More web obfuscation from the Federal Government

From Computerword, via LIS News comes this story about NARA abdicating their responsibility to preserve digital content from the Federal Government. Normally, I would read an article like this and move on. Just another story about how organizations push content on to the web without any concern about access and usability. In this case, NARA prefers to have non-governmental agencies preserve content from the Federal Government.

Agency under fire for decision not to save federal Web content: "'The fact that digital preservation is done by others outside NARA isn't an excuse for NARA to abdicate their responsibility, but an argument that they should be capable of fulfilling it,' he said. 'As members of Congress and federal agencies increasingly move their work online, robust digital archiving will only become more important, so we can understand how our government is performing its duties.'"

However, I have a personal story on federal web content. I once worked in a Government Documents Depository that was 95%. The 95% meant that is collected 95% of the publications the government pushed out. Our library collected information sent to us by the Federal Government, collected information from the State government, and collected information from local governments. There are many valuable and interesting documents in all of these collections. This also one of the most complicated call number systems around. SuDoc, Superintendent of Government Documents call number system categorizes information by agency, not be subject. Each department has a letter, and the numbers branch out to refer to a division. The Department of the Interior is indicated by an I and then a number sequence would follow. I was responsible for organizing the paper collection.

Some of the document put out are very interesting. There are documents that show mining accidents that document what happened with illustrations. I can remember reading one where there was a child involved in a wall collapse. I can see the small child playing by the wall in the illustration just before the collapse. I don't think it needed an illustration. It's burned in my memory now. Some of the more amusing ones were call Preventative Maintenance, an Army document. It was a comic book that showed how to provide maintaince on weapons and vehicles. It was like Archie Comics meets Army maintenance.

Federal Documents were just coming online. MARC records would come in to identify which records would no longer be distributed in paper and then provide a PURL (Permanent URL). These links almost never pointed to an actually document, just the general webpage of the authoring organization. Crazy as I was, I began to look for the actual page for the document and place both the PURL and the url in the marc records for people to find. I went even further and placed these documents online. This webpage doesn't exist any longer. There was another university doing similar work, http://exlibris.memphis.edu/resource/unclesam/migrating/mig.html It stopped updating five years ago. Why is this important? You can't search for this information. It is buried in government webpage. I was also an intern for a government agency and my job was to search for fugitive documents. It is almost impossible to find these documents online.

It takes deep digging at the government agency to get at the information you want. So not only is no one preserving this information, it has been made extremely difficult to find. So when patrons come into our library asking for government services, we say it's online. It is almost a miracle if you can dig it out. This goes back to my post about poor career sites. The government needs to provide an easier way to get information and use services online. NARA shirking its duties is just another example of the Federal Government not taking information distribution seriously. All this information is extremely critical and once again, an agency responsible for distributing that information has passed it to libraries.

Poor Career sites explain problems for job seekers or why librarians spend so much time helping job seekers

This article caught my eye. It certainly explains a great deal about why job seekers have so much difficulty applying for jobs at public libraries. This is something I have discussed in the past and last Summer Library Journal did a cover story on how public libraries are working for the Federal Government providing job and tax information. Apparently, we are also working for major employers that have passed on their job applications to online websites. Those sites, are failing:

Career Sites Fail Job Seekers - New York Times: "According to the research firm, more than 60% of 25- to 34-year-old job seekers rely on the Internet to find employment information, making career sites the second most common source of new hires for large companies. Forrester expects that popularity to increase as Generation X and Y employees begin to comprise a larger percentage of the total workforce. Yet the study showed that job seekers can expect poor performance from career sites across the board.
'Ten of the 12 sites reviewed scored below zero,' the report reads. A passing score on all 25 criteria Forrester examines would be a +25 or higher, with a score range of between -50 and +50. 'Yahoo! Hotjobs fared the best at +10, which is 15 points shy of a passing score; Merrill Lynch fared the worst at =18. The average score across all of the sites evaluated was -8.8,' Forrester reports.
Forrester evaluated American International Group (AIG), Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and The Goldman Sachs Group in the financial services industry. For retailers, the research firm examined JCPenney, Kroger, Macy's and Rite Aid. And for job search Web sites, the research covered CareerBuilder.com, Dice, Monster and Yahoo! Hotjobs.
Common problems across all industries including missing content and functions, flawed navigation flows, illegible text and poor use of space, as well as poor error handling and missing privacy and security policies. According to Forrester, companies need to design career sites with the user in mind and begin revamping by first fixing problems that inhibit site usability."
END SNIP

If you can imagine applying for a job using a computer when the job doesn't even REQUIRE a computer, it easy to see how frustrating the process can be. Some would even suggest businesses do this not just to save money, but to weed out those who cannot use a computer. I can say this, library staff take a large portion of their time helping the public navigate career websites and finding jobs. If those sites were easier, it would be less of a burden on public resources.

Librarians and Directors need to utilize their own services

It is difficult to be objective when looking at the services your own library provides. In any industry, an organization must look at their services and see it from the outsider's perspective. Is it easy to use? Does the service make sense?

For libraries, a problem that I see is the public computer stations. Do librarians actually sit down at one of these stations and try to do what they would do normally on them? Can you check your email? How fast does it go? Don't just rely on a speed test that the computer tells you. Sit down at the computer and try to do what you would normally do at home. Can you do them? Why not? Is it slow?

When we had computer slow-downs at my library I did a simple search on Google. The page itself took 30 seconds to load. At that point I realized we had a problem. The library only offers an hour to the patrons per day. In the study, we found that most patrons could barely check their email before their time was up due to the bandwidth strain. Thanks to e-rate funds, we were able to upgrade the service from 1.5 mbps to 6mbps. It's funny, on the first day of the new bandwidth, I could noticeably hear the clicking of mice (mouses?) and noticed that it was unusually fast. Blazing even. Many people will suffer through bad services since they have nowhere else to turn, but it shouldn't be so painfully poor. I read this post today and it made me laugh:

Tales from the "Liberry" 2.0: Gene FINALLY Poops: "Back when I had dial up at home, it used to be that going to work was my great escape from the slow speed at home. Now that I have amazingly reliable Verizon DSL at home, however, going to work is like sliding into a nice pool of tepid tar."

I think this is the next big issue for public libraries, bandwidth assurance. We need to start budgeting and paying for network upgrades for our t-1 lines. It is great that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave us computers in 2001, then replaced them in 2005, and they even upgrade libraries from dial-up to broadband. However, the next big push needs to be in sufficient bandwidth. The average library doesn't have enough pipe to make the service acceptable. The result is the post from above, it's terrible.

Actually, people like to share books, and it only helps the author

I am quite frustrated with the availability of e-books and the fact that I cannot read e-books in the format and the device I choose. I would love to fill a device with dozens of books and I would never be bookless. (A fear not mentioned in most psychiatric phobia analysis, but altogether very real and frightening.) Even with the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle's ability to store hundreds of books, you would have to purchase them from their store since the format is compatible. These devices don't do well with e-books that have Digital Rights Protection on them. Furthermore, while drm on an audiotrack is easily hacked in a variety of ways, the drm for e-books is remarkable. Just try to google the term adobe reader drm hack and similar terms and you find empty forums and of those, few exist. I understand that the author must be compensated, ABSOLUTELY, but I think they would like their books to be read as well. Afterall, a book more widely read (no matter how it was acquired) puts money in the authors pocket. After all, the first public libraries were formed from bookstores. When the bookstores ran out of copies of very popular books, they would loan them out until new books came in. It helped keep the interest of the reading public and the buzz about the books stoked the demand for the book, rather than drive down demand.

This headline from Techdirt discussing an article from The Times Online gives some hope.

Techdirt: Despite Inflammatory Headline, UK Authors Society Looking To Embrace Free, Not Fight The Internet: "There's a really inflammatory headline and opening paragraph in an article in the Times Online in the UK stating that 'book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing.' This claim is actually unsubstantiated by history (which has actually shown book piracy ends up helping authors) or, actually, by the rest of the article. Rather than a reactionary RIAA-style response from the UK's Society of Authors, the article shows that the group isn't so much fearing internet piracy, but simply noting that business models need to change."

Now that authors are beginning to understand that they need to find ways to lesson DRM on their books and make them more available, I have hope that we will make a connection in having downloadable e-books whenever you need them (when you are bookless in an airport, but have wi-fi) and the ability to read it on any device. This will be a great service to the reading addicts and will assure that a reader will never be without a book as long as they have an internet connection. Hmm think about that, the internet INCREASES reading instead of decreases it.