F e d e r a l D e p o s i t o r y L i b r a r y P r o g r a m ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 15, 2000 GP 3.16/3-2:21/15 (Vol. 21, no. 15) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [HANDOUT] GPO ACCESS UPDATE Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services GPO Access Statistical Measures * In recent months, GPO Access has averaged almost 26 million document retrievals per month, with a high in March of close to 29 million document retrievals. * GPO Access contains about 113,000 electronic titles and points to more than 80,000 others. * GPO Access provides use of over 1,600 databases through more than 80 applications. What's New on GPO Access * The new United States Government Manual (FY2000/2001) is now available via GPO Access at . * GPO Access has begun developing and hosting a new website, for the National Mediation Board at . * Additional final reports from the Office of the Independent Counsel are now available online via GPO Access at . * Two new services from the Department of Energy, the GrayLIT Network and Federal R&D Project Summaries, are now available through the FDLP Electronic Collection: Specialized Collections of Full-Text Information: . * Additional volumes have been added to the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: 1995, Volume I; 1998, Volumes I and II. These can be found at: . * Federal Tax Forms for the year 2000 are now available for sale via GPO Access at . * GPO has been participating in a study of performance measures for Federal agency Websites. The final report is available at . System Performance The work required to increase the bandwidth for GPO Access has been completed. This has more than doubled the bandwidth capacity for GPO Access. This increase will also allow for further expansion when additional capacity is needed. Improvements Made to the U.S. Government Online Bookstore A drop-down list titled "Browse a Topic" is now available on the U.S. Government Online Bookstore main page . This list is based upon the approximately 160 Subject Bibliographies that are available through the Online Bookstore. Additional enhancements, such as sending orders directly to the order processing system, providing customers with a detailed transaction receipt after order submission, an automatic price increase for foreign orders, and only entering a secure environment when customers are ready to enter personal information are expected to be available by December 15, 2000. New GPO Access Training Materials EIDS has completed work on a new GPO Access interactive training CD-ROM. The CD-ROM offers an overview of the Web interface, instructions for locating and retrieving information, sample searches in popular applications, and interactive elements (section quizzes, Web links, etc.). In addition, EIDS is in the process of developing a new, updated GPO Access Training Manual, which will be completed in the near future. Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids Awards and News Ben's Guide has been featured on HomeworkSpot.com as a "top-notch tool for students, parents and teachers." Surveys for Parents and Teachers as well as Students are currently under development that will provide feedback on the current effectiveness of Ben's Guide. These surveys will help to gather suggestions as to how to improve Ben's Guide. Search Engine Results EIDS continues to implement methods that strive to give GPO Access better positioning in major Internet search engines. EIDS has ordered and will receive a software package that assists in URL submissions to search engines. EIDS is also in the process of procuring a service that will submit GPO Access URLs to major search engines for a nominal fee. Coming Soon * An examination is being conducted as to how Dublin Core Metadata Elements may be integrated into GPO Access web pages, to help facilitate indexing of GPO Access pages in major search engines. * A fifth report evaluating the positioning of resources on GPO Access in major search engines will be completed in December 2000. * EIDS staff is in the process of evaluating Helpdesk software for customer support that will further improve customer service available through the GPO Access User Support Team. * Improvements to the U.S. Code application are under development. These improvements include adding a browse feature to this application. * A Statutes at Large application and a browseable list of all Congressional Hearings are also under development.