The circular continuum of agencies, libraries, and users: a model of e-government in practice

When e-government first became a viable solution to the dissemination of government information, experts believed that the rise of direct government-to-citizen (G2C) services would improve government transparency and foster civic engagement. It soon became clear, however, that not all users were not getting the type of information or instruction that they needed from this arrangement, and that there was a need for an intermediary in this continuum of services. Increasingly, libraries fulfill this role. Instead of direct government-to-user interaction, information channels flow from agency to librarian to user, from user back up to agency, and from agency to user to librarian. This paper expands on the idea of these multiple pathways of information through research conducted in collaboration with libraries, government agencies, state library agencies, and a national library association in the United States with aims to create an e-government web resource to assist librarians engaging in e-government services. The different pathways of information both informed the creation of the web resource and offered a practical model of e-government, important for other projects dealing with similar information.