ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program --------------------------------------------------------------------- November 15, 1999 GP 3.16/3-2:20/17 (Vol. 20, no. 17) --------------------------------------------------------------------- GPO Access Update Remarks by T.C. Evans Acting Director, Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Before the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer Kansas City, MO Monday, October 18, 1999 It is nice to have the opportunity to update you on the continuing growth and development of GPO Access. Because the evolution of GPO Access is happening so quickly, I never seem to be short of material to report. This fact is a strong testament to all of those at GPO whose relentless efforts to expand and improve our service provide me with this material and they deserve our thanks. Opportunities to add additional products and a desire to make those currently available better will always combine with the requirements of maintaining our ever-expanding electronic collection to keep these hardworking individuals occupied. Our users also deserve a word of thanks for their role in the development process. The value of their feedback cannot be overstated. It has certainly been evidenced by our selection as the first recipient of the AALL Public Access to Government Information Award and recent press praising the ease with which users can locate and access the pieces of our growing collection. But this by no means is an end to the changes on GPO Access. Work is already underway on collecting user feedback to continue the improvement process. An online user survey is currently available through GPO Access. The deadline for participation in this survey is December 15, 1999 and I hope you will take the opportunity to help us out if you have not already done so. We will use the results as part of our Biennial Report to Congress on the status of GPO Access. As of last week we had received 95 responses to the survey, with 41 coming from persons representing depository libraries. I would also like to remind you about our open forum to be held Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. in the New Yorker room. With Robin Haun-Mohamed's able assistance I will preview several new things to get your reactions and also discuss any aspect of GPO Access that you feel needs adjustment. Please join us and let us know what you think. We very much want to hear what you have to say. Efforts to continue improving system performance have been very successful. Data indicates that the implementation of the additional bandwidth and server controller array have definitely provided a superior balancing of our user load and effectively distributed the workload throughout our resources. We will continue to monitor bandwidth utilization and load distribution to ensure the best possible system response based on the factors we can control. A comparison of congressional and other legislative resources available on GPO Access and other Government and non-government Web sites has recently been completed and copies of the results provided to Council. Seven Web sites were selected for in-depth analysis: GPO Access, THOMAS, House.gov, Senate.gov, Lexis-Nexis, Congressional Universe, and CQ.com. The comparison was based on three factors: * What resources they make available * The scope of those resources (i.e., the range of years or sessions of Congress they cover) * The source of those resources (i.e., whether they house their own information content or link to other Web sites for it) Findings from the resulting report indicate that GPO Access fares quite well by comparison to these other sites. The strength of GPO Access lies in its breadth of online legislative resources, all of which it houses on its own servers. Of the 22 resources in the comparison, GPO Access provides 19, and it offers four resources that are not on any of the other Web sites in the analysis; its closest "competitor" is Lexis-Nexis, with 15 resources. However, GPO Access is not as strong in its scope of these resources; its coverage--strictly in terms of years--is greater than or equal to the coverage on the other Web sites for only eight of the 22 resources. Many of the noted differences between GPO Access and the other Web sites stem from GPO Access' mandate to provide free public access to authoritative electronic Government information from all three branches of the Federal Government. We have also spent a considerable amount of time examining usage and the ways in which we measure GPO Access usage. The system changes necessary to improve performance and accommodate the growth of information forced us to change the way in which we capture the number of documents downloaded each month. As a result, an improved interim process for fully capturing all downloads from GPO Access has been implemented. A more programmatic method to accomplish this task is being explored. Since the new method was employed in February, an average of over 21 million downloads per month have been recorded. Based on FY 99 data, this impressive figure is growing by almost 400,000 downloads per month. At our average of approximately 44,000 bytes per document downloaded, this means that an average of 924 Terabytes of information are downloaded from GPO Access each month. Or on a daily basis it averages out to almost 700,000 documents and more than 30 Terabytes of data. GPO Access now contains more than 101,000 electronic titles and points to more than 59,000 others. This represents a growth rate of almost 25% for the fiscal year that just ended. There are over 1,300 databases available on GPO Access, which is also a significant increase over the same time last year. An analysis of individual page use on the Web site indicates that, as time goes on, fewer users are starting at the GPO Access home page, as it has fallen to fourth in popularity. Many users appear to be bookmarking pages for specific applications and returning directly to those pages in the future. The Federal Register application is the most popular starting point, followed by the page that allows multiple databases to be searched at the same time. In third place we find the page that allows users to browse that day's table of contents for the Federal Register. Our redesigned online bookstore has been rising in popularity as a starting point ever since the new page was released in April. Appearing in the top ten initially at number nine, it has subsequently risen to number seven. Since the Code of Federal Regulations is far and away the numerical leader in documents downloaded, it is somewhat surprising that none of the CFR pages show up in the top ten entry pages. Further examination revealed some reasons why this is the case. Browsing appears to be much more popular than searching and many browsers are interested in only a specific area of the CFR. Each of these separate areas can be individually bookmarked so that the user can immediately go to the section that interests them most. This spreading of entries into the CFR application prevents it from showing up in the reports, but it is still clearly the most popular application on GPO Access. Our analysis has also revealed a direct correlation between system usage and inquiries to the GPO Access User Support Team. While this evidence matches our experience, and so was not surprising, it should prove useful in the future since the trend indicates that we will soon need to add more electronic product specialists to the team. I have already mentioned that our redesigned Online Bookstore was receiving more traffic. This rising traffic is translating into increasing electronic sales. Of particular interest is the indication that there is a transition period that new users of this application go through. It appears that new users of the Online Bookstore prefer to print out their orders and mail them in rather than submitting them electronically. This area has grown almost 400% this year. As time goes on, users appear to switch to submitting their orders electronically and this area has shown growth of more than 120% for the year. We are working to translate what we have learned into improved customer service on our secure site. While encryption ensures that a user is actually dealing with us and that their personal and payment information is protected, improvements to the shopping cart and some of our topical and product lists will make the electronic shopping experience better for our users. None of this would have been possible without the dedicated efforts of GPO personnel from many organizations. This includes the Web Committee, the many hardworking men and women in Production and Documents who strive to support the demands placed upon them, and the many people in the user community who give of their time to help GPO Access grow. Although many of these individuals cannot be with us today, and most are back at the office toiling away, they all deserve our thanks for a job well done. At this point I would like to spend a few moments describing some of the recent changes to GPO Access. Of special note are: * The addition of a site search application. This long-requested improvement to GPO Access proved to be quite a challenge and there is much yet to do, but I am confident that you will find it to be a useful aid in using our service. Released this past Friday, the index currently includes all of the HTML pages on GPO Access and the metatags that GPO personnel imbedded in them to aid in searching. In time, the index will hopefully be expanded to include the many PDF files available through GPO Access. While the search does not reach down into the databases themselves, indexing the many browse applications such as the Federal Register table of contents has provided excellent access by returning results that allow clicking to the individual documents themselves. * Our PubScience partnership with DOE. * Browseable links to the Congressional Record sections containing roll-call votes. * The new Congressional Directory for the 106th Congress. * The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, beginning with William J. Clinton (1997, Vol. 1). Other volumes will be added as they become available. * The robot exclusion has been removed for the past several weeks in a test to ensure the stability of the system. The test has proven successful and a plan is being implemented to invite the major search engines to index the GPO Access site. * The 1999 - 2000 edition of the U.S. Government Manual is now available. In addition to the improvements already described, there are some upcoming changes to GPO Access that bear mention. They are: * Deschler's Precedents of the Unites States House of Representatives is being readied for release on GPO Access. * A Statutes at Large application is under development. * Work is underway to develop a Web Site for the U.S. Supreme Court that should be released within this Court's term. * A pilot project with NARA's Office of the Federal Register is in progress that would lead to a more frequently updated electronic version of the Code of Federal Regulations. * We are also adding Electronic Product Development Specialists to work with publishing agencies to bring new products to GPO Access. They will operate as a team led by Mike Bright, who has a long and successful record in working with agencies to create electronic products that have benefited all of Documents programs. As you can tell, GPO Access is continuing its rapid evolution. I remind you how important your feedback is to this process and I hope you will take the time to participate with me in the open forum on Wednesday, at 10:30 a.m., in the New Yorker Room. I look forward to discussing with you then, or at any time, the ways in which you feel that GPO Access could be improved.