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Government Information Quarterly Contents

Government Information Quarterly

Volume 14, Number 4, 1997 (Index Issue)

DISCUSSION FORUM

Prepublication Review Policies at the Voice of America:
Why Censorship of Employee Speech Is Antithetical
to Its Mission and to the First Amendment
Jane E. Kirtley ................................................................................................ 335

ARTICLES

Presidential Records: Evidence for Historians
or Ammunition for Prosecutors
Don W. Wilson ................................................................................................ 339

Arguments for the Standardization of Privacy Protection Policy:
Canadian Initiatives and American and International Responses
Colin J. Bennett .................................................................................................. 351

Studies on Government Publications' Use, 1990-1996
Thomas Reed Caswell ....................................................................................... 363

Web Usage Statistics: Measurement Issues and Analytical Techniques
John Carlo Bertot, Charles R. McClure, William E. Moen
and Jeffrey Rubin ............................................................................................... 373

SPECIAL FEATURE

Open Government
Henry H. Perrift, Jr . .............................................................................................. 397

Contributors ....................................................................................................... 407

REVIEWS ................................................................................................................. 409

Index ........................................................................................................................... 423

ABSTRACTS

Presidential Records: Evidence for Historians
or Ammunition for Prosecutors

Don W. Wilson

This article, based on the 1997 Lazarow Lecture which Dr. Wilson delivered at Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science on April 3, 1997, discusses the evolution of Presidential records as "ammunition for prosecutors" and the implications of this for historical research. Studies on Government Publications' Use,
1990-1996

Thomas Reed Caswell

Modeled after two earlier articles concerning research published through 1989 on the use of government documents, this review of literature brings the coverage up-to-date. Concerning itself only with those studies concentrating on the use and users of government-produced information, this review found nine studies within a seven-year time period. Some parallels are drawn as far as the current status of knowledge in the field of government documents use, but limitations are pointed out as well in what is seemingly becoming an abandoned form of research in government documents librarianship. The article also suggests topics meriting further consideration.

Web Usage Statistics: Measurement Issues
and Analytical Techniques

John Carlo Bertot
Charles R. McClure
William E. Moen
Jeffrey Rubin

The number of federal agencies creating and maintaining electronic networked resources continues to increase. One networked resource federal agencies are increasingly using is the World Wide Web (Web). As government use of the Web rises, so too does the need for assessing the extent and nature of public use of agency Web sites. One means of Web use evaluation is through the analysis of Web server-generated log files. This article presents various log file analysis techniques and issues related to the interpretation of log file data.

SPECIAL FEATURE
Open Government
Henry H. Perritt, Jr.
Access to government information in electronic form is essential to the realization of a civil society, democratization, and a rule of law. Freedom of information issues are centrally important in countries around the world, and the Internet's World Wide Web offers the potential to provide freedom of information at low cost. Achieving a sound information policy to promote open government requires constant vigilance by those who care about the goal. The greatest threat is state sponsored monopoly. State sponsored monopolies are inimical to open government and rule of law because they open the possibility of censorship, because they raise prices and increase cost, and because they deprive the public of new technology developments. Agencies should never seek to restrict redissemination or to prescribe prices at which information may be distributed to redisseminated. Copyright law may be interpreted to exclude the possibility of copyright in basic public information. Finally, the proposed database protection treaty now pending before the World Intellectual Property Organization should be opposed, unless drafters add a compulsory license provision to mandate multiple sources and channels for public information locked up by intellectual property and database rights.
Contributors
Colin J. Bennett received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Wales and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since 1986, he has taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, where he is now Associate Professor. His research interests have focused on the comparative analysis of public policies to protect personal data at the domestic and international levels. The cross-national study of data protection (or privacy protection) policies provides insights into how different states with different cultures and institutions have responded to the threats posed by information technology. Recent research has focused on the regulation of new data processing and surveillance practices, such as data matching, data profiling, and the development of personal identification numbers and identity cards. He has published Regulating Privacy (Cornell University Press, 1992) and articles in a number of journals. He has also been a consultant to Industry Canada. He is currently a member of the provincial Advisory Council on Information Technology.
John Carlo Bertot is Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he teaches courses in federal and state government information management and policies, telecommunications policy, and management information systems. He completed his Ph.D. in Information Studies from Syracuse University. He has written extensively on topics related to information policy and information resources management, most recently co-editing a symposium issue of Government Information Quarterly on these topics. He is currently Co-Principal Investigator of a national study assessing cost factors associated with public library use of the Internet.
Thomas Reed Caswell has been the Electronic Reference Coordinator for the Documents Department at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida since 1991. He is the recipient of the 1997 GODORT/ALA David Rozkuska Scholarship Award and has just completed his Master's degree in Library and Inforrnation Science at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Jane E. Kirtley is Executive Director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a voluntary association of reporters and editors dedicated to protecting the First Amendment interests of the news media. A lawyer and former newspaper reporter, Ms. Kirtley writes and speaks frequently on press freedom issues. She edits The Reporters Committee's quarterly magazine, The News Media & The Law. She holds a J.D. degree from Vanderbilt University School of Law and Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
Charles R. McClure is Distinguished Professor of Information Studies at Syracuse University. He has received a number of honors for his research and has been the recipient of numerous research grants. He recently completed, with William Moen as Co-Principal Investigator, an assessment of the Government Information Locator Service (GELS). With John Carlo Bertot, he co-authored a two-volume report that assessed the Maryland State- wide Network, SAILOR. His most recent book is Assessing the Academic Networked Environment (Washington, D.C.: Coalition for Networked Information, 1996).
William E. Moen is Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Sciences, University of North Texas. He teaches courses, for instance, on information policy. He was the guest editor of Government Information Quarterly's symposium issue on "Information Technology Standards and Federal Information Policy" (vol. 11, no. 4, 1994).
Henry H. Perritt, Jr. is Dean, Vice President, and Professor of Law, IIT Chicago Kent College of Law. Prior to assuming this position, he was Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law. He served on President Clinton's Transition Team, working on telecommunications issues; on the White House staff, and as Deputy Under Secretary of Labor in the Ford administration. He is a member of the bars of Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Maryland, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He earned his B.S. degree in engineering from MIT in 1966, a Master's degree in management from MIT's Sloan School in 1970, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1975. He is the author of more than 35 law review articles and 11 books.
Jeffrey Rubin is a master's student and research associate at the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York 13244).
Don W. Wilson is the Executive Director of the George Bush Presidential Library Center, Texas A&M University. Before assuming this position in April 1993, he served as Archivist of the United States for more than five years. President Reagan appointed him to be the seventh Archivist of the United States and he was sworn in on December 4, 1987. Dr. Wilson has held a variety of administrative positions in both state and federal historical institutions He previously served as deputy director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and was named the first director of the Gerald Ford Presidential Library in 1981. At Texas A&M University, he has been associated with the Center for Presidential Studies as a research professor. He received his undergraduate degree from Washburn University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati, where he was a National Defense Fellow from 1964 to 1967. He also received a honorary doctorate from the University of Cincinnati in 1988.

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