The Darkening of Government Information Christopher C. Brown Reference Technology Integration Librarian / Government Documents Librarian University of Denver, Main Library August 7, 2014

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 Z 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 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference

The Information Access Anomaly 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: Western States Government Information Virtual Conference

Catalog Search vs. Metasearch vs. Discovery Search CatalogMetasearchDiscovery Searches 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 Deep searching in many cases; 1:1, otherwise 1:10,000 Gov info on par with other info Gov info backgrounded, since only CGP records exposed, NOT full text of FDsys 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 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference

Presence of Govdocs in DU’s Library Catalog 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 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 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference

Questions? 2014 Western States Government Information Virtual Conference Christopher C. Brown Christopher.