From lpsmail@access.digex.netFri Feb 16 12:20:00 1996 Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 16:08:27 -0800 From: Shipment Reply to: Discussion of Government Document Issues To: Multiple recipients of list GOVDOC-L Subject: ADNOTES: PATHWAY PROJECT UPDATE THE MESSAGE BELOW IS FROM ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES, VOL. 17, #04 (Feb. 15, 1996) PATHWAY PROJECT UPDATE AND DEMONSTRATION Remarks by Maggie Parhamovich Farrell and Raeann Dossett Internet Specialists, Electronic Transition Staff Federal Documents Task Force Government Documents Round Table American Library Association Midwinter Meeting January 20, 1996 Good morning. Despite government furloughs, technical difficulties, and nearly 2 feet of snow, Raeann and I remain undaunted by our project. We are halfway through our one year project at GPO and we would like to show you some results of our work. Raeann and I are part of the Electronic Transition Staff or ETS within the Library Programs Service. At the fall meeting of the Depository Library Council, ETS highlighted several of our projects. However, this morning, we will only be discussing the Pathway Project. ETS has developed an experimental Web page to demonstrate our concepts (http://www.access.gpo.gov/ets/). The Web page is a place where we will experiment with ideas and test Internet applications. The experimental site is our frame for developmental work. We encourage you to check it out occasionally as it is ever changing. The goal of the Pathway project is to develop Internet resources which facilitate access to government information. While the target audience of our project is Federal depository librarians, we believe the project will assist the general public as well. One aspect of our work is to develop a system which applies some of the characteristics of research in a traditional library to the electronic environment. Library patrons typically find information by two methods: Browsing through the stacks or card catalog or Searching for a specific concept or keyword. We have applied these patterns to our project. Raeann and I are in the process of building the Pathway Index. This will facilitate searching by keywords across government databases. Currently, we are using the Harvest software and the database is still in a developmental stage. Using the Pathway index, people can search using specific keywords. For instance, if you need some information on fish, the Pathway indexer will locate specific information on your term. The search results will provide an active link to the file. The results go beyond an introductory Web page to a specific file or document located on the server. Currently, the indexer is in a testing phase. Over the next few months, we will be migrating the Pathway index to the Open Text software which is the phase II software for GPO Access. That way, Pathway will be running the same software as GPO Access providing for smooth transition between GPO databases. People also find information by browsing by subjects. We are using the subject topics from the Subject Bibliographies and analyzing sites by subjects. Government Internet sites are then listed under the appropriate topic. Users can browse through the topic list and select a topic which interests them such as agriculture. The list will be an active list of agency sites which contain information on agriculture. We will continue to work on adding additional listings this spring and will add new sites as they become available. Recently, we did a demonstration project with GILS. Under GILS, The Government Information Locator Service, Federal agencies are mandated to create records which describe their information holdings. GILS is a decentralized locator system which can be tailored for specific information and audiences. On our Web site, we have a list of the agencies for which we have created what we are calling Pathway GILS records. These are simply records, in the GILS format which describe agencies and point to their GILS and main Web sites. We have also customized the records to point to resources in the Federal Depository Library Program. As you see, the records include a link to the Monthly Catalog and provide the SuDocs classification. We value your input and insights into our work. We encourage you to take a look at the Pathway tools and let us know what you think. We will be organizing a focus group in April during the GPO Annual Conference to discuss ways to improve Pathway. We will announce the time and location when the final conference schedule is released. Thank you.