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. Brown@du.edu