Editorial
Building the scholarship of next generation information professional
As governments increasingly shift their services, resources, and in-formation to online forms of delivery – often exclusively – this givesrise to numerous issues surrounding access to and dissemination ofgovernment information and the information policies that governthat access. In the U.S., the curation of federal government informa-tion has long been structured under two ends of a spectrum: 1) theauspices of the Government Printing Office and the nearly 1200 fed-eral depository libraries that exist throughout the nation, intendedto provide public access to the workings of government; and 2) theNational Archives and Records Administration, intended to preserveselected government records permanently. While a number of oftenincremental changes have been made to the depository program totry and contend with an increasingly digital government service con-text, the structure is antiquated in terms of the nature of governmentinformation is, which is increasingly born digital and no longerprinted; the ways in which access to and dissemination of govern-ment information is possible; preferences by both government agen-cies and the public for electronic access; and the current context inwhich federal depository libraries operate — which is marked by re-duced funding and staffing, as well as the potential for collaborativeservices that the digital realm can offer. Archivists and records man-agers also face numerous challenges regarding the preservation ofelectronic records and digitized content.
In 2008,GIQ editor JohnCarlo Bertot, Assistant Editor John Shuler, andBoard Member Paul Jaeger received a grant from the U.S. Institute ofMuseum and Library Services focused on the education and preparationof information specialists with the requisite skills necessary to contendwith the evolving government information landscape. In particular, thegrant funded the development and implementation of a digital govern-ment information concentration within the University of MarylandiSchool's Master of Library Science degree program. Designed as a two-year professional graduate program, 20 scholarship students enrolledin August 2009 and anticipate graduating in July 2012.
The goals of this program were to:
1. Develop a sustainable program of graduate librarianshipthat focuses on how future practitioners can effectively inte-grate the myriad sources of tangible (e.g., print, microfiche)and electronic government information services/sources intolibraries.
2. Encourage the evolution of government information research andpractice through grounded application and scholarship.
3. Bridge the gap between the practice of librarianship and theresearch challenges created by the shifting formats and distri-bution schemes of government information and services.
4. Prepare students to build and sustain government information andservices through library-based programs that reach out to allpopulations, including traditionally underserved communities,
such as persons with disabilities, Native American tribal areas, aswell as rural areas and urban neighborhoods which may lack agrounding in government information sources, services, andaccess.
5. Promote innovative approaches in research and practice aboutgovernment information services within an evolving social, techni-cal, legal, and policy contexts.
6. Promote the identification, evaluation, and adoption of best prac-tices in the delivery of access to government information and ser-vices in both tangible and electronic formats.
7. Foster scholarly discourse that examines the delivery of govern-ment information and services within the larger policy environ-ment and political context.
8. Gain direct experience of how government information librarianscontribute and influence the governance of federal, state andlocal government information programs.
In addition, the program was based on four core components:
• Coursework. The coursework served as the intellectual and concep-tual basis for the evolving government information environment.
• Practice. Through internships with a range of government infor-mation settings (e.g., Government Printing Office, depositorylibraries), students developed applied government informationskills.
• Professional. Students were integrated into the Federal DepositoryLibrary program through attendance at annual professionalmeetings of the By bringing students together annually to attendthe spring Federal Depository Library Council meeting, studentswill become integrated into the larger government informationcommunity and engage key issues in government information.
• Scholarship. Through inclusion in the review and manuscript devel-opment process of GIQ, students would publish government re-source reviews, thus contributing to scholarship in governmentinformation, and learn the publication process.
Together, these four integrative aspects of the program provided acritical foundation for students in the proposed program.
Student reviews
The following pages contain the first set of reviews of governmentwebsites by the students in the grant program. Through the develop-ment of these reviews, the students learned not only what it meant toconduct an analytic review of e-government services as offeredthrough government agency websites, but they also assisted GIQ de-velop a new approach to conducting reviews. Through this process,and under the leadership of our Review Editor Suzanne Reinman,we were able to rethink the review process, particularly what the
Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 294–310
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Government Information Quarterly
j ourna l homepage: www.e lsev ie r .com/ locate /gov inf
journal sought in terms of analysis and other review criteria and todevelop a review team. In short, this process provided us the oppor-tunity to recast reviews within the journal.
The following pages contain reviews by scholarship students AndyBourgeois, Michelle Donlin, Kim Larson, Ruth Lincoln, LawrenceMello, Alison Regan, and Eva Wolfberg. The assignment often pairedstudents with websites, thus Andy Bourgeois and Ruth Lincoln bothindependently reviewed the National Institutes of Health website(http://www.nih.gov); and Lawrence Mello and Michelle Donlinreviewed the Department of State's Travel website (http://travel.state.gov). We have published both sets of reviews for these sites.Alison Regan offers insights into the Department of Health andHuman Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion'sHealthfinder website (http://healthfinder.gov/). Eva Wolfberg reviewsthe Department of Education's Free Application for Federal StudentAid (FAFSA) website from a usability perspective (http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/). And lastly, Kim Larson reviews the Center for Disease Controland Prevention website (http://www.cdc.gov/).
John Carlo Bertot⁎Paul T. Jaeger
Information Policy & Access Center in the College of Information Studiesat the University of Maryland College Park, USA
⁎Corresponding authorE-mail address: [email protected]. (J.C. Bertot)
[email protected]. (P.T. Jaeger)
John A. ShulerUrban Planning Bibliographer in the Richard J. Daley Library at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, USAE-mail address: [email protected]. (J.A. Shuler)
doi:10.1016/j.giq.2012.01.002
295Editorial
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