In order to explore the prevalence of federal government information on the World Wide Web, two random samples were taken of material sent to federal depository libraries in the first half of the year 2000. Over the course of eighteen months four separate attempts were made to find each of the sample publications on the World Wide Web using a variety of search engines. During the first attempt, one to five months after the material was sent to depository libraries, 47% of the publications in the sample were located on the Web. During the final and most successful attempt, 18 to 23 months after the distribution, 63% of the sample publications were located. Based on the sample, at present almost two-thirds of depository material are available on the Web approximately two years after the material was sent to depository libraries.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.