Mary (Maggie) Farrell, Dean of Libraries at the University of Wyoming USA recently wrote an editorial in Government Information Quarterly (Vol. 22 (2005) 143–145)) entitled : “Google and government documents”.
The editorial discusses Google Print, and its aims to digitise the collections of major libraries. Google’s efforts are seen as more significant than those which have gone before due to the scale of Google’s effort as well as technology and funding which are in a completely different class to what has gone before. Google’s work is also viewed as a potential precursor to digitisation efforts by other major organisations such as Microsoft and Yahoo.
In the USA government documents are in the public domain and so Government libraries contain vast quantities of free information waiting to be made accessible by those searching online. It is noted that commercial enterprises have been exploiting this data for some time and charging for access to it and that it is possible that Google’s project could impact that business model.
Google’s Mission:
is compared to that of the Federal Depository Library Programme, which is essentially to do the same for US Government information.to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
A number of current hurdles to Government information being made easily made accessible to all online are noted:
- Internet access
- Document authentication
- Preservation of digital documents
The fact that there are a number of solutions to the last two points, and the first is likely to be a transitory problem is not discussed. Making Government documents online is going to make them more accessible even to those without internet access, as they simply become more widely accessible throughout society.
Farrell states in the article that:
I want to reach out to those who believe that the Internet has everything or that Google constitutes a thorough search.
Surprisingly the answer of making Government information available online, in a way such that it can be indexed effectively by search engines, indexes, and other information organising enterprises such as those involved in tagging, local searching etc. isn’t proposed. The article is suggesting that there will still be a primary role for individual library catalogues, Government Publication Office catalogues and others, and that the question facing librarians is not how to get people the information they’re searching for but: “How do we get them beyond Google into library resources?”, which is more like: “How do we keep librarians and libraries in the loop?”. Sci7 believes the kind of questions that could have been asked would have included how can we enable others to interact with our information and catalogues more easily - how do we provide access to catalogue data in machine readable formats.
There is no clear separation in the article between past, present and future. While the resources of Google and others may be of value in digitising existing paper content, this is only applicable to the past. For the present and future ensuring that documents are made available in a timely fashion, indexed / tagged / described and linked appropriately, and made available to webcrawling robots is of key importance. Once the information is out there - it is down to the search engines and other session initiation sites to ensure that content is presented when it is an appropriate response to a user query.
While preservation of documents is mentioned, the article does not discuss document formats, it appears that this question might be too contentious to be discussed with respect to a Government machine with much information entrapped in closed proprietary Microsoft formats.
Lastly two questions are raised, apparently as threats: “How do we serve patrons whom we never see?” and “How do we justify services and resources in an online environment?”, whereas Sci7 would counter that making information available online actually makes it possible to “see” a lot more about information users than ever before, the potential for detailed statistics and usage tracking makes informed judgements on questions such as value for money being provided by “library” services easier. A key missing, but related question is one of privacy - should the Government be tracking everyone who requests a particular Government document - what should they be allowed to do with that information, for how long should it be stored, etc. The American Government’s power to access library records has been a major issue in the debate on the extension of the Patriot Act’s powers in this area. The potential for such invasion of privacy may well be extended by the increased digitisation of Government documents and any discussion of Government information being made available online is incomplete without considering this important area which could significantly affect how individuals choose to interact with Government information.
Prior to her position at Wyoming Farrell was librarian and “Internet Consultant” at the USA Government Printing Office and Head of Government Publications at the University of Nevada.
Link to article: DOI: doi:10.1016/j.giq.2005.03.002