Helping All Our Employees To Become ‘Information Haves’

Up-to-date science and information are both important to developing conservation strategies for threatened or endangered species. So one of the things Scott Stoleson likes about “DigiTop”--the National Agricultural Library’s new “digital desktop” library for USDA--is that it’s now easy for him to quickly get the information he needs from his own USDA desktop computer at his office in rural western Pennsylvania.

Stoleson, a Forest Service research wildlife biologist at the agency’s Forestry Sciences Lab in Warren, Pa., said he understands the need to keep in touch with current science. He has been studying the Cerulean Warbler and other bird species with populations on the edge of extinction.

Susan Wilzer (left), the leader of current awareness literature services at NAL, discusses with FSIS program analysts Sibyl Wright (center) and Diane Moore how to use databases in DigiTop to find information that might be particularly useful to USDA employees. --Photo by Bob Anderson

“The nearest good university library is several hours away,” he advised. “But DigiTop’s speed and convenience let me review the scientific literature in my field--and still have more time for my research.”

“I like that.”

Stoleson said that tasks which used to take an entire day’s commitment to library resources can now be done in an hour or two at his desk.

NAL Deputy Director Eleanor Frierson led NAL’s DigiTop initiative. She explained that DigiTop was developed to provide USDA employees with access to key scientific journals, news services, statistics, databases, and other important information resources.

“With USDA employees using the Internet, and with many important books, journals, reference materials, and other information increasingly available electronically,” she advised, “we looked for a way to put those two factors together and give everyone at USDA access to the vital information they need.”

“While there might have been ‘information haves’ and ‘have nots’ at USDA in the past, DigiTop’s ability to deliver thousands of information resources directly to an employee’s computer means that now everyone at the Department can be an ‘information have’.”

Frierson pointed out that DigiTop connects USDA employees to a wide variety of information sources--such as literally thousands of full-text professional and scientific journals; more than 500 newspapers; several of the most respected scientific databases; and the “Yellow Book Leadership” directories which delineate key institutional leaders in all levels of government, business, professional, and non-profit organizations.

NAL combined funding contributed by several USDA agencies to purchase USDA-wide “starter” licenses to this information, at lower, library rates paid through NAL, for 2003--which is the pilot year for DigiTop. “The result,” she noted, “is a considerable amount of information available everywhere in USDA and around the clock--24/7--at a lower per-employee cost.” She added that NAL is pursuing sustained support for DigiTop for beyond the pilot year.

USDA employees, contractors, and cooperators can access DigiTop through its web site--http://www.nal.usda.gov/digitop--directly from a USDA computer. For USDA employees who use university or other non-USDA computers for their USDA work, access via a proxy server is available by contacting the DigiTop team at NAL, at DigiTop@nal.usda.gov.

Stoleson, who connects directly to the DigiTop web site from his USDA computer, said he uses the site so often that he has it bookmarked on his web browser. “DigiTop is invaluable to me and my fellow Forest Service researchers,” he emphasized. “It’s perhaps the tool I use most frequently--and most productively.” •

--Len Carey