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 [ PDF version ] [ Back Issues ] --------------------------------------------------------------------- May 1, 2001 GP 3.16/3-2:22/07 (Vol. 22, no. 07) --------------------------------------------------------------------- [Handout] GPO Access Update Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services Spring 2001 Depository Library Council Meeting GPO Access Statistical Measures * GPO Access achieved a record high of over 32 million document retrievals for the month of January 2001. * GPO Access contains almost 119,000 electronic titles and points to more than 84,000 others, for a total of almost 203,000 titles. * GPO Access provides use of almost 1,900 databases through more than 80 applications. * GPO Access received over 500,000 referrals from other Web sites for the month of January. Of these referrals 54% had an undetermined source (the origin of the referral could not be detected by the log program) and, over 30% came from the ".com", ".gov", and ".mil" domains (13.6% ".com", 17.8% ".gov", and < 1% ".mil"). The domains for ".net", ".org", and ".edu" had a combined total of almost 7%, and 2.3% were referred from Federal Depository Libraries. To date, for FY 2001, Federal Depository Libraries have had a cumulative 56,678 referrals with a high of 18,461 referrals in October 2000. What's New on GPO Access * The Davis-Bacon Wage Determinations application is available at . * A summary of the President's budget plan entitled A Blueprint for New Beginnings - A Responsible Budget for America's Priorities is available at . * FY 2002 Economic Outlook, Highlights from 1994 to 2001, FY 2002 Baseline Projections is available at . * A Public Documents Distribution Centers Page has been added to GPO Access with links to the centers in Laurel, Maryland and Pueblo, Colorado at . Usability Testing We are constantly looking for valuable feedback to improve the usability of GPO Access. A number of methods are used for this purpose, including focus groups, online surveys, and of course, questions and comments received by the GPO Access User Support Team on a daily basis. In addition to these mechanisms, we have started doing usability testing at usability-testing centers, in order to get immediate feedback on how users find government information on GPO Access. This will provide us with another measure of the effectiveness and efficiency of our site, as well as the satisfaction of users. We recently conducted our first usability study at the Bureau of Labor Statistics lab in Washington, DC. The results were most helpful and will be used in the ongoing development of GPO Access. We are currently trying to recruit hosts for usability testing. If you have a lab or know of an available lab, or are interested in participating in or hosting future usability studies for GPO Access, please contact Jason Humm, Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services, by phone at (202) 512-2122 or email . Section 508 GPO staff are also undertaking an examination of Section 508 of the Workforce Investment Act, which is meant to increase accessibility for the disabled in the workplace, to determine how it might apply to GPO Access Web pages. In particular, we are looking at how the sixteen Section 508 standards increase accessibility, and how each of these standards might apply to the GPO Access Web site and its hosted sites. Metadata Evaluation Dublin Core Metadata Elements have been incorporated into the HTML source code of our major Web pages as information resource descriptions. Our goal is to use these elements to help facilitate indexing of GPO Access pages in our site search and in Internet search engines to support consistent use of metadata elements on Web pages. For more information on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, please visit . Search Engine Results EIDS is continuing its ongoing process of attempting to achieve higher positioning for GPO Access pages in the search results of major Internet search engines. After conducting research on each search engine examined in the study, it is apparent that paid positioning in search engines is becoming more prevalent. In light of this, EIDS is currently examining measures in regards to paid placement and positioning to improve the ranking of certain pages in major Internet search engines. News for Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids Ben's Guide was recently highlighted in the February, 2001 issue of Skewl Sites newsletter as "a top notch resource to teach many topics related to government." In addition to that honor, Lightspan's StudyWeb featured Ben's Guide as one of the best educational resources on the Web. The U.S. Government Printing Office is holding the first ever Ben's Guide focus group on May 9, 2001 in Long Island, New York. The focus group will be held with students from local schools in an attempt to gain feedback about Ben's Guide from a student's perspective. Conferences We recently participated in the "Computers in Libraries" conference held from March 14-16 in Washington, DC. We will also be participating in the Medical Library Association 2001 Information Odyssey being held in Orlando, FL from May 26-29, the Annual American Library Association Conference being held in San Francisco, CA from June 14-20 and we will finish up FY 2001 at the American Association of Law Libraries Conference in Minneapolis, MN being held from July 14-19. Coming Soon * An eCFR application, which will be updated daily as opposed to the current quarterly updated Code of Federal Regulations application, will be available soon. * As a result of the development of the free eCFR application, the Sales program is developing a new e-mail subscription service and a quarterly CD-ROM subscription service on a fully rendered CD-ROM with a search engine installed program. Customers will be able to purchase subscriptions that will allow them to be notified via e-mail of any changes in one or more CFR titles and/or parts, as they are published in the Federal Register. * GPO Access is currently researching a subscription service that will allow us to monitor the site's performance at various times from a user's perspective. This will allow GPO to gain knowledge about what enhancements should be made to increase the overall performance of GPO Access.