Administrative Notes Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program Vol. 19, no. 03 GP 3.16/3-2:19/03 January 25, 1998 Current and Future State of GPO Access Remarks by T.C. Evans Assistant Director, Office of Electronic Information Dissemination, GPO Before the Federal Documents Task Force Government Documents Round Table American Library Association Saturday, January 10, 1998 New Orleans, LA Introduction It is a pleasure to have another opportunity to update the library community on the current and future state of GPO Access. As always, I want to thank you for the quality feedback that plays a vital role in the continuing development of GPO Access. I also want to express my appreciation to our Production Department for their hard work in implementing these improvements. As required in the GPO Access legislation, we recently completed and sent the Biennial Report to Congress on the Status of GPO Access. Copies are being printed for distribution to all Federal depository libraries and it will be mounted electronically on our Web site in the near future. It will be available in ASCII, WordPerfect 5.2, and PDF. The report emphasizes the growth in the amount of content available on GPO Access, the improved access to this content, and the dramatic increase in usage over the past two years. Usage Over the 22-month period from January 1996 through October 1997, searches on GPO Access have increased by almost 1,200 percent, and document retrievals have grown by more than 300 percent. I proudly reported in San Francisco that monthly retrievals had just gone over 4 million. In October 1997, more than 8 million documents were downloaded from GPO Access. As a result of the beginning of the holiday season, retrievals in November, dropped to 7.3 million and to just over 7 million in December. While I would not characterize 7 million as a low number, traffic on the system increased dramatically on January 5, 1998, so we fully expect our numbers for January to increase. Planning efforts are well underway to continue increasing system capacity to provide proper response times to users as this growth continues. The Code of Federal Regulations has now become our most popular database, averaging approximately 3 million retrievals per month. Work is nearing completion to make the full set of 1996 editions available and we have begun adding the 1997 versions that have been updated through the normal cycle. Usage of the Federal Register remains strong as our second most popular database, averaging approximately 2.5 million retrievals. Commerce Business Daily (CBDNet) continues as a strong third at about 750,000 retrievals per month. GPO Access Survey A survey of Federal depository libraries was conducted recently to gather information about several critical areas of the GPO Access service, including functionality and user support. The results of this survey reflected positively on the progress that we are making and provided insight into areas that deserve increased attention. The results revealed strong positive ratings in several areas. Approximately 87 percent of the respondents indicated that GPO Access provided users with the information that they were looking for. Over 98 percent indicated satisfaction with the timeliness of the information they were seeking from GPO Access. Ratings for GPO Access user support were also encouraging. Decidedly favorable results were obtained in the areas of the product knowledge of the GPO Access User Support Team, the timeliness and accuracy of their responses to user inquiries, and their ability to resolve complaints. A similar survey is now underway for all users. This survey is accessible on the GPO Access home page and will continue through the end of January. We plan to continue conducting these surveys on a regular basis. What's new on GPO Access There are a number of recent changes to GPO Access that should be noted. The most important are: * The 1997 Statistical Abstract is now available online through GPO Access. Each section is available as a separate PDF file. * An online edition of the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents is now available through GPO Access. In addition to the current documents, several prior years are being added to the database. These additional years should be available in a few weeks. * Browseable indexes have been added for a number of important databases on GPO Access. Additional indexes will be provided in the future. One such index that has received substantial use is provided in the GILS application. Agency GILS records can be located and retrieved by browsing the index for each of the agency GILS databases maintained by GPO. * Several new brochures have been prepared to highlight specific areas of GPO Access. These include the important databases published by the Office of the Federal Register and another focusing on the congressional materials available through GPO Access. * Two new agency Web pages are hosted by GPO Access. They are for the National Bankruptcy Review Commission and the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. What's on the Horizon for GPO Access As always, work is under way to add more content to GPO Access and to refine access to the materials already provided. Some key examples of current efforts are: * An increasing number of congressional committees are requesting that their hearings be posted on GPO Access. A study is underway to determine the best user interface to provide a central means of accessing these important documents. * Work is proceeding on creating a site search application for the GPO Access Web site. When ready, it will be prominently displayed on the GPO Access home page. * Development is ongoing to utilize OpenText for GPO Access. The first application to make use of this will be a new database of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decisions. This new application should be released sometime in the spring. I would like to close by issuing an invitation to stop by our booth at the Convention Center while you are here. We will be happy to demonstrate any part of GPO Access. We can also provide you with promotional materials on what is available in the Sales Program, and as an added bonus, LPS personnel will be available to answer questions related to the Federal Depository Library Program. So please stop by Booth Number 927. A flyer is available in the back of the room to keep as a reminder.