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The Darkening of Government Information
Christopher C. BrownReference Technology Integration
Librarian / Government Documents Librarian
University of Denver, Main Library
August 7, 2014
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Discovery Tools Abound – But How do the Affect Discovery of Government Information?
• Summon (ProQuest)• EDS (Ebsco)• Primo (ExLibris)• WorldCat Discovery (OCLC)
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Understand Our Current Technology
• Library catalogs allow searching of metadata only, no full text (FT) searching
• Vendors’ so called “federated search” tools were a huge FAIL, relying on crude technologies like Z39.50. No FT searching.
• Google (Web, Scholar, Books) allows searching of full text, this putting pressure on vendors to create a full text search products for libraries.
• Vendors rushed to create products that searched a large swath of library journal, newspaper, and book holdings, often down to the FT level.
The Information Access Anomaly
Book (average) Journal Article (average)
Google (Scholar/Books)
Typical Length - full text (FT)
200 pages x 400 = 80,000 words
15 pages x 400 = 6,000 words
Surrogate Record (SR)
50-100 words (75 ave.) 300-500 words (400 ave. 1)
SR to FT ratio 1 to 10,666“Catalog Discovery”
1 to 15“Index Discovery”
1 to 1“Google Discovery”
1 http://www.writersservices.com/wps/p_word_count.htm
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
©2014 Christopher C. Brown
In Older Search Tools, GovInfo was on par in terms of findability with other kinds of info
Searching this: To Retrieve this:
11,365 words
90,822 words
40 words
187 words
1:2,270
1:61
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Catalog Search vs. Metasearch vs. Discovery Search
Catalog Metasearch DiscoverySearches metadata of library catalog only
Searches metadata of library catalog and other resources via Z39.50 and other protocols
Searches the “big pot” of metadata and in some cases full text, all of which has been dumped into the “big pot”
Shallow searching; 1:10,000 Shallow searching; 1:10,000 Deep searching in many cases; 1:1, otherwise 1:10,000
Gov info on par with other info
Gov info on par with other info
Gov info backgrounded, since only CGP records exposed, NOT full text of FDsys.
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Catalog vs. Discovery Platform
• DU Library Catalog: About 4 million records, 30% of records are documents records. No FT discovery, only metadata discovery.
• DU Discovery Platform (Summon). 630 million records. Hard to estimate, but likely less than 1% government documents content.
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Presence of Govdocs in DU’s Library Catalog
Bib records Govdocs0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
3,000,000
3,500,000
4,000,000
4,500,000
4,000,000
1,200,000
Series1
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Presence of Govdocs in DU’s Summon Instance
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Default Search Affects Results
Default Search box until 2011: Library Catalog
Default Search box 2011 to present: Summon
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Darkening of Govinfo Over Time at DU
Default Search: Library Catalog Default Search: Discovery Tool (Summon)
Note: If FDsys were included in Summon, more exposure to govinfo would occur.
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
What’s the Solution?
• Have each of the discovery vendors fully cooperate with GPO. They need to acquire the full FDsys content and update it regularly – not just metadata, but full PDF content.
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference
Questions?
Christopher C. BrownChristopher. [email protected]