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National Library News

October 1995, vol. 27, no. 10

The National Library's Gopher One Year Later: Lessons Learned

by Lynn Herbert, Systems Librarian, Reference and Information Services Division

In June 1995, the National Library inaugurated its World Wide Web (WWW) service, exactly one year after its gopher server was established (see "Internet Services at the National Library of Canada: The National Library's Gopher Server", National Library News, vol. 26, nos. 8-9, August/September 1994, pp. 10-12). The gopher was one of the first bilingual Internet services in Canada, and among the earliest of the federal government's electronic services. It was also the Library's first experience in providing an Internet service. The effort has proven successful for several reasons. The content and structure of the service has been praised, and the usage statistics have demonstrated its usefulness to both Canadians and non-Canadians. Library staff have developed additional technical skills, and within the institution there has been a steady growth of knowledge and an evolution in thinking about electronic service provision.

A Librarian-Constructed Gopher Server

Librarians have the training and experience to build and maintain quality electronic services. The process of constructing the National Library's gopher involved careful thinking about hierarchical structure, logic and menu presentation. Those of us who were responsible for the project considered the clarity and consistency of presentation, the integrity of the information and, above all, the user's approach to navigating the menus. For example, we considered how the user might view our services, and not how these services are organized within the Library.

Although the gopher took several months to construct, our individual and collective efforts have been rewarded throughout the past year with numerous compliments about its structure, content and usefulness, and it has been frequently cited as a good example of how to build a server. In this sense, we have satisfied a need, and provided an example of the valuable role of librarians in the networked information environment.

Development and Status of the Gopher Server

The gopher usage statistics have been relatively consistent, with expected seasonal variations. Between June 1994 and May 1995:

A total of 691 728 directories were retrieved at an average of 57 644 each month.

A total of 75 612 documents were retrieved at an average of 6 301 each month.

Every week there was an average of 1 037 different connecting hosts.

While the service continues to function as both a gateway to Canadian library and government information and a delivery mechanism for ASCII versions of the National Library's publications, ideas for other roles have changed over time. Plans to expand the Library's gopher services have changed with the development of Internet technology and the Library's Web service. For example, subject-based menus linking to Canadian electronic information have never been put on the gopher, but will be part of the Web service this fall. In the Reference and Information Services Division, we now intend to increase our Internet offerings to include the direct provision of electronic services, such as finding aids, research instruction, subject-based gateways and answers to frequently asked questions about Canadian society, history, literature and music.

The administration of the gopher server has been decentralized, thus ensuring that several staff members have first-hand experience with the technical and intellectual aspects of Internet service management. The Gopher/Web Editorial Committee provides the necessary continuity for the hierarchical menu structures and consistency of quality and content for both the gopher and the new Web service.

The role of the gopher is now secondary to that of the Web service, but will remain complementary as long as usage statistics warrant it. Maintaining both services for a time gives us an opportunity to reach the widest possible number of users by offering various means for disseminating information.

Lessons Learned

One of our most valuable lessons was how quickly the technology evolves and how adaptable Internet services and librarians need to be. The gopher was barely finished and publicly announced, when it became evident that the Internet's evolution had already rendered it technically obsolete. Although new gophers were announced around the world during the past year, most North American and Western European Internet-connected institutions were already beginning to offer their services on the Web.

We are also learning to deal with the differences between gopher and WWW technology as tools for disseminating information and organizing resources on the Internet. The rapid growth of information on the Internet has made us aware that the Library cannot be an effective gateway to every Canadian site and service, and that the involvement of many staff members is necessary for locating, evaluating and annotating selected resources in Canadian studies, history, literature, and music.

For Library staff, the gopher has also demonstrated the potential to serve researchers directly and simultaneously in ways that were not possible before. This discovery implies a fundamental rethinking of traditional reference services.

The Future: An Integral Role for Reference Librarians

Librarians have an essential role in assisting researchers to overcome information overload, in filtering, judging and evaluating the quality of information, and in repackaging information as a value-added product that will assist users. We can also serve as intermediaries between the information, the technology and the researcher, acting as navigators, organizers and teachers.

Most experienced Internet users know of a few good sites to visit for topics of individual interest. However, the process of using the Internet for reference work, where the librarian does not have the luxury of surfing the Internet at leisure, has made it clear that the Internet is becoming unuseable. Relevant and useful information can always be found, but only with a considerable investment in time, and the librarian can never be certain that everything has been found.

Internet developers often focus on the technology of building indexes, are overly enamoured of the potential of full-text indexes, and neglect issues of content quality or do not realize the advantages of controlled vocabularies, indexing standards and human mediation. While technology can be used to build lists of links to associated documents, resources and services, this is currently a task that is generally done ad hoc by individuals. As a result, most lists are mixtures of links to other lists and links to original resources, often including the original list from which the user navigated. These lists are often also obsolete, incomplete and inconsistently maintained. It becomes frustrating and time-consuming to use these "directories", even though alternatives are few.

Unless we develop effective tools and methods for finding, evaluating, and providing access to information, the potential of networked information could be lost. Librarians should have a central role in developing these tools and methods, and machine indexing should supplement, rather than completely supplant, intellectual effort.

In keeping with the potential roles for reference librarians in the world of networked information, the Reference and Information Services Division plans to offer a range of electronic services and products as resources permit. For example, staff members are eager to contribute to the organization of Canadian information found on the Internet and, in collaboration with colleagues in the National Library's Acquisitions and Bibliographic Services, we plan to provide subject-based access to these resources. As well, we will make available many of the navigational aids that reference staff have already produced to assist researchers in finding information in our collections on a broad range of topics in Canadian studies. We also intend to maintain a series of aids for effective research techniques and strategies for finding information in various forms. No doubt, as time goes on, technology continues to develop and users' needs become more varied, other ideas for improving services to our users will be considered and, if resources permit, implemented. As always, we welcome your comments.

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