August 25, 2007 from http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6282632.html