Locating online government information: a comparison of FirstGov, Google, and Yahoo

To facilitate both the understanding and the discovery of information, we need to utilize multiple sources of evidence, integrate a variety of methodologies, and combine human capabilities with those of the machine. The Web Information Discovery Integrated Tool (WIDIT) Laboratory at the School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University-Bloomington, houses several projects that employ this idea of multi-level fusion in the areas of information retrieval and knowledge discovery. This poster describes a comparative study of FirstGov, Google, and Yahoo by WIDIT's DGov research group, whose aim is to develop a more efficient and effective approach to organizing the U.S. Government websites that can facilitate the access and enhance the retrieval of government information.