[12495] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Washington State Library & the Digital Future
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ellen Levesque)
Fri Oct 16 20:03:53 1998
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 12:40:27 -0500
From: Ellen Levesque <elevesque@STATELIB.WA.GOV>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Gayle Palmer the WAGILS program manager, ask me to post this press release.
Please contact her if you have additiional questions (info at end of release)
"Washington State Library Leads Other States toward a Digital Future"
The states of Oregon, Mississippi and New Hampshire will soon benefit from the
success of
Find-It! WashingtonTM (http://find-it.wa.gov) the unique website created by the
Washington
State Library. The State Library has just been awarded $114,040 by the
Institute of Museum
and Library Services to replicate this popular program in these three states.
The Institute is a federal
agency that fosters innovation, leadership and a lifetime of learning, and
sponsors the
National Leadership Grant program. Nancy Zussy, State Librarian, noted that the
State Library proposal
was one of only ten national awards made by the Institute, and it was selected
from sixty-six
applications for Library Research and Demonstration Project funding.
Washington State's Government Information Locator Services (WAGILS) launched the
Find-It! Washington
search engine in June 1998 in order to increase the ability of citizens to find
and use
state and local government information and services. Since its June debut,
Find-It! Washington
has clearly demonstrated its popularity, with website use growing by more than
12,000 hits
a week. It has already received national and international notice. Project
Director Phillip Coombs
was invited to present a paper at the international Internet Society's annual
conference in Geneva
Switzerland in July concerning the metatagging process used by Find-it!
Washington. His report
can be read at (http://www.isoc.org/inet98/proceedings/1c/1c_1.htm). The Ohio
Supercomputer Center,
Electronic Commerce, Law and Information Policy Strategies program at Ohio State
University recently used Washington State's program as a case study of
successful
implementation of intergovernmental connectivity. The Center's report
Eliminating Legal and
Policy Barriers to Interoperable Government Systems was issued in August 1998
and can be read at
(http://iep.fedworld.gov/library/elapbigs/cover.html).
Users of Find-It! Washington can search more than 190,000 resource descriptions
linked from
seventy-six local and state government servers in Washington. As the only
Washington search
engine that provides access to both local and state government information, it
offers citizens easy
and powerful access to online information of cities, counties and state
government and to more
than 82,000 printed government publications located in Washington libraries. If
the user doesn't
find the information needed, they can use the unique "GILShelp" e-mail, which
connects them
with live librarians to assist in their search for information.
The State Library WAGILS staff assist state and local governments to become
participants in the
program, as well as offer workshops, consultation and training to develop
content for world wide
web delivery. The indexing and categorizing concepts of WAGILS can be used in
an Internet
or Intranet environment.
For more information please contact Gayle Palmer, WAGILS Program Manager,
360-704-5210,
e-mail: gpalmer@statelib.wa.gov.
