ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES NEWSLETTER OF THE FEDERAL DEPOSITORY LIBRARY PROGRAM Vol. 19, no. 09 GP 3.16/3-2:19/09 July 15, 1998 GPO ACCESS: CURRENT AND FUTURE 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, June 27, 1998 Washington, DC 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. These efforts are paying off both in terms of utility to our users and attention for the site. GPO Access was selected as one of the "Best Feds on the Web" by Government Executive Magazine. This award was followed by a letter from Vice President Gore congratulating GPO "for the excellent customer service you are providing through your Web site." There are now more than 800 official Government databases available on GPO Access. These databases contain over 81 gigabytes of data and the total is growing daily. In addition, thousands of other Government information products are accessible through GPO Access. In fact, a recent count designed to equate titles available electronically to paper titles distributed through the Federal Depository Library Program revealed a very interesting number. More than 114,000 electronic titles are available through the FDLP Electronic Collection. These titles include all of the products and services available on and linked to from GPO Access. This total is dramatic evidence of the transition to a more electronic FDLP. The number of electronic titles has grown by more than 31,000 so far this year and will continue to expand as more content is added to our servers, additional partnerships are achieved, and more titles on other sites are bibliographically controlled and linked from our site. Usage GPO Access usage continues to be high, even though we are entering the traditionally slowest time of the year. Over 153 million documents have been downloaded from GPO Access since it began operation in 1994, with more than 80.5 million downloaded in FY 1998 through May. At the current rate, almost 127 million documents will be downloaded in FY 1998, compared to about 46 million for FY 1997. User support contacts have continued to be strong as well. The GPO Access User Support Team is now fully staffed, with eight specialists ready to answer your questions, and planning is underway to add more specialists as workload warrants. In mid-May our support hours expanded, running from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EST. While this increase has proven to be beneficial to our users, volume during the extra half-hour has been light. This volume may increase as more users find our about the extension and we will continue to monitor these reports to see if additional time is needed. What's New on GPO Access There are a number of recent changes to GPO Access that should be noted. The most important are: * A new shopping cart feature has been added to the Sales Product Catalog (SPC) application. With this feature you can order up to 20 Sales products on a single order. These products can be selected from either a single search or from multiple searches. There is also an opportunity for you to edit your order before submitting it to GPO. These improvements to the SPC are just the start of many improvements that are planned to assist you in locating and purchasing sales products from GPO. * A browseable Table of Contents for the Federal Register, with links to the individual documents, is now available and has been receiving a heavy volume of use. User response indicates that this was a very useful modification to the application. * A new GPO Access Training Manual has been published and will be shipped to depository libraries in the near future. A limited number of evaluation copies are also available at our booth in the Convention Center. * Two new promotional posters for GPO Access have been created. While copies will be shipped to depository libraries around the first week in July, copies are also available at our booth in the Convention Center. * Ways and Means Committee Print 105-7, known as the 1998 Green Book, containing background material and data on programs within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means, is now available on GPO Access. It is accessible through the Ways and Means Committee database. 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: * Building upon the popular success of the new Federal Register browseable table of contents, browseable versions of the tables of contents for the individual parts and subparts of the Code of Federal Regulations is under development. * A cooperative project is underway to enhance CBDNet. GPO is working with Commerce, GSA, and NASA to enhance CBDNet to provide the single face for Government procurement called for in the FY 1998 Defense Appropriation Act. These enhancements include adding links in notices that will take users directly to all documentation related to a given procurement, and enabling users to establish e-mail profiles so that notices matching that profile will be sent to them as soon as they are entered into the system. In the future, businesses will also have the ability to directly submit their bids to Government through the system. Starting with the e-mail profiles, these enhancements should become available in the near future. * New databases for the House and Senate Journals are under development. These journals contain the official minutes of the House and Senate. They record in summary the activities of each legislative day and official acts of Congress, broken down into paragraphs. The Journals are different from the Congressional Record in that they summarize the events of a session as opposed to capturing the debate verbatim. The Journals for 1991 on will be included in this application when it is finished. * An increasing number of congressional committees are requesting that their hearings be posted on GPO Access. The number of Senate committees asking that their hearings be posted on GPO Access is growing, while only a few House committees have made their materials available to date. A study is underway to determine the best user interface to provide a central means of accessing these important documents. * A site search application for the GPO Access Web site is still under development. When ready, it will be prominently displayed on the GPO Access home page. * Based on feedback received from focus groups conducted at the Federal Depository Library Conference in April, a new GPO Access home page is under development. It can be viewed at our booth in the Convention Center. I urge you to stop by Booth Number 2771-2773 and see this and other new GPO Access offerings. 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.